Pinning down the nature of heterodox economics and...

Pinning down the nature of heterodox economics and suggesting appropriate definitions of this field of study is both, a general concern of the heterodox research community and a practical necessity for advancing a coherent research agenda. An interesting recent contribution to this discussion can be found here, which emphasizes, among other things, that “it is important to have a positive definition of heterodox economics to distinguish the field from other social sciences, as well as from the mainstream of the field.” This argument reminds me that it was exactly this concern that motivated me - many years ago, when I started editing this Newsletter - to change the definition given on our webpage from a ‘negative’ one, which focused on differences to mainstream approaches, to a ‘positive’ version, which puts emphasis on common conceptual building blocks across different heterodox traditions (see here & scroll down a little).

In my view, such a positive definition does not only allow to carve out commonalities between different heterodox traditions as well as to provide a more reasoned account on the differences to mainstream economics, but also comes with greater conceptual clarity that makes heterodox economics a more attractive contributor to other sub-fields in social research, like development studies, economic sociology or political economy (as already emphasized here).

Having said all that, I wanted to urge you to inspect this week’s Newsletter quickly as some of our job ads (e.g. here or here) and conference calls (e.g. here or here) come with rather tight deadlines!

All the best,

Jakob