IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03485164.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The riddle of the use of impossible examples in microeconomics textbooks

Author

Listed:
  • Emmanuelle Benicourt

    (CRIISEA - Centre de Recherche sur les Institutions, l'Industrie et les Systèmes Économiques d'Amiens - UR UPJV 3908 - UPJV - Université de Picardie Jules Verne)

  • Sophie Jallais

    (PHARE - Philosophie, Histoire et Analyse des Représentations Économiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

  • Camille Noûs

    (Laboratoire Cogitamus = Cogitamus Laboratory)

Abstract

This paper examines the use in microeconomics textbooks of what we call 'impossible examples', looking specifically at certain examples employed in chapters dealing with the production process or markets for factors of production. After showing that such examples are mostly to be found in textbooks for beginners, it asks what beginner students can possibly learn through them, taking the case of a concept (the marginal product), a law (the law of diminishing marginal product), and a theory (the income theory of distribution). The use of impossible examples in such textbooks appears to be a riddle, since, by using them to introduce, present, or explain parts of neoclassical theory, authors are in effect teaching a fake and inconsistent version of that theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Emmanuelle Benicourt & Sophie Jallais & Camille Noûs, 2021. "The riddle of the use of impossible examples in microeconomics textbooks," Post-Print hal-03485164, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03485164
    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.

    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:hal:journl:hal-03485164. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.