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新古典派経済学は、財やサービスの生産、消費、評価（価格設定）が需要と供給のモデルによって決定されると考える経済学のアプローチである。[ 1 ]この考え方によれば、財やサービスの価値は、所得制約のある個人による効用の仮想的な最大化と、生産コストに直面し、利用可能な情報と生産要素を用いる企業による利益の最大化によって決定される。このアプローチは、しばしば合理的選択理論に訴えることで正当化されてきた。[ 2 ]
新古典派経済学はミクロ経済学における支配的なアプローチであり、ケインズ経済学とともに新古典派総合を形成し、1950年代以降、「新ケインズ経済学」として主流経済学を席巻した。
この用語はもともと、ソースタイン・ヴェブレンが1900年の論文「経済科学の先入観」の中で導入したもので、彼はその中でアルフレッド・マーシャルらの伝統における限界主義者をオーストリア学派の限界主義者と関連付けた。[ 3 ] [ 4 ]
ここでは、認められている2つか3つの主要な「学派」の相対的な主張について判断を下そうとはしない。ただし、この目的においては、いわゆるオーストリア学派は、重点の配分が異なる場合を除いて、新古典派とほとんど区別がつかないという、やや明白な結論は述べる。一方では近代化された古典派の見解と、他方では歴史学派とマルクス主義学派との間の相違はより大きく、実際、後者の前提を前者と同じ調査項目で検討することは不可能である。[ 5 ]
It was later used by John Hicks, George Stigler, and others[6] to include the work of Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and many others.[3] Today it is usually used to refer to mainstream economics, although it has also been used as an umbrella term encompassing a number of other schools of thought,[7] notably excluding institutional economics, various historical schools of economics, and Marxian economics, in addition to various other heterodox approaches to economics.
Neoclassical economics is characterized by several assumptions common to many schools of economic thought. There is not a complete agreement on what is meant by neoclassical economics, and the result is a wide range of neoclassical approaches to various problem areas and domains—ranging from neoclassical theories of labor to neoclassical theories of demographic changes.
It was expressed by E. Roy Weintraub that neoclassical economics rests on three assumptions, although certain branches of neoclassical theory may have different approaches:[8]
From these three assumptions, neoclassical economists have built a structure to understand the allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends—in fact, understanding such allocation is often considered the definition of economics to neoclassical theorists. Here is how William Stanley Jevons presented "the problem of Economics".
Given, a certain population, with various needs and powers of production, in possession of certain lands and other sources of material: required, the mode of employing their labor which will maximize the utility of their produce.[9]
From the basic assumptions of neoclassical economics comes a wide range of theories about various areas of economic activity. For example, profit maximization lies behind the neoclassical theory of the firm, while the derivation of demandcurves leads to an understanding of consumer goods, and the supply curve allows an analysis of the factors of production. Utility maximization is the source for the neoclassical theory of consumption, the derivation of demand curves for consumer goods, and the derivation of labor supply curves and reservation demand.[10]
Market analysis is typically the neoclassical answer to price questions, such as why does an apple cost less than an automobile, why does the performance of work command a wage, or how to account for interest as a reward for saving. An important device of neoclassical market analysis is the graph presenting supply and demand curves. The curves reflect the behavior of individual buyers and individual sellers. Buyers and sellers interact with each other in and through these markets, and their interactions determine the market prices of anything they buy and sell. In the following graph, the specific price of the commodity being bought/sold is represented by P*.[11]
In reaching agreed outcomes of their interactions, the market behaviors of buyers and sellers are driven by their preferences (= wants, utilities, tastes, choices) and productive abilities (= technologies, resources). This creates a complex relationship between buyers and sellers. Thus, the geometrical analytics of supply and demand is only a simplified way how to describe and explore their interaction.[12] Market supply and demand are aggregated across firms and individuals. Their interactions determine equilibrium output and price. The market supply and demand for each factor of production is derived analogously to those for market final output[13] to determine equilibrium income and the income distribution. Factor demand incorporates the marginal productivity relationship of that factor in the output market.[6][14][15][16]
