A feminist challenge to Paul A. Samuelson’s Overlapping Generations Model. Conference Paper

We look at Paul A. Samuelson’s 1958 article “An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest With or Without the Social Contrivance of Money” as an exemplary, Neo-classically misconstructed model of nowadays society and its economic activities. The failure to notice the existence of unpaid labor in the framework of the model, and the implicit dependence of the outcomes on unpaid (omitted) reproduction work has apparently gone unchallenged so far. The logical inconsistencies of the model and their androcentric backgrounds are discussed in this paper. Furthermore, we aim to debate (but not explicitly formulate) an alternative modeling approach based on the use of Genetic Algorithms to include – at least some – crucial features of modern society in its whole heterogeneity.