Introduction

Economics is about people and their actions. But economists have found that it is as difficult tofigure out the economic motivations and behaviour of individuals as to make an analysis of the wholeeconomy. And, though each person is only one small unit in the overall economy, the individualcannot be neglected for his or her behaviour creates exchange, markets, and the aggregate economy.When we search for accounts of the individual’s economy, we quickly find that over the pasttwo centuries economists have created a series of economic man portraits, a veritable gallery ofeconomic heroes, each fashioned to fit the style and content of the economics of their day. Whereasearly characters appear as descriptions with recognisable human passions, later characters becamemore shadowy for their design was more clearly driven by the needs of economists’ theories.These successive models of economic man were represented initially in verbally drawn sketches, andlater in terms that were informed by and fitted to mathematical notions. During the process,economists began to refer to these model people with symbols, and, as we have learnt from the lastchapter, labelled them anonymously and interchangeably as X and Y, or A and B. We can treat these asmodels inasmuch as each one offers a well defined portrait of individual motivations or behaviourstrictly limited to the economic sphere. We are dealing here, not with the development of a smallworld, but with a model person, someone who in some respects appears thinly described but in othersappears a caricature: an economic man, not a full man.