Routledge Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition
Robinson Crusoe economy (E1)
An abstract model ECONOMY, based on Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, which engages in simple capital accumulation. Although he has an initial capital endowment through salvaging goods from the shipwreck, he establishes himself as a farmer on a desert island through using ROUND-ABOUT METHODS OF PRODUCTION.
He learns that production is only possible when he has first attended to his security and that money is useless in an isolated economy without exchange. Robinson Crusoe has long been used as an example of an optimizing economic man who abandons AUTARKY for EXCHANGE and as the embodiment of bourgeois values, the independent modern economic man.
References
Grapard, V. (1995) ‘Robinson Crusoe: the quintessential economic man?’ Feminist Economics 1:33–52.
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