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Consumer Rationality
The term ''Homo economicus'', or economic man, is the portrayal of humans as agents who are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested, and who pursue their subjectively defined ends optimally. It is a wordplay on ''Homo sapiens'', used in some economic theories and in pedagogy. In game theory, ''Homo economicus'' is often (but not necessarily) modelled through the assumption of perfect rationality. It assumes that agents always act in a way that maximize utility as a consumer and profit as a producer, and are capable of arbitrarily complex deductions towards that end. They will always be capable of thinking through all possible outcomes and choosing that course of action which will result in the best possible result. The rationality implied in ''Homo economicus'' does not restrict what sort of preferences are admissible. Only naive applications of the ''Homo economicus'' model assume that agents know what is best for their long-term physical and mental health. For ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agency (philosophy)
Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. It is independent of the moral dimension, which is called moral agency. In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure. Notably, though, the primacy of social structure vs. individual capacity with regard to persons' actions is debated within sociology. This debate concerns, at least partly, the level of reflexivity an agent may possess. Agency may either be classified as unconscious, involuntary behavior, or purposeful, goal directed activity (intentional action). An agent typically has some sort of immediate awareness of their physical activity and the goals that the activity is aimed at realizing. In 'goal directed action' an agent implements a kind of direct control or guidance over their own behavior. Human agency Agency is contrasted to objects reacting to natural forces involving only unthinking deterministic processes. In this respect, agency is subtly distinct from the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bounded Rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals decision-making, make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisficing, satisfactory rather than optimal. Limitations include the difficulty of the problem requiring a decision, the cognitive capability of the mind, and the time available to make the decision. Decision-makers, in this view, act as satisficers, seeking a satisfactory solution, with everything that they have at the moment rather than an optimal solution. Therefore, humans do not undertake a full Cost–benefit analysis, cost-benefit analysis to determine the optimal decision, but rather, choose an option that fulfills their adequacy criteria. Some models of human behavior in the social sciences assume that humans can be reasonably approximated or described as rationality, rational entities, as in rational choice theory or An Economic Theory of Democracy, Downs' political agency model.M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Model
An economic model is a theoretical construct representing economic processes by a set of variables and a set of logical and/or quantitative relationships between them. The economic model is a simplified, often mathematical, framework designed to illustrate complex processes. Frequently, economic models posit structural parameters. A model may have various exogenous variables, and those variables may change to create various responses by economic variables. Methodological uses of models include investigation, theorizing, and fitting theories to the world. Overview In general terms, economic models have two functions: first as a simplification of and abstraction from observed data, and second as a means of selection of data based on a paradigm of econometric study. ''Simplification'' is particularly important for economics given the enormous complexity of economic processes. This complexity can be attributed to the diversity of factors that determine economic activity; t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lionel Robbins
Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins, (22 November 1898 – 15 May 1984) was a British economist, and prominent member of the economics department at the London School of Economics (LSE). He is known for his leadership at LSE, his proposed definition of economics, and for his instrumental efforts in shifting Anglo-Saxon economics from its Marshallian direction. He is famous for the quote, "Humans want what they can't have." Early life Robbins was born in Sipson, west of London, the son of Rowland Richard Robbins (1872–1960), known as Dick, and his wife Rosa Marion Harris; his father was a farmer, a member of Middlesex County Council involved also in the National Farmers' Union, and the family was Strict Baptist. His sister Caroline became a noted Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College. Robbins was educated at home, at Hounslow College (a preparatory school) and at Southall County School. He went to University College London in October 1915, beginning an Arts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rational Choice Theory
Rational choice modeling refers to the use of decision theory (the theory of rational choice) as a set of guidelines to help understand economic and social behavior. The theory tries to approximate, predict, or mathematically model human behavior by analyzing the behavior of a rational actor facing the same costs and benefits.Gary Browning, Abigail Halcli, Frank Webster (2000). ''Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present'', London: Sage Publications. Rational choice models are most closely associated with economics, where mathematical analysis of behavior is standard. However, they are widely used throughout the social sciences, and are commonly applied to cognitive science, criminology, political science, and sociology. Overview The basic premise of rational choice theory is that the decisions made by individual actors will collectively produce aggregate social behaviour. The theory also assumes that individuals have preferences out of available choice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (; ; born Wilfried Fritz Pareto; 15 July 1848 – 19 August 1923) was an Italian polymath, whose areas of interest included sociology, civil engineering, economics, political science, and philosophy. He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices, and was one of the minds behind the Lausanne School of economics. He was also responsible for popularising the use of the term '' elite'' in social analysis and contributed to elite theory. He has been described as "one of the last Renaissance scholars. Trained in physics and mathematics, he became a polymath whose genius radiated into nearly all other major fields of knowledge." He introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. He was also the first to claim that income follows a Pareto distribution, which is a power law probability distribution. The Paret ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Léon Walras
Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras (; 16 December 1834 – 5 January 1910) was a French mathematical economics, mathematical economist and Georgist. He formulated the Marginalism, marginal theory of value (independently of William Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger) and pioneered the development of general equilibrium theory. Walras is best known for his book ''Éléments d'économie politique pure'', a work that has contributed greatly to the mathematization of economics through the concept of general equilibrium. For Walras, exchanges only take place after a Walrasian ''tâtonnement'' (French for "trial and error"), guided by the auctioneer, has made it possible to reach market equilibrium. It was the general equilibrium obtained from a single hypothesis, rarity, that led Joseph Schumpeter to consider him "the greatest of all economists". The notion of general equilibrium was very quickly adopted by major economists such as Vilfredo Pareto, Knut Wicksell and Gustav Cassel. John Hicks and Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Stanley Jevons
William Stanley Jevons (; 1 September 1835 – 13 August 1882) was an English economist and logician. Irving Fisher described Jevons's book ''A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy'' (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in economics. It made the case that economics, as a science concerned with Real versus nominal value (economics), quantities, is necessarily mathematical. In so doing, it expounded upon the "final" (marginal) utility theory of value. Jevons' work, along with similar discoveries made by Carl Menger in Vienna (1871) and by Léon Walras in Switzerland (1874), marked the opening of a new period in the history of economic thought. Jevons's contribution to the Marginal utility#Marginal Revolution, marginal revolution in economics in the late 19th century established his reputation as a leading political economist and logician of the time. Jevons broke off his studies of the natural sciences in London in 1854 to work as an metallurgical assay, ass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Edgeworth
Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (8 February 1845 – 13 February 1926) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and political economist who made significant contributions to the methods of statistics during the 1880s. From 1891 onward, he was appointed the founding editor of ''The Economic Journal''. Life Ysidro Francis Edgeworth – the order of his forenames later reversed – was born in Edgeworthstown, County Longford, Ireland, the son of Francis Beaufort Edgeworth and his wife, Rosa Florentina, daughter of exiled Catalan general Antonio Eroles. Francis Beaufort Edgeworth, when "a restless philosophy student at Cambridge on his way to Germany", had met Rosa, a teenage Spanish refugee, on the steps of the British Museum, and they subsequently eloped. Francis Beaufort Edgeworth was the son of politician, writer, and inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth (father also of the writer Maria Edgeworth), by his fourth wife, the botanical artist and memoirist Frances Anne, daughter of the Anglican ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Historical School Of Economics
The English historical school of economics sought a return of inductive methods in economics, following the triumph of the deductive approach of David Ricardo in the early 19th century.Spiegel, 1991 The school considered itself the intellectual heirs of past figures who had emphasised empiricism and induction, such as Francis Bacon and Adam Smith. Included in this school are William Whewell, Richard Jones, Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie, Walter Bagehot, Thorold Rogers, Arnold Toynbee, William Cunningham, and William Ashley. Concepts The economists of the English historical school were in general agreement on several ideas. They pursued an inductive approach to economics rather than the deductive approach taken by classical and neoclassical theorists. They recognised the need for careful statistical research. They rejected the hypothesis of "the profit maximizing individual" or the "calculus of pleasure and pain" as the only basis for economic analysis and policy. They beli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marx's Theory Of Alienation
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the separation and estrangement of people from their work, their wider world, their human nature, and their selves. Alienation is a consequence of the division of labour in a capitalist society, wherein a human being's life is lived as a mechanistic part of a social class. The theoretical basis of alienation is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of these actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wealth Of Nations
''An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'', usually referred to by its shortened title ''The Wealth of Nations'', is a book by the Scottish people, Scottish economist and moral philosophy, moral philosopher Adam Smith; published on 9 March 1776, it offers one of the first accounts of what builds nations' wealth. It has become a fundamental work in classical economics, and been described as "the first formulation of a comprehensive system of political economy". Reflecting upon economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Smith introduced key concepts such as the division of labour, productivity, free markets and the role prices play in resource allocation. The book fundamentally shaped the field of economics and provided a theoretical foundation for free market capitalism and economic policies that prevailed in the 19th century. A product of the Scottish Enlightenment and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the treatise offered a critical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
