Pisces Economicus: The Fish as Economic Man

Abstract

Since a paradigmatic approach is judged in part by the range of phenomena it can explain, neoclassical microeconomists have no doubt gained assurance about the power of their paradigm by the invasion of economics into a number of related fields, what Hirschleifer (1985) has referred to as the “expanding domain of economics.” Moreover, even beyond these excursions into the provinces of other social sciences concerned with human behavior, economics has also recently expanded into the analysis of animal behavior (cf. Battalio, Kagel, and McDonald, 1985). This development not only adds more scientific prestige to the approach, but allows economists to use research techniques developed in more experimentally oriented disciplines.