新古典派経済学は均衡、すなわち主体による最大化問題の解を重視する。経済における規則性は方法論的個人主義、つまり経済現象は主体の行動を集計することによって説明できるという立場によって説明される。重点はミクロ経済学に置かれる。以前は個人の行動を規定するものと考えられていた制度は、重要視されなくなる。こうした重点には経済的主観主義が伴う。一般均衡も参照のこと。
新古典派経済学は、財の価値は使用者が経験する限界効用によって決定されるとする効用理論を採用している。これは、価値は生産に必要な労働によって決定されるとする労働価値説を採用している古典派経済学やマルクス主義経済学などの他の初期の経済理論との新古典派経済学の主な違いの一つである。[ 17 ]
新古典派価値理論の部分的な定義によれば、市場交換対象の価値は、個人の選好と生産能力の間の人間的な相互作用によって決定される。これは、最も重要な新古典派仮説の1つである。しかし、新古典派理論は、買い手と売り手の需要と供給の行動が具体的に何によって引き起こされるのか、そして人々の選好と生産能力が市場価格をどのように決定するのかについても問いかけている。したがって、新古典派価値理論は、人間の選好と生産能力というこれらの力に関する理論である。これらは、需要と供給の行動、ひいては価値の最終的な因果的決定要因である。新古典派経済学によれば、個人の選好と生産能力は、他のすべての経済事象（需要、供給、価格）を生み出す本質的な力である。[ 18 ]
新古典派理論は、経済活動を組織化するために市場を支持する一方で、外部性の存在により市場が常に社会的に望ましい結果を生み出すとは限らないことを認めている。[ 17 ]外部性は市場の失敗の一形態とみなされている。新古典派経済学者の間では、市場の結果における外部性の重要性の認識に違いがある。
In a market with a very large number of participants and under appropriate conditions, for each good, there will be a unique price that allows all welfare–improving transactions to take place. This price is determined by the actions of the individuals pursuing their preferences. If these prices are flexible, meaning that all parties are able to pursue transactions at any rates they find mutually beneficial, they will, under appropriate assumptions, tend to settle at price levels that allow for all welfare–improving transactions. Under these assumptions, free-market processes yield an optimum of social welfare. This type of group welfare is called the Pareto optimum (criterion) after its discoverer Vilfredo Pareto.[19] Wolff and Resnick (2012) describe the Pareto optimality in another way. According to them, the term "Pareto optimal point" signifies the equality of consumption and production, which indicates that the demand (as a ratio of marginal utilities) and supply (as a ratio of marginal costs) sides of an economy are in balance with each other. The Pareto optimum point also signifies that society has fully realized its potential output.[20]
Normative judgments in neoclassical economics are shaped by the Pareto criterion. As a result, many neoclassical economists favor a relatively laissez-faire approach to government intervention in markets, since it is very difficult to make a change where no one will be worse off. However, many less conservative neoclassical economists instead use the compensation principle, which says that an intervention is good if the total gains are larger than the total losses, even if losers are not compensated in practice.[17]
Neoclassical economics favors free trade according to David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage.[21] This idea holds that free trade between two countries is mutually beneficial because it allows the greatest total consumption in both countries.
Classical economics, developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, included a value theory and distribution theory. The value of a product was thought to depend on the costs involved in producing that product. The explanation of costs in classical economics was simultaneously an explanation of distribution. A landlord received rent, workers received wages, and a capitalist tenant farmer received profits on their investment. This classic approach included the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
However, some economists gradually began emphasizing the perceived value of a good to the consumer. They proposed a theory that the value of a product was to be explained with differences in utility (usefulness) to the consumer. (In England, economists tended to conceptualize utility in keeping with the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and later of John Stuart Mill.)
The third step from political economy to economics was the introduction of marginalism and the proposition that economic actors made decisions based on margins. For example, a person decides to buy a second sandwich based on how full he or she is after the first one, a firm hires a new employee based on the expected increase in profits the employee will bring. This differs from the aggregate decision-making of classical political economy in that it explains how vital goods such as water can be cheap, while luxuries can be expensive.
