Relationship of Economic Communications and Productive Consumption: Theoretical Aspect

Abstract

The article examines the formation and development of the theory of economic behavior as one of the basic theories of modern economic science. The authors studied the features of approaches to the study of the behavior of economic agents from the point of view of representatives of the Austrian neoclassical school, Keynesian economic theory, the Russian economic and mathematical school of the late XIX - early XX centuries, monetarism, and the modern Russian economic and mathematical school. The authors revealed a limited heuristic value of the studied approaches. The authors revealed a dichotomy of the theory of behavior of an economic agent and proved that it is a methodological problem, since it contradicts the principle of methodological atomism, according to which an economic agent should be a single and indivisible basic “particle” of the economic system. It has been established that modern economic theory cannot overcome the neoclassical dichotomy “producer – consumer”, which contradicts the principle of methodological atomism and therefore is a methodological problem. The producer – consumer dichotomy is partially solved with the help of theoretical tools such as the equilibrium approach and the balance method, but this is not a methodological solution.

The authors also investigated the heuristic potential of the theory of productive consumption and the theory of economic communications to solve the problem of the producer-consumer dichotomy. It has been established that consumer orientation to the future to a greater extent than to the present, his desire to increase human capital, stimulates the manufacturer to search for opportunities to meet future consumer needs. It is established that economic communications form the internal environment of systems and subsystems of various types and levels, affect the coordination mechanisms within systems and between systems. The role of economic communications is growing in direct proportion to the growing role of human and social capital in the economy.

The authors formulated two working hypotheses for further research. The first hypothesis is the assumption that the image of the future becomes the main condition for coordinating the interests and actions of both the producer and the consumer, since they both strive to maximize their well-being and their human capital in the future. The second hypothesis is that economic communications are the connecting link between economic agents (consumers and producers) in the present and future. These hypotheses are supposed to be used in the future to construct a general theory of economic behavior. The authors proved that the neoclassical dichotomy “consumer - producer” can be resolved on the basis of the theory of productive consumption and the theory of economic communications.