The modelling of bounded rationality is currently pursued by approaches that exhibit a wide diversity of methodologies. This special issue collects five contributions that discuss different methodological aspects of these approaches. In our introduction, we map the variety of methodological...

This response to Reiss 'explanatory paradox' argues that some economic models might be true, and that many economic models are not intended for providing how-actually explanations, but rather how-possibly explanations. Therefore, two assumptions of Reiss' paradox are not true, and the paradox...

The contrastive approach to explanation is employed to shed light on the issue of the unrealisticness of models and their assumptions in economics. If we take explanations to be answers to contrastive questions of the form, then unrealistic elements such as omissions and idealizations are (at...

In discussing rational choice theory (RCT) as an explanation of demand behavior, Becker (1962, Journal of Political Economy, 70, 1-13) proposed a model of random choice in which consumers pick a bundle on their budget line according to a uniform distribution. This model has then been used in...