Discussion about this post

User's avatar
ArnaudTramp's avatar

Do recent economic models bring any new insight compared to - let’s say - 1900 ? Real question.

Expand full comment
Radek's avatar

One nitpicky point. It doesnt actually make sense to ask "do utility functions exist?". Preferences exist. Utility functions are just convenient representations of preferences which make analyzing preferences easy. Of course one can ask how likely is it that preferences are complete, transitive and continous (or least the first two) so that they can be represented by utility functions. Tbf economists themselves get sloppy here where they say stuff like "agents are endowed with a utility function" rather than the more precise "agents have preferences which can be represented by a utility function".

Also, demand functions - derived from utility and budget constraints - do in fact exist, we estimate them all the time and really that's all you need for 95% of Economics to work and to do empirical work

Expand full comment
5 more comments...

No posts