Abstract
Economists have often claimed that our theories were never intended to describe individual behaviour in all its idiosyncrasies. Instead, in this view, economic theory is supposed to explain only general patterns across large populations. The prime example is the theory of competitive markets, which is designed to deal with situations in which the influence of any individual agent on price formation is ‘negligible’.
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Roberts, J. (2018). Large Economies. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_754
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_754
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