9311930 Hoover In this project, Professor Hoover is building a bridge between the analysis of causality in the philosophy of science and the practice of macroeconomics and macroeconometrics. To build this bridge, he is taking the constraints imposed by the nature of macroeconomics on useful causal analysis as seriously as philosophers of science typically take the constraint imposed by quantum mechanics. A central theme of the first part of Professor Hoover's study is that probabilistic theories of causality, especially those that rely on assumptions about temporal order, are not adequate for macroeconomics. In contrast, a counterfactual analysis that stresses the importance of the invariance of economic structures and the transmission of the effects of interventions is more suitable. Probabilistic theories have a clear function only within such a structural account. The second part of the study uses results from the first part to motivate and justify methods of causal inference that are then applied to empirical questions of causal direction in macroeconomics. The study aims both to improve applied macroeconomics and to provide a richer and more general philosophical analysis of causality. ***
