 In contrast to standard economic approaches focusing exclusively on equilibrium, EAEPE conceptualizes the economy as a cumulative process unfolding in historical time in which agents are faced with chronic information problems and radical uncertainty about the future.Contrary to standard models where individuals and their tastes are taken as given, where technology is viewed as exogenous, and where production is separated from exchange, EAEPE's concern is to address and encompass the interactive, social process through which tastes are formed and changed, the forces which promote technological transformation, and the interaction of these elements within the economic system as a whole.In lieu of an orientation that takes the market as an ideal or natural order and as a mere aggregation of individual traders, EAEPE recognises that it is appropriate to regard the market itself as a social institution, necessarily supported by a network of other social institutions such as the state, and having no unqualified nor automatic priority over them.