Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnography of undergraduate economics education, this paper will consider the implications of aesthetic aspects of modelling processes for the authority of markets in economics.

Paper long abstract:

Modelling is central to the practice of neoclassical economics. Based on long-term ethnography of undergraduate economics education, this paper explores the aesthetic aspects of this process.

The models of undergraduate degrees are striking for several features, including their similarity. Analyses undertaken of a range of contexts are often based on diagrams with markedly repetitive visual features, with dynamics of the consumer and firm mirroring one another in largely identical images. Axiomatic assumptions regarding the representative agent enable both legibility of dimensions and sensorial qualities including simplicity and smoothness in these images, which contribute to notions of a what is often referred to as a models' "niceness". This paper will explore the proliferation of specific pictures that contribute to certain analyses becoming compelling in diverse contexts.