Re: Say's Law and Operationalism

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathan D Halvorson wrote:

> all such economic laws depend on
> the assumption that agents are rational in a very stringent sense

Not at all.
Consider the entire set of arbitrage
(in the strict sense) results
in financial markets.
Note that these are actually quantitative.
More to the point,
see the entire literature on economics
without the rationality hypothesis.  Start
perhaps with Alchian's famous 1950 article
but be sure to get to Gode and Sunder's 1993
article.

Alan Isaac



  author = {Alchian, Armen A.},
  year = 1950,
  title = {Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory},
  journal = jpe,
  volume = 58,
  nubmer = 3,
  month = jun,
  pages = {211--21}


  author = {Gode, D.K. and Sunder, S.},
  year = 1993,
  journal = jpe,
  title = {Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders:
Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality},
  volume = 101,
  number = 1,
  month = feb,
  pages = {119--137}