Turn in and Return of Orthodoxy in Recent Economics

This paper examines change on the economics research frontier, and asks whether the current competition between new research programs may be supplanted by a new single dominant approach in the future. The paper discusses whether economics tends to be dominated by a single approach or reflect a pluralism of approaches, and argues that historically it has alternated between the two. It argues that orthodoxy usually emerges from heterodoxy, and interprets the division between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in terms of a core-periphery distinction. Regarding recent economics, the paper maps out two different types of combinations of new research programs as being synchronic or diachronic in nature. It treats the new research programs as a new kind of heterodoxy, and asks how a new orthodoxy might arise out of this new heterodoxy and traditional heterodoxy. It discusses this question by advancing two views regarding how the two different types of combinations in the new research programs might consolidate along the lines of three shared commitments with traditional heterodoxy to form a new orthodoxy in economics.