General Equilibrium Theory in the Twenty-First Century

General equilibrium theory clarifies how the social economy works. Given the complexity of the society, each general equilibrium theory model has so far dealt with only a few facets of the society. Moreover, neither trade unionists, federations of business organizations, bureaucracy, etc., nor even entrepreneurs and bankers find their appropriate places in the models. These still assume that the seventeenth-eighteenth century English rationalism prevails, whereas the spirit of competitive economy is now seen to be in conformity with heretical ethos too. We need a multiple-facet model constructed multidisciplinarily in collaboration with sociology, history, and others. Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.