Economic theory: an endangered monument?
Abstract
The economic theory has lost most of its attractiveness amongst academic economists. There are many reasons for this discredit, but they have to do mainly with the reduction of the research area, as a consequence of an increasing need for coherence and the will to empirically test some fundamental assumptions that blurs the traditional border between disciplines. The development of quantitative data processing techniques and the nature of the questions posed make many empirical studies part of both economics and sociology. This decline of economic theory refers mainly to the dominant paradigm, which simultaneously gave economists the type of problems to solve (existence and optimality of equilibria) and the tools to do so (mathematical models that associate rational behaviors and conditions balance). That decline has little to do with the dominated paradigm that Schumpeter calls monetary analysis and that runs counter to the theory of value. Illustrated by Steuart in the 18th century and by Keynes in the 20th century, this monetary analysis is characterized by other issues (viability rather than equilibrium) and other representations of the economy (payment matrices rather than excess demand matrices).
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