ABSTRACT
Models addressed individual behavior and the externalities that result from individual choice with respect to social distancing, treatment, and vaccination. In economics, research that leads to new ideas does not occur in isolation. Relativism means that the current economic environment shapes the questions and theories of researchers. Procedures of justification and standards of reasoning stem from assessments of the context calling attention to them. The progression of ideas has properties relative to a given framework of analysis. In the relativist framework, when the events of the day warrant change, new economic methods supplant old ideas. Absolutists, in contrast, argue that internal factors of the discipline, such as ongoing and unresolved questions and the discovery of new solutions, shape the progression of ideas. Joseph Schumpeter (1961), the influential Austrian political economist, argues that, with respect to the progression of ideas, two groups exist: innovators and articulators.
