The methodology of economics and the survival principle revisited and revised: Some welfare and public policy implications of modeling the economic agent

The focus of this paper is on the survival principle, as articulated by Milton Friedman, that dominates the methodology of the conventional wisdom either explicitly or implicitly. The survival principle is revised applying the behavioral approach to economics, which differs fundamentally with Friedman’s methodology. This discussion is contextualized by a comparison of the different approaches to the modeling of economic agents and the substantive implications of this for theory and public policy and thereby for economic welfare and economic justice.