Conceptions of Human Beings Implicit in Economics and in The Practice of Economic Policy

JUAN LLACH, RICADO CRESPO

Vaticano

Jornada; Eleventh Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; 2005

Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences

What are the conceptions of human beings implicit in the practice of economic policies? Do they have some impact on their results in contemporary societies? These are the central questions addressed in the second section of the paper. But in order to give more precise answers to them we thought it would be better to begin with some synthetic references to the conceptions of human beings implicit in the economic science per se that, very often, inspires economic policy making. Our analysis will be focused on the mainstream of (Western) economic science, i.e., the so called neoclassic-Keynesian synthesis. Only minor references to more “heterodox” economic policies will be included. At the end of the paper, a concluding section aims to link the two first parts. Its central question is if some agenda could be devised in order to avoid the negative consequences arising from what could be the main mistakes of the implicit conceptions of human beings dealt with in the paper.