NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS
Economics “The study of how societies use scarce resources to
produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different
people.” (Paul Samuelson Economics)
Economy (1530) from oikonomos, oikonomia (Greek Οικονομικών =
oikos, house + nemein, to allot, manage; Latin oeconomia) =
household manager/steward; household management
Economic Sociology “The application of the frames of reference,
variables, and explanatory models of sociology to that complex of
activities concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and
consumption of scarce goods and services.” (Smelser & Swedberg 1994:3)
“Economics is all about how people make choices; sociology
is all about how they don’t have any choices to make.”
(Duesenberry, James. 1960. “Comment on Gary S. Becker’s ‘An Economic
Analysis of Fertility’.” Pp. 231-234 in Demographic and Economic Change in
Developed Countries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Marginal Analysis
Classical economics – created by Adam Smith (The
Wealth of Nations, 1776), David Ricardo, John Stuart
Mills – stressed the benefits of free trade, market
tendency to equilibrium, and a labor theory of value.
Prices objectively reflect the amount of labor required
to produce goods. This assumption is the basis of
Marx’s theory of capitalist exploitation of workers.
A. Smith
Marginal utility theory dominated neoclassical economics after
1870. Marginal utilitydf = added subjective satisfaction or benefit
that a consumer derives from an additional unit of commodity or
service. Utility is inverse to consumption: the price a consumer is
willing to pay for additional purchases diminishes due to satiation.
EX How much are you willing to pay for your first
laptop? How much for a second; third; hundredth?
Individuals Maximize Utility
Neoclassical economists assume methodological individualism:
all economic phenomena can be explained by aggregating over
individuals’ behaviors. They de-emphasize institutions – rules &
regulations that predate and condition an individual’s actions.
Consumers and producers are rational actors who seek to
maximize subjective expected utility across a set of goods and
services, making choices within a budget constraint: e.g., what
Ns of bananas & mangoes for $XX will maximize your SEU?
Alfred Marshall (1890) analyzed commodity prices and
production quantities as the intersection between supply
and demand curves:
► Consumer utility maximization explains shifts in the
supply & demand curves for consumer goods.
A. Marshall
► Producer profit maximization explains the origin of
firms’ demand curves for factors of production, and
underlies neoclassical economics’ theory of the firm.
Factors of Production
Land
Labor
Firm production
function
Technological
constraints
Business
Buyers
Capital
$
Goods & services for
sale in the market
Budgetary
constraints
$
Consumer
Buyers
Firms Maximize Profits
The core neoclassical assumption: Firm goal ≡ profit maximization
Profit maximization is the process by which a firm determines the
price and output levels that will return its largest profit.
Marginal analysis reveals that profit maximization
requires reducing total cost relative to total revenue:
Revenue = Price of product X Quantity sold
Cost = Price of inputs X Quantity used
Profit = Revenue – Cost
To maximize its profit in a perfectly competitive market (where all firms are
price-takers, not price-makers), a firm should produce output until its
marginal cost of producing the last unit exactly equals the equilibirum price
in the market, at which every firm sells all the units they produce. General
equilibria are the aggregate solutions to individual maximization problems.
(See next slide)
Finding the Maximum Profit
The Market
$
D
The Firm
$
S
PE
MC
AC
PE
Q
QEQUILIBRIUM
Q
QPRODUCED
Market price for a good & the
quantity produced by all firms
is determined at equilibrium by
the intersection between:
Firm produces the product until its
marginal cost of producing the last
unit equals the market price. Its
profit is the difference between:
(a) downward sloping
consumer demand curve D;
and (b) upward sloping
producer supply curve S.
(a) total revenue ( = Q x P) minus
(b) total cost ( = Q x Average Cost)
Market Transactions
Economics claims that the market, through its pricing mechanism, is
the most efficient means to coordinate all buy-sell transactions.
• Producers and consumers are rational actors, assumed to have
perfect information about market prices at the time of exchange.
