事实的推导、预测与发现——经济人假设作为一种信息的限度与陷阱

在立法过程中,经济人假设对立法事实的发现有一定贡献,但只有在经济人拥有相同程度的理性或拥有同样的利益结构,且其利益构成的权重相同的情形和前提下,运用经济人假设对众多经济人的行为进行社会整体的评价和推测才是可行的,而由于经济人个体之间的巨大差异,这一前提在实践中并不存在,因此运用时须避免误入陷阱。

Fact Reasoning, Prediction and Finding: The Limits and Pitfalls of the "Economic Man" Assumption as Legal Information

The assumption of "economic man" has made some contribution to the fact finding in the law-making process.However,only under the premise that the assumed "economic men" act at the same level of rationality or within the same cost benefit structure,and with similar subjective weight on values,can we make the assumption to judge and predict numerous economic mens social behaviors in whole.But in practice,we can hardly put on the assumption based on such a premise simply because there exist individual differences of the economic men.So while making the assumption,we should watch out not to fall into the pitfall of generalities.