Interaction and Market Structure

Book excerpt: This book is a collection of essays which examine how the properties of aggregate variables are influenced by the actions and interactions of heterogenous individuals in different economic contexts. The common denominator of the essays is a critique of the representative agent hypothesis. If this hypothesis were correct, the behaviour of the aggregate variable would simply be the reproduction of individual optimising behaviour. In the methodology of the hard sciences, one of the achievements of the quantum revolution has been the rebuttal of the notion that aggregate behaviour can be explained on the basis of the behaviour of a single unit: the elementary particle does not even exist as a single entity but as a network, a system of interacting units. In this book, new tracks in economics which parallel the developments in physics mentioned above are explored. The essays, in fact are contributions to the analysis of the economy as a complex evolving system of interacting agents.