Prologue: Searching for a New Kind of Economics

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s a school of thought reached the zenith of its power. Its influence had become pervasive. Having been the view of only a minority little more than 20 years earlier, this approach had succeeded in dominating its discipline at all leading universities in the world. Academics that did not adhere to it found it hard to make a career: obtaining jobs or moving up the ladder depended on publications in leading journals — which had been usurped by this particular school of thought.