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Heterodox Economics Newsletter

Issue 185 September 14, 2015 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory

Now and then, it is quite interesting to look into other disciplines and ask whether the theoretical and empirical contributions advanced in these fields could provide some additional support for heterodox economic perspectives. One such field is possibly Economic Geography, which regularly makes use of heterodox economics as is evidenced by their citation behavior. Another, possibly more surprising field, is management studies, which regularly produces research of great interest to economists of a critical persuasion. In occasional discussions on this issue I always provide three critical examples, which are surely noteworthy: First, I would refer to an early stream of research on the "performativity of economics" within management studies, which focuses on the dysfunctional effects emerging from restructuring organizations in accordance with rational choice- and transaction cost-theory (here is an exemplary review paper on this issue). Second,I always like to point out that accounting scholars often have a quite appropriate view of macroeconomic relationships, especially as it regards the role of "capital" and the financial sector, and, hence, view macroeconomics as "accounting for society" (see e.g. here or here).

Finally, there has been some creative work on the question of paradigmatic development in management studies. This funny paper on paradigmatic development, for instance, rests on a simulation model based on a rough interpretation of Kuhn's famous Structure of Scientific Revolution. This paper's main finding, by the way, is that the intrinsic quality of a paradigm's core ideas are relatively negligible for explaining its success (does this ring a bell with you?), but rather the most decisive variable related to the question whether a dominant paradigm will sustain its position is the number of competitors: the more of them, the easier it is for a dominant paradigm to sustain it's position (since this is a battle of group-think, heterogeneity is a stark disadvantage;-).

Having told you that, I just wanted to close by saying that this is a really interesting issue of the Newsletter, which features a series of most promising conference invitations, job postings and brand-new issues of heterodox economic journals. So you should inspect this one closely!

All the Best,

Jakob

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