Revista OEconomica

Tudor Constantin BĂLAN - Cycles of Freedom: Are Our Rights Today Permanently Secured, or Are We in a Transitional Phase? The Cases of Great Britain, the United States, and Russia

Marius-Cristian PANĂ, Adela BĂLAN - Economic Freedom and Prosperity: A Comparative Analysis of Welfare Determinants at the International Level

Ana Octavia ALBU - When Accurate Forecasts Still Produce Waste: Demand Shocks and Over-Forecasting Risk in Food Retail

Adrian-Ioan DAMOC - The Persian Pivot and the Reconfiguration of Geopolitical Realism: Iran and Venezuela in Strategic Competition among the United States, China, and Russia

Emmanuel Olusegun STOBER - Coercive Diplomacy in the Gulf and the Limits of the Strike-Forward Strategy: Toward a Middle-Power Coalition for Regional Stability

Sorin-Nicolae CURCĂ - On the Informational Entropy of Economic Shock

Florin DĂNESCU - The Banking Sector as Critical Infrastructure in the Logic of Hybrid Conflict: Post-2014 Legislative Convergence in Central and Eastern Europe and the Case of Romania

Alexandru POPOVICI - The Contribution of the Music Industry to GDP and Employment: A Comparative Analysis

Mohammed AL-NASSERY - Implications of the War in the Middle East: An Analysis of the Economic, Security, Humanitarian, and Political Dimensions

Mihai LĂCĂTUŞ - GDP as a Means, Not an End: Inequality as the Missing Variable in Fiscal Policy Design – A 60-Country Analysis of Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being

Articles on Issue Theme

Andrei SANDU

Durham University

This essay will first outline the case for microfoundations, before presenting the limitations which undermine both the representative-agent model as a means of reduction and the individualist claim that microfoundations are necessary for explanation of economic aggregates. I conclude that the desire for microfoundations is justifiable in certain contexts, but that demanding them as a validator of macroeconomics demonstrates too narrow a conception of the purposes of social science. Though a sound understanding of microeconomics is necessary for a sound understanding of the economy, macroeconomics deserves a greater degree of ontological independence than it is granted by individualists.

ŒCONOMICA no. 3-4/2016

Keywords: microfoundations, macroeconomics, representative-agent model, individualism

JEL: B41, D00, E00

Microeconomic Foundations for Macroeconomic Phenomena. A Problem of Ontological (In)Dependence [Fundaţii microeconomice ale fenomenelor macroeconomice. O problemă de (in)dependenţă ontologică]

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