Rationality, behavior, institutional, and economic change in Schumpeter

Agnès Festré and Pierre Garrouste

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2008, vol. 15, issue 4, 365-390

Abstract: In 1940 Schumpeter wrote a paper entitled: 'The Meaning of Rationality in the Social Sciences', which was intended as a contribution to one of the meetings of a seminar including Talcott Parsons, Wassily Leontief, Paul Sweezy and other Harvard scholars, that he initiated. In this paper Schumpeter develops thoroughly his own conception of rationality in economics. First, this paper is interesting in itself because it relates to contemporary methodological debates on rationality in the social sciences. Second Schumpeter's conception of rationality is linked to his methodological background (both individualistic and holistic), which is rooted in his economic sociology and explains the relationships he stresses between individual behavior and collective entities. In this contribution we present the arguments developed by Schumpeter in his 1940 paper and analyze the reason why his notion of rationality can be seen as a key component of his conception of economic and institutional change.

Keywords: rationality; institutional change; economic change; economic sociology; Schumpeter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501780802507222 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Rationality, behavior, institutional and economic change in Schumpeter (2008)
Working Paper: Rationality, behavior, institutional and economic change in Schumpeter (2008)
Working Paper: Rationality, Behavior, Institutional and Economic Change in Schumpeter (2007)
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:taf:jecmet:v:15:y:2008:i:4:p:365-390

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13501780802507222

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands

More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().