Seminal work within experimental economics has shown the remarkable tendency for experimental trading markets to converge to neoclassical predictions. Yet, the extent to which neoclassical competitive market theory explains the equilibrating forces operating in extra-lab markets remains under-researched. In this study, we depart from the traditional experimental investigation of neoclassical co...

Is ecological economics mainly a natural science or a social science? Ecologists may start from a natural science perspective emphasizing positivism and value-neutrality as their theory of science. When looking for similarly inclined scholars in the social sciences they will find friends among neoclassical economists. But theory of science is not limited to positivism and economics is much more...

This paper investigates whether since the 1980s neoclassical economics has been in the process of being supplanted as the dominant research programme in economics by a collection of competing research approaches which share relatively little in common with each other or with neoclassical economics. A shortlist of the new approaches in recent economics includes game theory, experimental economic...

51 WALTER BLOCK is the Harold E. Wirth eminent scholar endowed chair in economics, WILLIAM BARNETT II is associate professor of economics, and STUART WOOD is associate professor of economics and finance at Loyola University, New Orleans. Block would like to thank David Kennedy, Tony Sullivan, and the Board of Directors of the Earhart Foundation for financial support used to write this paper. An...

Many of us decided to study economics because we were interested in issues such as economic growth, unemployment, poverty, discrimination and social exclusion. And for much of the history of the discipline, economists grappled with explaining such phenomena and, hopefully, helped to improve the development of economic policy. But now the discipline is increasingly dominated by other concerns, s...