THE AXIOMATICAL TREND OF ECONOMIC RATIONALITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM AND STRUCTURALISM

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing theoretical and methodological consequences derived from the axiomatization of rationality concept in the economic theory. Special importance is attributed to theoretical and methodological difficulties of surpassing the microeconomic behavior towards the macro. For doing so, it is presented the epistemological context by which the psychological reduction of homo economicus is adopted by the economic theory. Next, it is discussed the legitimacy of the micro-macro transcendence from the methodological treatment of the individual and the firm, in the neoclassical microeconomic context, in which consumer and firm are supposed to be isomorphic unities of analysis. It is argued that the methodological individualism, inherent to neoclassical approach, implies the counterposition between an individual and a collective level of analysis so that the microeconomic behavior is established ex-ante and disconnected to the macro. Influenced by this counterposition, the first structuralist approaches tend to maintain the axiomatic tendency of rationality in the economic theory. However, more advanced versions of structuralism, giving emphasis on relations (not on agents) as unity of analysis, allow to integrate the individual behavior as a product of social relations taking into account the interdependency between the micro and micro level.