Despite what might seem to the naked eye, and as many will already imagine, the expression positive economy does not refer to a type of economy with optimistic or positive character; Although the term is often used in a similar sense (in everyday contexts and by people with few economic knowledge, mainly), “optimism” or “positivity” in economics, as in any other scientific branch, is only attributable (or not ) to those who practice it, but in no way to science itself.
Clarified this point and to offer an approximate definition of positive economy that we all understand, it is necessary to refer to what has sometimes been presented as its antagonist, the normative economy. And although sometimes it is so, that is, that the appreciations and statements formulated from the normative position with those of the positive, both are complementary aspects, branches of the science or economic theory that are infinitely reinforced between the Yeah.
Normative economy and positive economy. As we said, it is easier to understand the concept of positive economy if it is exposed in relation to that of normative economy. And attentive, because the distinction between both concepts transcends the merely economic matter, rooting in the philosophical field.
The differences between normative economy and positive economy are a formulation, in the economic field, of the ancient philosophical problem of “being” and “duty to be”, between regulations and descriptivity, facets faced for centuries to be able to get the hegemony in the definition in the definition of science.
The conflict could be summed up in a question about the scientific statements of the following type: these statements, should they talk about how things are, or how they should be? That is, it is questioned if, for a proposition (the content of a statement, of a phrase that gives us a certain knowledge about the world) is considered typical of scientific language, it must be normative to state what is supposed to be, occur, occur according to certain laws or norms, or descriptive state what really happens and its possible causes.
Returning to the economic field, the normative economy exerts a very important role in the preparation of economic theories; Their statements establish what should happen, what should happen (or what is the same, how the world should be) to achieve certain milestones. Of course, the normative economy, by its very nature, often suffers from a distancing from the real that incapacitates it to analyze certain facts and scenarios.
On the other hand, the positive economy is based on facts, in what it is (and not on what it should be), using descriptive statements to refer to the state of things and evaluating its possible causes to offer an explanation anchored in the real.
The positive economy and the economic theories in which they participate, ultimately, analyze economic behavior rather than guide it, as would be the object of the normative economy. There is no doubt that both, as we said, often collide with each other, but the role of complementarity that plays one with the other is also evident, both at macroeconomic scale and at the microeconomic level, on a small scale, applicable both to the analysis of the analysis of the analysis Economic and financial status of any company (positive economy), as to its strategic planning, describing what should happen and what is necessary to happen with the views placed in the future horizon of the organization (normative economy).
Eccio Leon
@el54r
