Book Section
This chapter argues that there are cases in which the reference point used by economists for constructing models is not the self-interested, fully informed agent of neoclassical economics, with the capacity to make rational decisions and to maximize utility. Sometimes, economists see Homo economicus as a real historical figure, one that emerges only in relation to a fully functional market.
Keywords: Economic models; market; labour; Homo economicus
Rights: © by the author(s). Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Part of Breaking and Making Models Containing:
Introduction / Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Marietta Kesting, Claudia Peppel
Models as Media of Worlding in Sadie Benning and Fernand Deligny / Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky
Abstraction as Strategy for Worldmaking / Julia Sánchez-Dorado
From Climate Model to Climate Fiction: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future as Operative Literature / Ross Shields
The Slime Mould’s Many Bodies, or Modelling Networks with Physarum polycephalum / Maria Dębińska
Persistence: Model Asylum Narratives and a Recognizable ‘Transgenderness’ / B Camminga
The Statistical Cloud of Race: Lancelot Hogben’s Anti-Eugenics between Populations and Organisms / Ben Woodard
Crises in Modelling: Articulations of the Romanian Labour Market in the Long 1990s / Alina-Sandra Cucu
Models, Markets, and Artificial Intelligence: A Brief History of our Speculative Present / Orit Halpern
Large Language Models, Parrots, and Children: Modelling Speech, Text, and Learning Processes / Marietta Kesting
Modelling Institutions, Instituting Models: The Juridification of Politics and the Performative Power of Naming / Natascia Tosel
Aesthetic Modelling at the Limit of the Human Montage / Marta Aleksandrowicz
The Exophonic Lyric: A Poetics / Mark Anthony Cayanan
Towards a Genealogy of Moffie: Troubling the Binary Model of Understanding either Homosexuality or Homophobia as Un-African / Ruth Ramsden-Karelse
Title
Crises in Modelling
Subtitle
Articulations of the Romanian Labour Market in the Long 1990s
Author(s)
Alina-Sandra Cucu
Identifier
https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-33_07
Description
This chapter argues that there are cases in which the reference point used by economists for constructing models is not the self-interested, fully informed agent of neoclassical economics, with the capacity to make rational decisions and to maximize utility. Sometimes, economists see Homo economicus as a real historical figure, one that emerges only in relation to a fully functional market.
Is Part Of
Breaking and Making Models
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
May 20, 2025
Subject
Economic models
market
labour
Homo economicus
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Language
en-GB
page start
181
page end
200
Source
Breaking and Making Models, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Marietta Kesting, and Claudia Peppel, Cultural Inquiry, 33 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 181–200

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Cite as: Alina-Sandra Cucu, ‘Crises in Modelling: Articulations of the Romanian Labour Market in the Long 1990s’, in Breaking and Making Models, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Marietta Kesting, and Claudia Peppel, Cultural Inquiry, 33 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2025), pp. 181-200 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-33_07>