Economy as a Social System: Niklas Luhmann's Contribution and its Significance for Economics

Niklas Luhmann's (1927–1998) ambitious research project was aimed not only at describing society as a global social system, but it also analyzed various subsystems (including an economic one). The article assesses Luhmann's vision of the economy, summarized mainly in his Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft, wherein he addresses basic economic notions: the economic system, money, prices, rationality, and the market. I then interpret his ideas in the context of modern discussions in economics (intersubjective structures, complex systems, and evolutionary modeling). I also propose some heuristics implied by Luhmann's economic ontology, which are potentially interesting for methodological and theoretical strategies of modern economics.