The Representative Agent in Macroeconomics

James E. Hartley is Assistant Professor of Economics at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts

Part I Why representative agents?1 INTRODUCTION 2 THE ORIGINS OF THE REPRESENTATIVE AGENT 3 ARGUMENT FOR THE NEW CLASSICAL USE OF REPRESENTATIVE AGENT MODELS Part II The Lucas Critique 4 BEYOND TASTE AND TECHNOLOGY PARAMETERS IN MACROECONOMICS Part III The Walrasian tradition 5 WALRASIAN METHODOLOGY 6 MARSHALLIAN METHODOLOGY 7 THE NEW CLASSICALS AS WALRASIAN ECONOMISTS Part IV Microfoundations 8 MICROFOUNDATIONS: AUSTRIAN STYLE 9 THE TRADITIONAL CASE FOR MICROFOUNDATIONS 10 THE AGGREGATION PROBLEM 11 INDIVIDUAL AND MARKET EXPERIMENTS 12 THE REPRESENTATIVE AGENT VERSUS MICROFOUNDATIONS 13 THE MYTH OF MICROFOUNDATIONS Part V Whither macroeconomics? 14 AFTER REPRESENTATIVE AGENT MODELS