Subjectivism,indeterminacy and the structure of economic analysis

Subjectivists tend to reject the use of mechanistic laws in the explanation of human behaviour. There is a widespread belief, even in Austrian circles, that this rejection has destructive implications for all theory. The aim of this paper is to show that this belief is mistaken and that deterministic laws of behaviour need not play an essential role in economic theory. Behaviour can still be analysed and understood without using such laws. In addition, economics is not only about the explanation of behaviour, but also about the identification of which behaviour, by whom, is responsible for certain economic phenomena. The relevant methodology for these kinds of analyses is worked out and topical controversies in subjectivist economics, such as the role of the economics of knowledge, the possibility for dynamic theory and the relation between subjectivism and Keynes's method, are addressed.