IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jen/jenavo/1998-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Paradoxical Fate of the Representative Firm

Author

Listed:
  • Frank Schohl

Abstract

While modern theorising on the microfoundation of macroeconomics makes intense use of the representative firm notion, severe objections have been raised. Regarded from the history of thought this is the second time that its usefulness is called into question. The paper presents an old literature which has ended with the abandonment of the representative firm from competition theory because it neglects the innovation issue. It shows that its subsequent adoption to macroeconomics suffers from similar flaws. It follows that the representative firm is inappropriate for the analysis of modern competitive economies and should be withdrawn from macroeconomics as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank Schohl, 1998. "The Paradoxical Fate of the Representative Firm," Working Paper Series B 1998-03, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, School of of Economics and Business Administration.
    • Handle: RePEc:jen:jenavo:1998-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maarten C. W. Janssen, 1991. "What Is This Thing Called Microfoundations?," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 687-712, Winter.
    2. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    3. Long, John B, Jr & Plosser, Charles I, 1983. "Real Business Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(1), pages 39-69, February.
    4. Alan P. Kirman, 1992. "Whom or What Does the Representative Individual Represent?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 117-136, Spring.
    5. Janssen, Maarten C.W., 1991. "The alleged necessity of microfoundations," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 619-639.
    6. Young, Allyn A., 1928. "Increasing Returns and Economic Progress," History of Economic Thought Articles, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, vol. 38, pages 527-542.
    7. James E. Hartley, 1996. "Retrospectives: The Origins of the Representative Agent," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 169-177, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Victor Zarnowitz, 1997. "Business Cycles Observed and Assessed: Why and How They Matter," NBER Working Papers 6230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Lu Zhang, 2019. "Q-factors and Investment CAPM," NBER Working Papers 26538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Patricia Bonini, 2004. "New Macroeconomics and Credibility Analysis," Economia, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics], vol. 5(2), pages 341-359.
    4. Senbeta, Sisay, 2011. "How applicable are the new keynesian DSGE models to a typical low-income economy?," MPRA Paper 30931, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Pedro Garcia Duarte & Gilberto Tadeu Lima, 2011. "Privileging Micro over Macro? A History of Conflicting Positions," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2011_01, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    6. Aoki, Masanao & Hawkins, Raymond J., 2010. "Non-self-averaging and the statistical mechanics of endogenous macroeconomic fluctuations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1543-1546, November.
    7. Daniel G. Swaine, 2001. "Are taste and technology parameters stable? a test of \"deep\" parameter stability in real business cycle models of the U.S. economy," Working Papers 01-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    8. Quah, Danny, 1994. "One business cycle and one trend from (many,) many disaggregates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(3-4), pages 605-614, April.
    9. Mark Schankerman, 1991. "Revisions of Investment Plans and the Stock Market Rate of Return," STICERD - Economics of Industry Papers 05, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    10. Molnárová, Zuzana & Reiter, Michael, 2022. "Technology, demand, and productivity: What an industry model tells us about business cycles," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    11. Froyen, Richard T & Waud, Roger N, 1988. "Real Business Cycles and the Lucas Paradigm," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(2), pages 183-201, April.
    12. Pizer, William A., 1999. "The optimal choice of climate change policy in the presence of uncertainty," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3-4), pages 255-287, August.
    13. Kevin E. Beaubrun-Diant & Julien Matheron, 2008. "Rentabilités d'actifs et fluctuations économiques : une perspective d'équilibre général dynamique et stochastique," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 35-63.
    14. J.P.G. Reijnders, 2007. "Impulse or propagation? How the tides turned in Business Cycle Theory," Working Papers 07-07, Utrecht School of Economics.
    15. Ramey, Garey & Ramey, Valerie A, 1995. "Cross-Country Evidence on the Link between Volatility and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1138-1151, December.
    16. Farmer, Roger E. A. & Jang-Ting, Guo, 1995. "The econometrics of indeterminacy: an applied study," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 225-271, December.
    17. James E. Hartley, 1996. "Retrospectives: The Origins of the Representative Agent," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 169-177, Spring.
    18. Thomas Harjes, 1997. "Real business cycles in an open economy: An application to Germany," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 133(4), pages 635-656, December.
    19. Jean-Paul Fitoussi & Francesco Saraceno, 2004. "The Brussels-Frankfurt-Washington Consensus. Old and New Tradeoffs in Economics," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2004-02, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    20. Lars Lochstoer & Harjoat S. Bhamra, 2009. "Return Predictability and Labor Market Frictions in a Real Business Cycle Model," 2009 Meeting Papers 1257, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    microfoundation; representative agent; aggregation; innovation; competition; Marshall; Schumpeter;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B20 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - General
    • D00 - Microeconomics - - General - - - General
    • E00 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jen:jenavo:1998-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Markus Pasche (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.wiwi.uni-jena.de/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.