If we take it that, at least in the social sciences, "realistic" implies "finite", then countless economic models involving infinitary assumptions must obviously be classified as unrealistic - for example, models with infinitely divisible goods, a continuum of traders, consumers optimizing over...

If we take it that, at least in the social sciences, "realistic" implies "finite", then countless economic models involving infinitary assumptions must obviously be classified as unrealistic - for example, models with infinitely divisible goods, a continuum of traders, consumers optimizing over...

Economics has been persistently criticized for its heavy reliance on unrealistic assumptions. Some people reply to this criticism by saying that the unrealistic assumptions of economics result from abstraction from unimportant details, and abstraction is necessary for knowledge of a complex real...