I was very pleased with my post on this topic, making the point that standard microeconomic analysis only works properly on the assumption that the economy is at a full employment equilibrium.
But, it turns out, exactly the same point, using the same title, was made by David Colander 20 years ago
Colander (1993), The Macrofoundations of Micro, Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall, 1993), pp. 447-457
And he wasn’t the first. The term and the idea have a long history, including a contribution by my UQ colleague Bruce Littleboy
The term macrofoundations, I suspect, has been around for a long time. Tracing the term is a paper in itself. Axel Leijonhufvud remembered using it in Leijonhufvud [1981] . I was told that Roman Frydman and Edmund Phelps [1983] used the term and that Hyman Minsky had an unpublished paper from the 1970s with that title; Minsky remembered it, but doubted he could find it and told me that he used the term in a slightly different context. I was also told by Christof Ruhle that a German economist, Karl Zinn, wrote a paper with that title for a Festschrift in 1988, but that it has not been translated into English. I suspect the term has been used many more times because it is such an obvious counterpoint to the microfoundations of macro, and hence to the New Classical call for microfoundations. While he does not use the term explicitly, Bruce Littleboy [1990], in work that relates fundamentalist Keynesian ideas with Clower and Leijonhufvud’s ideas, discusses many of the important issues raised here.
John Quiggin 
I am not familiar with the work done under the heading ‘macrofoundations of micro’. My comment may be therefore off the mark.
IMHO, arrived at after I worked in general equilibrum theory, microeconomic results (eg consumer choice, production theory) are characterisations of ‘an equilibrium’, assuming it exists. Many of these results rely on a unique equilibrum. Translated to macroeconomic topics, such as ‘unemployment’, ‘an equilibrium’ may entail zero involuntary unemployment (Walras equilibrium) or it may entail positive involuntary unemployment (‘excess supply with its value minimised – eg zero wage) in a Radner equilibrium (which is known as ‘pseudo-equilibrium’). ‘An equilibrium’ in models where markets are incomplete are known to be generically Pareto inefficient (ie involuntary unemployment cannot be ruled out). So, what type of equilibrium is supposed to underly the macroeconomic foundation of microeconomics?
I am only sure that I am sure of nothing anymore: at least in relation to economics. Here are my oblique ramblings.
A human body in a morgue freezer has an equilibrium state. A living, healthy human body has a homeostatic state. Can a society or socio-economic system ever be said to be in or capable of an equilibrium state?
In an equilibrium state:
Conditions are stable within the system
Net free energy neither enters nor escapes the system
In a steady state (such as homeostasis);
Conditions are stable within the system
Free energy is continuously put into the system
Over time, the system is maintained in a higher state of order than its surroundings
But then maybe economists don’t mean by “equilibrium” what physicists and biologists mean by “equilibrium”. If economics has no connection to physics or biology then what is it connected to?
This idea, in fact (and not suprisingly), dates back to Keynes’ General Theory. Of course, Keynes does not use the concept of “microfoundations”, but his argument is very close to that. At any rate, it is a fundamentally keynesian idea in its inspiration.
(Chapter 19)
Damn it, ramit. I’m going back to for a re-read. Keynes always thinks.