Heterodox Microfoundations are an effort to understand macroeconomic phenomena in terms of economic agents' behaviors and their interactions.
During recent decades, macroeconomists have attempted to combine microeconomic models of individual behaviour to derive the relationships between macroeconomic variables.
However, microfoundations research is still heavily debated with management, strategy and organization scholars having varying views on the "micro-macro" link.
[5] However, the Walrasian general equilibrium theory presents another trend to the synthesis as it attempts to theorise the economy as a whole and is viewed as an alternative to macroeconomics.
[7] One particularly influential endorsement of the study of microfoundations was Robert Lucas, Jr.'s critique of traditional macroeconometric forecasting models.
This approach "makes the microeconomic and the macroeconomic level of analysis coincide: a single agent, a utility maximizing individual, represents an entire sector, which may be, for instance banks, consumers, or firms".
While there may be various outlooks on the topic, the general consensus implies that to bridge macro and micro theories and models, microfoundations should be adopted.
Similarly to Kirman, Robert Solow[21] has argued that the issue with the microfoundation project is the demand that it must be built on Walrasian foundations.
Although sympathetic to microfoundations overall, Solow points out that the demand for micro-foundations might be exaggerated; the harder sciences do not necessarily describe their objects of interest down to e.g. a molecular level.