Alternative approaches to building a model of human economic behavior

V. V. Biryukov
sciencebvv@gmail.com
Omsk Humanitarian Academy, Omsk, Russian Federation

Alternative approaches to building a model of human economic behavior

Abstract: The article deals with issues related to the search for new approaches to the development of a human model as a methodological core of economic science. The purpose of the article is to determine the methodological features of the development of alternative approaches to the study of human economic behavior. The research methodology is determined by the need for a conceptual change in the vision of the picture of economic reality, taking into account its intersubjective nature and the formation of a model of an economic person corresponding to the realities on this basis. The paper shows that alternative approaches to analyzing economic processes have arisen due to using different versions of the standard (basic) model of economic man proposed by the German historical school. This model incorporates elements of methodological individualism and methodological holism and assumes a description of the exogenous influence of non-economic factors on economic behavior. At the same time, the unorthodox version of the economic man model provides that at the value-normative level, within the framework of the established collective values, the construction of the institutional system of the economy is explained, and at the institutional-instrumental level, based on this, the features of the behavior of economic entities are described. In the mainstream version, research is conducted only at the institutional and instrumental levels. The paper proposes to abandon the standard model of an economic person and, in line with the ideas of the classical school, substantiates the possibility of using a model that is adequate to the realities, which allows for the study of the endogenous mechanisms of economic development and forming a systemically holistic vision of it.

Keywords: economic methodology, standard model of an economic person, models of economic behavior.

Paper submitted: March 10, 2023.

For citation: Biryukov V. V. (2023) Alternative approaches to building a model of human economic behavior. Russian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 200–207. DOI: 10.57015/issn1998-5320.2023.17.2.20.

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