Table of Contents

Introduction: Why is rationality so important to economists? 1: Adam Smith and the concept of morally constrained rationality 2: John Stuart Mill and the concept of socially embedded rationality 3: William Stanley Jevons and the concept of substantive rationality 4: Vilfredo Pareto and the idea of rationality as consistency of choices 5: Lionel Robbins, scarcity, consistency and rationality 6: Neoclassical rationality under fire: the empiricist critique 7: Three conventionalist responses. Machlup, Samuelson and Friedman 8: Popper’s conventionalist retreat 9: Game theory introduces strategic rationality 10: Herbert Simon and the concept of bounded rationality 11: Rationality in behavioral economics 12: The social individuals’ rationality Conclusion: Who is rational after all?

About the Author

Michel S. Zouboulakis is Professor of History & Methodology of Economics at the University of Thessaly, Greece.