ABSTRACT
Contemporary mainstream economics contrasts with the relative hegemony of past neoclassical economics in being a multidimensional, pluralistic endeavor made up of a variety of different and competing currents of thought (Morgan and Rutherford 1998). Game theory, bounded rationality, experimental economics, behavioral economics, evolutionary economics, new institutional economics, and a number of other recent strategies of investigation are pursued alongside a still active, if now less ambitious, neoclassical research program. Thus, there are a variety of incipient, new ideas about individuals in mainstream economics, some of which still draw on neoclassical assumptions and others that introduce altogether new themes about the nature of individuals. However, in my view these new currents have to date generated only different collections of loosely related ideas that may or may not subsequently
be woven into new theories of the individual. For example, bounded rationality and evolutionary game theorists often characterize individuals roughly as “rule followers.” However, this sort of characterization is less a theory about the nature of individuals and more an eclectic set of ad hoc claims about individual behavior driven first and foremost by broad goals involved in elaborating alternative theoretical strategies for economics after the demise of general equilibrium theory brought about by the SMD results.1 Thus, I suggest that, for the present at least, the only alternative theorization of the individual in mainstream economics is the default abstract individual conception, more the inadvertent outcome of the history of critique of the subjectivist neoclassical view than an intended destination.
