Frederic Jennings Jr. - Economic essays (part one): toward a realistic concept of choice

jpe:10732 - Journal of Philosophical Economics, November 20, 2019, Volume XIII Issue 1 - https://doi.org/10.46298/jpe.10732
Economic essays (part one): toward a realistic concept of choiceArticle

Authors: Frederic Jennings Jr. 1

  • 1 Center for Ecological Economic and Ethical Education

These essays were originally drafted 30 years ago between 1988 and 1990, and then they were filed away and rediscovered just this year. They represented an attempt to offer a simple and unadorned version of fundamental issues in economics pertaining to our urgent need for a realistic concept of choice on which to found our constructions. The first essay introduces the notion of ‘opportunity cost’ and our use of caeteris paribus in the process of partial analysis. The second essay offers two metaphors for economic behavior: the ‘neighborhood store’ where virtually all neoclassical choice occurs; and the ‘chessboard’ that opens three issues simply ignored in orthodox settings. The third essay addresses the problem of interdependence, since choice in this setting confronts our range of awareness as bounded where outcomes spread forever with externalities everywhere, ruling out additivity.


Volume: Volume XIII Issue 1
Section: Articles
Published on: November 20, 2019
Imported on: December 28, 2022
Keywords: choice,cost,neoclassical,competition,ethics,planning horizons,[SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences

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