ABSTRACT
The centerpiece of neoclassical equilibrium economics has always been the claim that the prices we see in the 'real world' are equilibrium prices. Since most neoclassical economists today would immediately reject the holist view of institutions, their primary philosophical task is to reconcile a methodological-individualist concept of social institutions with the concept of equilibrium prices. Perhaps economists think that by separating demand from supply we can build in a minimum, but essential, element of 'free will' for autonomous decision-making. No matter what decisions individuals made in the process of reaching an equilibrium, there might be only one set of determined values for the set of exogenous givens. Leon Walras is famous for attempting to specify the behavioral assumptions that would ensure the existence of a set of prices consistent with a general equilibrium of price-takers for any set of exogenous givens.
