From the human capital defined as "homo oeconomicus rationalis" to that of the rationally bounded and oportunistic "homo contractualis". An institutionalist approach

The rationality (its presence or its absence) of the business, be it producer or consumer, has been a constant preoccupation of all those who dedicated their energy and talent on the sinuous road of the history of economic thinking. Without rational behaviour it was inconceivable to determine a development path. From this point of view the position of the great schools of thought is based, essentially, on two main approaches. The classics and the neoclassics had in mind the perfectly rational and well-informed individual. In reply, the institutional economy, in its old or new form (NIE), opposes to homo oeconomicus rationalis a narrow-minded and insufficiently informed homo contractualis. The consequences of this re-evaluation of the basics of the business’s potencies on the physiognomy of the theoretical approach and also on the results of practical actions are significant. Those linked to the bounded rationality hypothesis, an important operating concept in the analytical structures of NIE, may trigger debates on the theoretical basis of standard economics.