Search results for "Methodological individualism"
showing 5 items of 5 documents
Piero Sraffa on utility and the 'subjective method' in the 1920s: A tentative appraisal of Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts
2001
The paper reconstructs Sraffa's assessment of utility-based and individualistic explanations of demand in Marshallian economics in the light of some fresh evidence provided by Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts of the 1920s. It is shown that Sraffa criticised the standard Marshallian explanation of individual consumption choices, emphasised the independent measurement requirement in explanation, lacked enthusiasm for the heuristic potentialities of the 'subjective method' in economic theorising and strove for an analysis of the phenomena of interdependence in the sphere of production as well as in the sphere of consumption.
Rational Choice Theory and the Environment: Variants, Applications, and New Trends
2010
Rational choice theory (RCT) is a research paradigm based on methodological individualism. Collective phenomena are explained by assumptions about the behavior of (subjectively) rational individual or corporate actors. In environmental research, RCT is used to predict ecological perceptions, attitudes and behavior on the micro level, and to shed light on environmental outcomes on the macro level. The most fundamental insight from RCT is that environmental problems are often the result of a social dilemma, that is, individuals’ purposive action leads to unintended negative collective consequences. This chapter addresses variants of RCT including game theory, shows applications in the field o…
La rationalité simonienne : interprétations et enjeux épistémologiques
1999
Since economics focuses on individual behaviour and implicitly adopt a methodological individualism, an individual rationality hypothesis must be laid down. Beyond the usual substantive rationality hypothesis, others forms of individual rationality can be found in economics theory. They are often related to the Simon's bounded rationality hypothesis. In the economics literature the meanings of the bounded rationality hypothesis are obviously diverse and sometimes based on a partial or superficial readings of Simon's writings. Moreover, each one of these meanings is implicitly closely linked with a particular methodological and epistemological position. Based on careful readings of Simon's w…
Institutional individualism and institutional change: the search for a middle way mode of explanation
2001
After noting the lack of enthusiasm of several well-known scholars concerning the adoption of both methodological holism and methodological individualism in its several versions, this paper shows that institutional individualism is a different mode of explanation from both of these and also that it is not the same thing as the so-called Popperian programme of situational analysis. Institutional individualism is a mode of explanation that yields non-systemic and non-reductionist explanations at the same time as it allows for the incorporation into economic theories and models of the many formal and informal institutional aspects surrounding all human interactions, whether these interactions …
Explaining the process of change taking place in legal rules and social norms: The cases of institutional economics and new institutional economics
1995
This paper deals with the phenomenon of institutional change and has been conceived as an attempt to answer the following question: Can we retain theimage of institutional change contained in a theory when we replace a methodological foundation on which the theory was built by a different and alternative one? For an answer to be developed, special attention is paid to the contributions made by institutional economists (IE) and those made by transaction cost—new institutional economists (NIE). The question clearly shows that it is a paper on applied methodology rather than a survey on institutional change contributions. Because of that, its main purpose is not to increase our knowledge about…