Impossible examples in microeconomic textbooks : what justifications ?

Emmanuelle Benicourt , Sophie Jallais (1)

1 PHARE - Philosophie, Histoire et Analyse des Représentations Économiques

In this presentation, we investigate the “impossible examples” we find in microeconomics textbooks. The terminology “impossible examples” designates either examples describing an « impossible world » or examples which describe real world but are partly inconsistent with the very concept or hypothesis they exemplify. Focusing our analysis on the presentation of the « competitive » firm, and on the examples given to illustrate the production process, we ask the question “What can students possibly understand and learn through these impossible examples?”

Keywords: Microeconomics Examples Producer Teaching Epistemology

Domains: Quantitative Finance [q-fin]; Humanities and Social Sciences

Emmanuelle Benicourt, Sophie Jallais. Impossible examples in microeconomic textbooks : what justifications ?. Penser l’économie de demain et le futur de l’économie politique, Association Française d'Economie Politique, Jul 2019, Lille, France. ⟨hal-03974776⟩