The Black Box
Since the future is unknowable, it is more fruitful to speculate about the way economists will perceive the nature of their subject matter in 2090 than to predict the particular issues that will attract their concern. The dominant neoclassical paradigm will have been replaced by one which recognizes the central importance of unknowability and the need for an embracing logic of choice that treats all opportunity-cost decisions, whatever their context, in parity of significance with choice-through-markets. The "black box" is a thumbnail description of decision-making in the new environment, characterized by purposive behavior in the context of "unknowledge." Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.