经济学个人主义方法论反思——劳动分工和内生市场结构的视角

Critique of the Individualistic Methodology in Economics: The Division of Labor and Endogenous Market Structure

本文通过对古典经济学、新古典经济学、奥地利学派和新兴古典经济学理论框架和方法论的分析,揭示了西方主流经济学个体主义方法论的局限性,发现新古典经济学的一些逻辑矛盾。以亚当·斯密为代表的古典经济学派采用的是个人主义和整体主义相结合的研究方法,扩展杨小凯的新兴古典分析框架是经济理论重构最有前途的方向之一。沿着亚当·斯密、杨格和杨小凯等先驱开辟的道路,受中国古典哲学名著《道德经》和唯物辩证法的启示,本文通过引入群体行为假设,实现个体主义和整体主义方法论的结合,发展了新兴古典经济学的研究范式,建立了一个融发展和结构、增长和分配为一体的研究框架,明晰了市场结构的内生演化机制和市场经济的局限性,给出了劳动分工状态的计算公式和收入的概率分布,得到了价格期望值的演化方程。通过定性和数值模拟分析,揭示了市场规模、交易成本、群体行为对国民福利增长的重要性。

Summary:The 2008 international financial crisis caused tremendous damage to the world economy,however no one can accurately measure the extent of the damage.This has led to questions for economists and modern economics,making it particularly important to examine the theoretical framework of modern economics,find the drawbacks of the mainstream economic system and explore ways to improve economic theory and escape the current predicament of economics.This study reveals the inherent contradictions in the mainstream economic system,and the limitations of its individualistic methodology through a comparative analysis of the theoretical frameworks and methodologies of classical economics,neoclassical economics,Austrian economics and emerging classical economics,to open the way for a reconstruction of the economic theory.After a brief investigation of the historical development of economics,this paper finds that the individualistic methodology often used in economics has major flaws.It is impossible to establish a complete theoretical system that relies solely on the individualistic methodology.Mainstream economics has problems separating static from dynamic,total from structural,micro from macro and growth from distribution analysis.Creating a new economic theoretical system is an important task facing economists.Following the path paved by pioneers Adam Smith,Young and Yang Xiaokai,and inspired by the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching and materialist dialectics,this paper regards the whole or the group as a new entity formed after a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change.The nature of the group is completely different from the individuals that make it up.This paper introduces a group behavior hypothesis based on individual behavior,combines individualistic and holistic methodology,develops a research paradigm for new classical economics and establishes a research framework that integrates development with structure,growth and distribution.This paper obtains results beyond those of neoclassical economics.It proves that markets have limitations.Both self-sufficiency and the market structure of the division of labor are affected by transaction costs,individual preferences and the production technology and are the results of the endogenous evolution of the economic system.The market economy is inherently unstable and unfair.When there are few participants and an odd number of market participants,the market economy is unlikely to produce a fair income distribution.This paper gives a formula for the division of labor and the distribution of income and derives the evolutionary equation for price expectations.This formal expression of Smith s“invisible hand”deepens our understanding of the views of Adam Smith on price fluctuations and those of Stiglitz on how the invisible hand“trembles”.This paper has three main contributions.First,it examines the problems and contradictions inherent to neoclassical economics and the Austrian school of economics from the perspectives of philosophy,logic and mathematics,uncovering the drawbacks of the individualistic methodology.It is concluded that holism and individualism are complementary.Second,inspired by the dialectical thinking of the Tao Te Ching,this paper proposes a modeling idea that conforms to the laws of the unity and conflict of opposites,the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes and the negation of the negation,integrating the individual behavior hypothesis and the group behavior hypothesis into a new analytical framework to achieve unity of individualism with holism and deductive reasoning with inductive reasoning.Third,it is proven that the new framework has more explanatory power than neoclassical economics,and that market structure,growth and distribution can be discussed within the same theoretical framework.