Abstract

A spate of recent attacks on the rationality assumption in economic theory is noticed. Some of these attacks are fresh and, in many ways, original, but the central ideas underlying them are not new. They appear to have been provoked by the direction in which much of mainstream economics has been moving in recent years. On the other hand, it is suggested here, certain developments in contemporary economics, associated particularly with the revival of interest in the Austrian paradigm, offer afresh understanding of the way in which the rationality assumption, its role in economics properly understood, is able to meet these old?new attacks.