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Titre L'intérêt limité de l'hypothèse de rationalité individuelle
Auteur Jean Cartelier, Carlo Benetti
Mir@bel Revue Cahiers d'économie politique
Numéro no 24-25, automne 1994-printemps 1995 Quelles hypothèses de rationalité pour la théorie économique?
Page 19-35
Résumé anglais Individual rationality cannot be defined independently of the type of social organisation. Two different meanings must be considered. The first, quite usual, is the maximisation of a function under some constraints. It is shown that this hypothesis, crucial for the normative content of general equilibrium theory, is relatively immaterial for its descriptive aspect. The second, often overlooked, concerns the rules under which individuals carry out their transactions. A monetary organisation of markets possibly is one of theses rules. Introducing a monetary system in current nontâtonnement models of the market entails that an individual cannot be sure that his participation in the market will always improve his situation. If money and market were indissociable, the fiction according to which society results from voluntary actions of rational agents would be deprived of any analytical foundations.
Source : Éditeur (via Persée)
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