Abstract: The production of scientific knowledge is a social process that can be analyzed with the help of conceptual tools drawn from economic science. A growing literature shows that this analysis is fruitful for the understanding of relevant cognitive aspects of the process of science and its outcomes, and can offer a middle ground between rationalist and constructivist paradigms. Three approaches are identified within the economics of scientific knowledge, based respectively in the following ideas: scientific research as an optimization process, scientific research as a market for ideas, and scientific research as a collection of social mechanisms. .