• Actors’ abilties to calculate their utility and profit maxima are equal
(no information asymmetries). Participation in market transactions
doesn’t run a risk of opportunistic behavior (“self-seeking with guile”).
Therefore, no transaction costs need occur:
• Search costs
• Negotiation costs
• Organizational costs
• Monitoring costs
• Opportunity costs
The Firm as Black Box
Neoclassical economists did not theorize about what goes on inside
firms. Organizationally, the “production function” is an
undifferentiated black box that mysteriously transforms factors of
production into products & services for sale on the market.
INPUTS
OUTPUTS
Using the firm’s production function, a single owner/manager decides
what & how much will be produced, subject to its budget constraint.
Neoclassical theory of the firm ignores the differing interests,
resources, and actions of entrepreneurial owners, boards of
directors, shareholders, managers, employees, communities,
governments, and numerous other firm stakeholders.
Criticisms of Neoclassical Economics
Neoclassical economics is often criticized for not explaining actual
economies, instead describing a normative “Pareto-optimal Utopia"
Over-Reaching Claims (a.k.a. economic imperialism): “The
economic approach is a comprehensive one that is applicable to all
human behavior – all human behavior can be viewed as involving
participants who maximize their utility from a stable set of
preferences and accumulate an optimal amount of information.”
(Gary S. Becker 1976 The Economic Approach to Human Behavior).
Unrealistic Assumptions -- Do these principles reflect a real world?
• People & orgs are rational, risk-neutral, self-interested utility maximizers
• Humans possess perfect information (certainty) about prices & qualities
• Production, profit, efficiency, … are the only important economic values
• Markets are perfectly competitive (participants are price-takers, not -makers)
• Economies can use unlimited planetary resources, no externalities (pollution)
• Simplification to obtain (mathematical) rigor is analytically worthwhile
Economic Sociology as Alternative
Economic sociology in its classical era emphasized institutional analysis
“Economic sociology is the study of “economic institutions.” (Joseph
Schumpeter. 1954. History of Economic Analysis).
“Finally there are the economic institutions: institutions relating to the
production of wealth (serfdom, tenant farming, corporate organization,
production in factories, in mills, at home, and so on), institutions relating
to exchange (commercial organization, markets, stock exchanges, and so
on), institutions relating to distribution (rent, interest, salaries, and so
on). They form the subject matter of economic sociology.” (Emile
Durkheim. 1909. L'Année Sociologique.)
Central concepts in economic sociology’s current era are social
embeddedness and the social construction of economic institutions
THREE THEORETICAL PILLARS of ECON SOC:
► Networks – embeddedness of interpersonal & interorganizational relations
► Organizations – resource dependence, neoinstitutionalism, pop. ecology, …
► Culture – beliefs, ideologies, taken-for-granted assumptions
Readings Discussion Quex
1. How valid are Becker & Coleman claims that utility-maximizing principles
can explain all forms of social behavior, not just economic activities?
2. By going beyond narrow self-interest to include other motives (guilt,
affection), has Becker diluted neoclassical econ model’s rigor & power?
3. How can social structure & action perspectives enrich economics? Or is
Fine right: economics’ colonization of social sciences is inevitable?
4. Why does Granovetter call embeddedness “the opposite of atomization”?
Does this structural approach to economic life make econ soc distinct from
economics? Or can econ soc deal only with nonrational “left-overs”?
5. Is Swedberg’s theoretical tripod sufficient for developing econ soc as an
intellectually powerful & institutionalized theory group? Don’t middle-range
theories lack the unifying power achieved by neoclassical economics?
6. What does Zafirovski see as relation between econ soc & economics?
Why does he argue that rational choice model is unable to bridge the gap?
7. Beckert argues that refuting maximization alone can’t create a truly
sociological theory of economics. How could uncertainty about outcomes
become the foundation of an alternative to neoclassical economics?