The Economic Entomologist: An Interview with Alan Kirman

Bassett, David et François Claveau (2011), The Economic Entomologist: An Interview with Alan Kirman, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 4 (2) : 42-66.

Résumé (en)

ALAN P. KIRMAN (London, 1939) is professor emeritus at l’Université d’Aix-Marseille III and researcher at GREQAM (Groupe de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d’Aix-Marseille). He has published over a hundred academic articles and edited and authored many books including noted monographs on general equilibrium analysis (Hildenbrand and Kirman 1976; 1988) and most recently Complex economics: individual and collective rationality (Kirman 2011, reviewed in this issue of EJPE).

Professor Kirman’s work touches on many issues of interest to economic methodologists and so we were delighted to have the opportunity to interview him when he visited the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) in late November 2010 to present a paper on the state of macroeconomics.

In this interview Professor Kirman discusses his understanding of the relationship between individual behaviour and aggregate patterns, why it is essential to consider the interactions between agents, and what the study of ant’s behaviour can teach us about collective human actions. He explains the core concepts of his ‘interactionist’ approach, including microfoundations, rationality and emergence, and reflects on the potential of agent-based modelling, the limitations of game theory, the possibility of aggregate-level analysis, and the relevance of behavioural studies. The interview also ranges more widely, discussing the different goals of economics (for instance, explaining, predicting, and controlling), the role of mathematics in modern economics, and the state of macroeconomics.

Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 18 juillet 2016 à 19 h 48 min.