The change in economic theory from classical to neoclassical economics has been called the "marginal revolution", although it has been argued that the process was slower than the term suggests.[22] It is frequently dated from William Stanley Jevons's Theory of Political Economy (1871), Carl Menger's Principles of Economics (1871), and Léon Walras's Elements of Pure Economics (1874–1877). Historians of economics and economists have debated:
In particular, Jevons saw his economics as an application and development of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism and never had a fully developed general equilibrium theory. Menger did not embrace this hedonic conception, explained diminishing marginal utility in terms of subjective prioritization of possible uses, and emphasized disequilibrium and the discrete; further, Menger had an objection to the use of mathematics in economics, while the other two modeled their theories after 19th-century mechanics.[24] Jevons built on the hedonic conception of Bentham or of Mill, while Walras was more interested in the interaction of markets than in explaining the individual psyche.[23]
Alfred Marshall's textbook, Principles of Economics (1890), was the dominant textbook in England a generation later. Marshall's influence extended elsewhere; Italians would compliment Maffeo Pantaleoni by calling him the "Marshall of Italy". Marshall thought classical economics attempted to explain prices by the cost of production. He asserted that earlier marginalists went too far in correcting this imbalance by overemphasizing utility and demand. Marshall thought that "We might as reasonably dispute whether it is the upper or the under blade of a pair of scissors that cuts a piece of paper, as to whether the value is governed by utility or cost of production".
Marshall explained price by the intersection of supply and demand curves. The introduction of different market "periods" was an important innovation of Marshall's:
Marshall took supply and demand as stable functions and extended supply and demand explanations of prices to all runs. He argued supply was easier to vary in longer runs, and thus became a more important determinant of price in the very long run.
Cambridge and Lausanne School of economics form the basis of neoclassical economics. Until the 1930s, the evolution of neoclassical economics was determined by the Cambridge school and was based on the marginal equilibrium theory. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Lausanne general equilibrium theory became the general basis of neoclassical economics and the marginal equilibrium theory was understood as its simplification.[25]
The thinking of the Cambridge school continued in the steps of classical political economics and its traditions but was based on the new approach that originated from the marginalist revolution. Its founder was Alfred Marshall, and among the main representatives were Arthur Cecil Pigou, Ralph George Hawtrey and Dennis Holme Robertson. Pigou worked on the theory of welfare economics and the quantity theory of money. Hawtrey and Robertson developed the Cambridge cash balance approach to theory of money and influenced the trade cycle theory. Until the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes was also influencing the theoretical concepts of the Cambridge school. The key characteristic of the Cambridge school was its instrumental approach to the economy – the role of the theoretical economist is first to define theoretical instruments of economic analysis and only just then apply them to real economic problems.[25]
The main representatives of the Lausanne school of economic thought were Léon Walras, Vilfredo Pareto and Enrico Barone. The school became famous for developing the general equilibrium theory. In the contemporary economy, the general equilibrium theory is the methodologic basis of mainstream economics in the form of New classical macroeconomics and New Keynesian macroeconomics.[25]
The evolution of neoclassical economics is sometimes divided into three phases.
The pre-Keynesian phase began when neoclassical economics initially formed (in the second half of the nineteenth century) and continued until the arrival of Keynesian economics in the 1930s.
