Abstracts Economics

Methodology and Microfoundations: A New Argument for an Autonomous Macroeconomics

by Nadia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7755-1298 Ruiz

Although microeconomics and macroeconomics seem to differ in their object of study––microeconomics studies how economic individual agents make decisions and how those decisions interact, while macroeconomics studies that overall ups and downs in the economy as a whole (Hubbard and O’Brian, 2015) ––there is a significant tradition in economics that argues that macroeconomic model building requires microfoundations. The core motivating my dissertation thesis is whether this tradition is right. Specifically, the core questions I address in here are (a) to what extent macroeconomic model requires microfoundations, and (b) what grounds the need for microfoundations (or its absence). I assess these question by focusing on microfoundations purely as a methodological practice–– i.e., as a method for X scientific purpose, does macroeconomic models need microfoundations?