Cárdenas, L. (2015) La epistemología del análisis económico estructural. Cinta moebio 54: 218-239

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The epistemology of structural economic analysis

Mg. Luis Cárdenas (luiscard@ucm.es) Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Madrid, España)

Abstract

In this paper we focus on the structural approach and structural method developed from Sampedro’s work. We propose that this approach is inside the systemic paradigm and it has two interdependent and necessary ideas. On the one hand, we take as a reference some schools of thought in economics and the structural method with two stages (descriptive and synthesis). On the other hand, some macroeconomic principles has been derived from the vision and the methodology, which give the structural approach an analytical, synthetic, aggregate and historiographical character. In this sense, the main argument is that structural analysis has its own macro-theoretical characterization (although eclectic). In this way, the structural approach allows valid analysis in order to increase our knowledge of the economic reality.

Keywords: structural analysis, epistemology, macroeconomics, methodology, economic thought.