ケインズ主義の時代は1940年から1970年代前半まで続いた。この時代、ケインズ経済学は世界経済を支配したが、新古典派経済学は消滅したわけではなかった。新古典派経済学はミクロ経済理論の発展を続け、独自のマクロ経済理論の構築に着手した。新古典派マクロ経済理論の発展は、貨幣数量説と分配理論の発展に基づいていた。この第二段階の成果の一つが新古典派総合であり、これは新古典派ミクロ経済学とケインズ派マクロ経済学の特別な組み合わせを表している。
第3段階は1970年代に始まり、マネタリズムや新古典派マクロ経済学などの新古典派の学派が発展し、台頭した。これらの理論は焦点やアプローチが多様であるにもかかわらず、すべて伝統的な新古典派経済学の理論的および方法論的原理に基づいている。[ 26 ]
新古典派経済学において重要な変化が1933年頃に起こった。ジョーン・ロビンソンとエドワード・H・チェンバリンは、それぞれ著書『不完全競争の経済学』（1933年）と『独占的競争の理論』（1933年）をほぼ同時に出版し、不完全競争のモデルを導入した。市場形態と産業組織に関する理論は、この研究から発展した。彼らはまた、限界収入曲線などの特定のツールを強調した。ロビンソンは著書の中で、ある種の限定的競争を形式化した。彼女の研究の結論は福祉経済学にとって憂慮すべきものであった。それは、市場メカニズムが労働者の限界生産性の完全な価値に応じて賃金が支払われず、消費者主権の原則も損なわれるような形で機能していることを示唆していたからである。この理論は、1940年代と1950年代の多くの西側諸国の反トラスト政策に大きな影響を与えた。[ 27 ]
ジョーン・ロビンソンの不完全競争に関する研究は、少なくともピエロ・スラッファが指摘したマーシャル流の部分均衡理論のいくつかの問題点への対応であった。英米の経済学者たちもまた、ワルラスとヴィルフレド・パレートによってヨーロッパ大陸で発展した一般均衡理論へと目を向けることで、これらの問題に対応した。J・R・ヒックスの『価値と資本』（1939年）は、英語圏の同僚たちにこれらの伝統を紹介する上で大きな影響力を持った。ヒックス自身もまた、オーストリア学派の経済学者フリードリヒ・ハイエクがロンドン・スクール・オブ・エコノミクスに移籍したことに影響を受けており、当時ヒックスも同校で学んでいた。
こうした発展に伴い、無差別曲線や順序効用理論といった新たなツールが導入された。新古典派経済学の数学的洗練度は向上し、ポール・サミュエルソンの『経済分析の基礎』（1947年）は、こうした数理モデルの向上に貢献した。
アメリカ経済学における戦間期は、新古典派経済学と制度主義が支持を競い合う多元主義的時代であったと論じられてきた。初期のシカゴ学派の経済学者であるフランク・ナイトは、両学派を融合させようと試みた。しかし、この数学の隆盛は、第二次世界大戦後、英米の大学における新古典派経済学の優位性の増大と並行して起こった。一部の研究者[ 28 ]は、マッカーシズムなどの外部の政治的介入や内部のイデオロギー的いじめが、この優位性の台頭に重要な役割を果たしたと主張している。
ヒックスの著書『価値と資本』は主に二つの部分から成り立っている。第二の部分は、おそらくすぐに影響力を持たなかったものの、一時的均衡のモデルを提示した。ヒックスはハイエクの異時点間調整の概念に直接影響を受け、リンダールの先行研究と並行していた。これは、細分化された長期モデルの放棄の一環であった。この傾向はおそらく、アロー＝ドブルーの異時点間均衡モデルで頂点に達した。アロー＝ドブルーモデルは、ジェラール・ドブルーの『価値論』（1959年）とアローとハーンの『一般競争分析』（1971年）で正統的に提示されている。
Many of these developments were against the backdrop of improvements in both econometrics, that is the ability to measure prices and changes in goods and services, as well as their aggregate quantities, and in the creation of macroeconomics, or the study of whole economies. The attempt to combine neo-classical microeconomics and Keynesian macroeconomics would lead to the neoclassical synthesis[29] which was the dominant paradigm of economic reasoning in English-speaking countries from the 1950s till the 1970s. Hicks and Samuelson were for example instrumental in mainstreaming Keynesian economics.
The dominance of Keynesian economics was upset by its inability to explain the economic crises of the 1970s-[30] neoclassical economics emerged distinctly in macroeconomics as the new classical school, which sought to explain macroeconomic phenomenon using neoclassical microeconomics.[31] It and its contemporary New Keynesian economics contributed to the new neoclassical synthesis of the 1990s, which informs much of mainstream macroeconomics today.[32][33]
The Neoclassical theory of growth grew out of the work of Robert Solow and Trevor Swan in the 1950s and extended by David Cass and Tjallings Koopmans in the 1960s (with precursors in Frank Ramsey's 1928 paper). In their 1956 papers, Solow and Swan argued that diminishing marginal product of capital eliminated capital accumulation as a source of long run growth. The model would become known as the Solow-Swan model. Cass and Koopmans extended this work by endogenizing the savings (or investment rate) to time preference and inter temporal substitution, itself the result of diminishing marginal utility of consumption at any point in time. The model became known as the Neoclassical growth model and by the 1980s had become a workhorse model of macroeconomics used to analyze growth, business cycles, taxation, and financial markets.[34]
The Cambridge capital controversy was a major debate in the 1960s—the "Cambridge capital controversy"—about whether one could justify these assumptions, and largely centered around aggregation theory. Concretely, the Neoclassical growth model assumes an aggregate production function with aggregate output stemming from aggregate capital and labor, and the debate centered around whether such a mathematical assumption of aggregation could be justified. There were also internal attempts by neoclassical economists to extend the Arrow–Debreu model to disequilibrium investigations of stability and uniqueness. However, a result known as the Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem suggests that the assumptions that must be made to ensure that equilibrium is stable and unique are quite restrictive.
