Articles
Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.

Economic “fields” as historical objects (not yet)
The notion of “field” is so pervasive that economists hardly pay conscious attention to it.


The Theory of the Firm: Language, Model and Reality
In a previous post we queried whether the theory of the consumer as developed in the first three chapters of Mas-Colell, Whinston and Green (and indeed other comparable texts) provides anything by way of content beyond what is implied by the abstract description of consumers as agents who are maximizing something. [We did not discuss chapter four, on aggregation of demand, to which we may return later]. As we noted then, a comparable point can be made about the theory of the firm.