A Methodological Agenda for New Economic Thinking

In this paper I look into the suggestions made to set up the agenda for the development of alternative paradigms, concentrating mainly on the views emerging from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which held its inaugural Conference at King’s College in Cambridge in April 2010 on the theme The Economic Crisis and the Crisis in Economics and the second in Bretton Woods on the theme Crisis and Renewal: International Political Economy at the Crossroads. These events brought together economists of various orientations, skills and persuasion, all disillusioned (to varying degrees) with the present. state of economics and committed to promoting change in the way economics is practised in research and teaching. Here I look into a few of the proposals made there with a view to assessing their contributions in addressing “the failure of ideas” issue and setting up the agenda for new economic thinking. I examine the main lessons to be drawn from the work of Keynes and Sraffa, which seem to me an essential part of the criticism of mainstream economics Finally, I raise some issues against the existing career models and system of evaluation of research in economics.