Journal Articles

1. Hoover, KD, Reductionism in economics: Intentionality and eschatological justification in the microfoundations of macroeconomics, Philosophy of Science, vol. 82 no. 4 (October, 2015), pp. 689-711, University of Chicago Press [doi].
   (last updated on 2024/04/18)

   Abstract:
   Macroeconomists overwhelmingly believe that macroeconomics requires microfoundations, typically understood as a strong eliminativist reductionism. Microfoundations aims to recover intentionality. In the face of technical and data constraints macroeconomists typically employ a representative-agent model, in which a single agent solves the microeconomic optimization problem for the whole economy, and take it to be microfoundationally adequate. The characteristic argument for the representative-agent model holds that the possibility of the sequential elaboration of the model to cover any number of individual agents justifies treating the policy conclusions of the single-agent model as practically relevant. This eschatological justification is examined and rejected.