Politics and Governance

Stephen DeCanio ()

Chapter 7 in Limits of Economic and Social Knowledge, 2014, pp 173-195 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract If there is only one agent (or one representative agent), then as we have seen in Chapter 5, most economic analysis boils down to a calculus exercise in constrained maximization. For example, making a decision between current consumption and current investment (i.e., between current and future consumption) leads to the Hamiltonian formalism of capital theory as described in detail by Weitzman (2003).1 Single-agent economies (or societies) can be described with relatively straightforward mathematics because there are no competing interests, no externalities, no strategic interactions, and no collective decisions that have to be made by individuals with different endowments, preferences, values, or world-views.

Keywords: Collective Action; Social Knowledge; Coalition Formation; Political Morality; Pure Exchange Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-37193-5_7

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137371935_7

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