Where did the Rational Agent come from?
by NSER Editorial Board on January 13, 2009
The social phenomena political economy and economics aspire to explain and predict have from the beginning of speculation about these subject presented two aspects. On the one hand it is clear from our daily experience that economic phenomena (prices, production, consumption, and so forth) arise from individual actions (going to the store and buying something, contracting for the construction of a building and the like). On the other hand, these individual actions always present themselves as aggregate, statistical phenomena (the market price, gross domestic product, etc.) A peculiarity of economics is that the very phenomena it studies take a quantitative form (market transactions, accounts) produced directly from the phenomena. The profit and loss of a company, or the net worth of a household, are quantities that are inherent in the existence of the company of the household. The economist may have to take some trouble to collect this data and organize it, but is not required, like the physicist or biologist, to devise instruments to represent the phenomenon studied (the behavior of the electron or the cell, for example) in a quantitative form.
Foley, Duncan K. 2004. “The strange history of the Economic Agent.” New School Economic Review 1(1): 82-94
Tags: Economics, History, Rational Agent
