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4 Overview of Various Economic Schools of Thought

The history of the various schools of thought in economics can be loosely categorised as follows:

Schoolmen, mercantilism, physiocrats, utilitarianism
Classical economics, developed by David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill in the 19th century.
Neoclassical economics, arising from the Neoclassical Revolution which incorporated the marginal theory of value in the late 19th century. It is associated with e.g. Alfred Marshall
Marxist economics is usually classified as a variant of classical economics and is based on the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and others.
The Austrian school, with its stress on Economic subjectivism and its rejection of economic modelling, developed by Carl Menger, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.
German Historical School and institutionalists, mainly American ( Thorstein Veblen, Commons, Mitchell and followers; 1899-)

For an overview of macroeconomic schools, see macroeconomics. In brief, this includes mainly,

Contemporary alternative schools outside the mainstream of economic thought include:

Post-Keynesian economics, which regards neoclassical economics as fundamentally flawed and develops a radically different analysis.
Green economists, a loose group of theories associated with feminism, postmodernism, and the ecology movement.
Modern variants of Marxist economics, such as Marxian and Post Marxist economics.

Neoclassical economics dominates in undergraduate textbooks. The core of contemporary economics rests on the microeconomic theory of neoclassical economics, but on many topics there is little agreement on which schools to develop to usefully explain existing economies. Outside mainstream economics more widely-divergent views abound.

Some extremely important tools, such as game theory, econometrics, and linear programming, do not easily fall unambiguously into only one of the schools listed above.

5 Economics and political thought

Throughout the history of economic thought, different political ideas have often been associated with different schools of thought about how economies operate. For example, Adam Smith used his theories of trade and of the division of labour to argue for laissez-faire government economic policies, particularly against mercantilism. Similarly, Marx developed his theories, which focus on production and labor, to advocate socialism and communism.

An example of another economic system which has recently been advocated is the participatory economics model. This uses neither market methods nor centralised methods for allocation, but incorporates many local positive and negative feedback loops in order to respond to the most positive human values. In "-ist" terminology, the participatory economics model is neither communist nor capitalist. One example of this school of thought is the Post-Autistic Economy movement started in spring 2000 by a group of French economy students.

Topics: History Of Economic Thought Economics Theory Modern Market...

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