Heterodox economics

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Heterodox economics refers to approaches or schools of economic thought that do not conform to mainstream economics, which has largely developed from neoclassical economics in the late 19th century.

Heterodox economists often argue that most neoclassical economists take a narrow view on economic phenomena. Heterodox economic theories claim to explain more or less complex phenomena that can be described as economic, yet are not covered by neoclassical theories. Sometimes heterodox theories make different grounding assumptions than the mainstream, such as that economics primarily deals with the exchange of value, and that labour (human effort) is the source of all value.

Typically, mainstream economists argue that the modern economic framework is flexible enough to analyze a very broad range of phenomena. However, mainstream economics has sometimes been influenced by heterodox ideas, in particular institutional economics.

Fields or schools of heterodox economics include:

Austrian economics # (partly within mainstream economics)
Feminist economics #
Institutional economics # (sharp division within as to hetero- & mainstream economics)
Political economy (the term is used in various ways, also to describe certain kind of economics)
Post-Keynesian economics
Sraffian economics #
Marxian economics #
Socialist economics #
Behavioral economics
Bioeconomics §
Complexity economics
Evolutionary economics § (partly within mainstream economics)
Green economics
Neuroeconomics
Supply-side economics

# Listed in Journal of Economic Literature codes scrolled to at JEL: B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches.

§ Scrolled to at JEL: C73 - Stochastic and Dynamic games; Evolutionary games.

Research is also being done in the multidisciplinary field of cognitive science on individual decision making, information as a general phenomena, distributed cognition and their implications on economic dynamicity.

Some schools in the social sciences aim to promote certain perspectives: classical and modern political economy; economic history; economic sociology and anthropology; gender and racial issues in economics; economic ethics and social justice; development studies; and so on.