Concept of “Economic Man” in Economic Approach to Law: An Explanation and a Critique

دانشنامه حقوق اقتصادی

Article 6, Volume 19, Issue 2, January 2013   

Document Type: Scientific research

DOI: 10.22067/le.v19i2.27379

Authors

Seyyed Morteza Naeemi^* ; Mohammad Rasekh

Abstract

Concept of “economic man” is one of the principal assumptions of economic approach to law. Based on this assumption, economic approach, a modern and leading school of thought in legal philosophy, seeks to explain and predict individual behavior in legal framework and make recommendations and prescriptions so as to improve the effects of laws and regulations on legal actors. In this paper, in addition to definition of economic man, two claims suggest: First, there isn’t a unique version of economic man and at least, we face four versions of this concept. Second, although in economics and economic analysis, economic man is the prevailing and current paradigm, in order to give a more accurate explanation of human conduct and make a more exact prediction of it, it’s better to combine this theory with other theories and findings of other social sciences such as psychology and sociology

Keywords

Economic man; economic approach to law; bounded rationality; anomalies; commitments