Although the neoclassical approach is dominant in economics, the field of economics includes others, such as Marxist, behavioral, Schumpeterian, developmentalist, Austrian, post-Keynesian, Humanistic economics, real-world economics and institutionalist schools.[17] All of these schools differ with the neoclassical school and each other, and incorporate various criticisms of the neoclassical economics.[35] Not all criticism comes from other schools: some prominent economists such as Nobel Prize recipient and former chief economist of the World BankJoseph Stiglitz are vocally critical of mainstream neoclassical economics.[36]
While Veblen's original 1900 coinage of "neoclassical" did not differentiate Austrian marginalists from Marshallian economists, the Austrian School developed over the 20th century into one of the most sustained and methodologically distinct critic of the mainstream neoclassical economics, principally through the work of Ludwin von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Israel Kirzner.
Carl Menger's objection to the use of mathematics in economics, noted above, was developed by Mises into praxeology: the position that economics is a deductive science or purposeful human action, whose theorems are derived logically from the axiom that humans act to attain chosen ends, rather than an empirical or statistical science modeled on physics.[37] The dominant view in Austrian school is that human ends and means are subjective and constantly revised, empirical description of how people actually choose cannot be calculated.
Hayek argued in Economics and Knowledge and the Use of Knowledge in Society that neoclassical equilibrium models, by assuming that agents possess full and relevant information, the models assume away the central economic problem: the knowledge of prices, costs, and opportunities dispersed among many individuals and must be discovered and communicated through the market process and price systems themselves, rather than given in advance to a maximizing agent.[38][39] Kirzner extended this critique, arguing that neoclassical economics has comparatively little to say about the entrepreneurial alertness and discovery process by which markets move toward equilibrium in the first place.[40]
The Austrian school shares this criticism with the modelling of "homo economicus" in the neoclassical tradition, arguing that the it is defined too narrowly. However, Austrians identify the problem differently than behavioral economics: rather than treating purposeful action as the defining feature of economic behavior.[41]
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk emphasized the heterogenous, time-structured nature of capital goods, arranged in stages of production in varying lengths, in contrast to the neoclassical treatment of capital as a single homogenous quantity.[42] The theory is a fundamental building block of the Austrian business cycle theory.
Some see mathematical models used in contemporary research in mainstream economics as having transcended neoclassical economics,[43] while others disagree.[44] Mathematical models also include those in game theory, linear programming, and econometrics. Critics of neoclassical economics are divided into those who think that highly mathematical method is inherently wrong and those who think that mathematical method is useful even if neoclassical economics has other problems.[45]
Critics such as Tony Lawson contend that neoclassical economics' reliance on functional relations is inadequate for social phenomena in which knowledge of one variable does not reliably predict another.[46] The different factors affecting economic outcomes cannot be experimentally isolated from one another in a laboratory; therefore the explanatory and predictive power of mathematical economic analysis is limited. Lawson proposes an alternative approach called the contrast explanation which he says is better suited for determining causes of events in social sciences. More broadly, critics of economics as a science vary, with some believing that all mathematical economics is problematic or even pseudoscience and others believing it is still useful but has less certainty and higher risk of methodology problems than in other fields.[47][48]
Milton Friedman, one of the most prominent and influential neoclassical economists of the 20th century, responded to criticisms that assumptions in economic models were often unrealistic by saying that theories should be judged by their ability to predict events rather than by the supposed realism of their assumptions.[49] He claimed that, on the contrary, a theory with more absurd assumptions has stronger predictive power. He argued that a theory's ability to theoretically explain reality is irrelevant compared to its ability to empirically predict reality, no matter the method of getting to that prediction.
