Homo Economicus and Homo Stramineus

Marek Hudik

Prague Economic Papers, 2015, vol. 2015, issue 2, 154-172

Abstract: The model of Homo economicus has often been criticized as unrealistic. In particular, it has been found lacking for allegedly assuming that people are selish, an assumption which is contradicted by both introspection and empirical evidence. The aim of this paper is to show that never in the history of the economic discipline has selishness constituted the core of the Homo economicus model. In fact, the standard economic model of behaviour which has been used by economists for more than a hundred years is reticent about the motives of behaviour. Critics thus do not criticize Homo economicus but a straw man - Homo stramineus. Three possible reasons for confusing Homo economicus with Homo stramineus are identiied: malicious intent, ignorance and an attempt to avoid the tautological model of behaviour.

Keywords: utility; self-interest; rationality; Homo economicus; desire of wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B12 B13 B21 B41 D01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://pep.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.pep.506.html (text/html)
http://pep.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.pep.506.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2015:y:2015:i:2:id:506:p:154-172

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Editorial office Prague Economic Papers, University of Economics, nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Praha 3, Czech Republic
http://pep.vse.cz

DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.506

Access Statistics for this article

Prague Economic Papers is currently edited by Klára Pavlová

More articles in Prague Economic Papers from Prague University of Economics and Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stanislav Vojir ().