Lars P. Syll — Reformulating The Economic Science Curriculum

Econ 101. The criterion model is misleading.

Having gone through a handful of the most oftentimes used textbooks of economic science at the undergraduate marking today, I tin give the axe alone conclude that the models that are presented inwards these modern mainstream textbooks endeavor to depict too analyze complex too heterogeneous existent economies amongst a unmarried rational-expectations-robot-imitation-representative-agent.

That is, amongst something that has absolutely zilch to create amongst reality.….
For most xl years mainstream economic science itself has lived amongst a theorem that shows the impossibility of extending the microanalysis of consumer behavior to the macro marking (unless making apparently too admittedly insane assumptions). Still afterwards all these years pretending inwards their textbooks that this theorem does non be — none of the textbooks I investigated fifty-fifty cite the beingness of the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theorem — is actually outrageous.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Reformulating the economic science curriculum
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University