Neoclassical economics is often criticized for having a normative bias despite sometimes claiming to be "value-free".[50][51] Such critics argue an ideological side of neoclassical economics, generally to argue that students should be taught more than one economic theory and that economics departments should be more pluralistic.[52][53]
One of the most widely criticized aspects of neoclassical economics is its set of assumptions about human behavior and rationality. The "economic man", or a hypothetical human who acts according to neoclassical assumptions, does not necessarily behave the same way as humans do in reality.[54] The economist and critic of capitalism Thorstein Veblen claimed that neoclassical economics assumes a person to be "a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift about the area, but leave him intact."[55]
Veblen's characterization references a number of commonly criticized rationality assumptions: that people make decisions using a rigid utilitarian framework, have perfect information available about their options, have perfect information processing ability allowing them to immediately calculate utility for all possible options, and are independent decision-makers whose choices are unaffected by their surroundings or by other people. While Veblen is from the Institutional school, the Behavioral school of economics is focused on studying the mechanisms of human decision-making and how they differ from neoclassical assumptions of rationality. Altruistic or empathy-based behavior is another form of "non-rational" decision making studied by behavioral economists, which differs from the neoclassical assumption that people only act in self-interest.[56][57] Behavioral economists account for how psychological, neurological, and even emotional factors significantly affect economic perceptions and behaviors.[58]
Rational choice theory need not be problematic according to a paper written by the economist Gary Becker which was published in 1962 in the Journal of Political Economy called "Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory".[59] According to Becker, this paper demonstrates "how the important theorems of modern economics result from a general principle which not only includes rational behavior and survivor arguments as special cases, but also much irrational behavior." The specific important theorems and results which are shown to result from a broad range of different type of irrational behavior, as well as rational behavior by market participants in the paper, are that market demand curves are downward sloping or "negatively inclined", and that if an industry transformed from a competitive industry to a completely monopolistic cartel and profits are always maximized, then output per firm under the cartel would decrease compared to its equilibrium level when the industry was competitive.
This paper was largely based on the 1950 paper "Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory" by Armen Alchian.[60] The paper sets out a justification for supply analysis separate from relying on the assumption of rational consumption, the representative firm and the way neoclassical economists analyze firm behavior in markets which does not rely on rational behavior by the decision makers in those firms, nor any other type of foresighted or goal directed behavior by them. Becker's subsequent 1962 paper provides an independent justification for neoclassical market demand analysis. The two papers offer separate justifications for the use of neoclassical methodology for supply and demand analysis without relying on assumptions otherwise criticised as implausible.
Neoclassical economics offers an approach to studying the economic behavior of homo-economicus. This theory is based on methodological individualism and adopts an atomistic approach to social phenomena, according to which social atoms are the individuals and their actions.[61] According to this doctrine, individuals are independent of social phenomena, but the opposite is not true. This position holds that the behavior of an economy as a whole should ultimately be explained by adding up the choices of the individual people and firms within it. Individuals' actions can explain macro-scale behavior, and social collections are nothing more than aggregates, and they do not add anything to its components (Ibid). Although methodological individualism does not negate complex social phenomena such as institutions or behavioral rules, it argues any explanation should be based on constituent components' characteristics of those institutions. This is a reductionist approach based on which it is believed that the characteristics of the social system are derived from the individuals' preferences and their actions.[62]
A critique of this approach is that the individuals' preferences and interests are not fixed. The structures contextualize individual's. According to social constructivists, systems are co-constituted alongside the actors, and ideas within the system define actors' identities, their interests, and thus their behavior.[63] In this regard, actors in various circumstances (exposed to different impressions and experiences) will construct their interests and preferences differently, both within each other and over time.[64] Given the individualistic foundation of the economic theory, critics argue that this theory should consider individual action's structural contexts.
Neoclassical economics is often criticized as promoting policies that increase inequality and as failing to recognise the impact of inequality on economic outcomes. In the case of the former claim, neoclassical economics is often used for analysis in support of policies reducing economic inequality—in particular through determining the diminishing marginal utility of income, whereby poorer individuals gain greater net benefits from a given increase in income than comparable richer individuals,[65][66] but more generally by being the primary means by which the impact on inequality of any given policy is assessed. In the case of the latter claim, neoclassical economics is the prevailing lens through which the relationship between inequality and economic outcomes is studied.[67]
Neoclassical economics tends to promote commodification and privatization of goods due to its principle that market exchange generally results in the most effective allocation of goods. For example, some economists support markets for human organs, on the basis that it increases supply of life-saving organs and benefits willing donors financially.[68] However, there are arguments in moral philosophy that use of markets for certain goods is inherently unethical. Political philosopher Michael Sandel summarizes that market exchanges have two ethical problems: coercion and corruption.[69] Coercion happens because market participation may not be as free as proponents often claim: people often participate in markets because it is the only way to survive, which is not truly voluntary. Corruption describes how commodification of a good can inherently degrade its value.
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