ABSTRACT
In many branches of economic theory, notably in public economics, international economics, labour economics and industrial organization, it is conventional to assume that all members of some class of agents are identical in their preferences and endowments (including information).2 Each member of such a class may be said to ‘represent’ the class. The convention is especially prominent in analyses that purport to be general-equilibrium in scope, for it allows appeal to the properties of the substitution matrix of a representative household and to the properties of the production set of a representative firm.
