ABSTRACT
But what is their purpose? It is to convince the student that there is a specific kind of reasoning, called “economic reasoning,” that is quite simple to grasp and enjoys universal validity. It has two central pillars. There is the “law of supply and demand,” which everyday life supposedly confirms, and there is the proposition that the market is an “efficient” system – i.e. a “mechanism” that generally allocates resources in an optimal way. The efficiency proposition, however, is presented neither as an empirical truth nor as an a priori belief; instead it is offered as a result in the mathematical sense, but one too demanding to be shown to the readers. In lieu of proof students are offered various poetic images, including the inescapable “invisible hand.”
