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Methodological Individualism and Cultural Economics

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Abstract

This paper considers the communitarian critique of the method of economics, especially in regard to its methodological individualism, with reference in particular to cultural economics. It asks whether cultural goods can be modelled in a meaningful way under the usual assumptions in neoclassical economics about individual economic agents. Special attention is paid to Charles Taylor's critique of ''atomism'', and his suggestion that some goods are ''irreducibly social''. The implications of the critique for (1) public funding of the arts, and (2) copyright policy, are considered.

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Rushton, M. Methodological Individualism and Cultural Economics. Journal of Cultural Economics 23, 137–146 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007556402981

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