The logical reconstruction of pure exchange economics: Another alternative (Q1062593)

The structuralist metascience approach of Sneed and Stegmüller has recently been applied to Walrasian pure exchange economics (PEE) by \textit{W. Balzer} [Erkenntnis 17, 23-46 (1982)] and \textit{F. Haslinger} [ibid. 20, 115-129 (1983)]. Haslinger's paper was written in order to rectify at least two perceived inadequacies of Balzer's paper. First, Haslinger argued that ''utility'' was not as essential to PEE as Balzer had initially claimed. Second, Haslinger argued that Balzer's reconstruction ''did not do justice to the standard texts'' of general equilibrium economics. This latter inditement is particularly important since both authors agree that textual fidelity is a necessary condition for an adequate structuralist reconstruction. In this paper we argue that while most of Haslinger's criticisms of Balzer are valid, he too fails to do justice to the standard texts in a variety of ways. For one thing, Haslinger's reconstruction still places unnecessary emphasis on utility and utility functions. For another thing, Haslinger's characterization of equilibrium is inadequate. And finally, Haslinger overstates the magnitude of the qualitative comparative statics information available from PEE as well as the importance of the gross substitute assumption. These criticisms constitute Section I of the paper. In Section II we offer our own reconstruction of PEE which uses market excess demand as the fundamental concept and provides a more accurate portrayal of what appears in the standard economic texts and theoretical publications than the reconstructions of either Balzer or Haslinger. In Section III we point out how our reconstruction of PEE differs (particularly with respect to empirical hypotheses) from structuralist reconstructions in physical science, and the closing paragraphs of Section III discuss the metascientific implications of these differences.