Some historians of economic thought, in particular, Sraffian economists, see the classical theory of prices as determined from three givens:

Critics who have alleged that Marx has been proved internally inconsistent include former and current Marxian and / or Sraffian economists, such as Paul Sweezy, Nobuo Okishio, Ian Steedman, John Roemer, Gary Mongiovi, and David Laibman, who propose that the field be grounded in their correct versions of Marxian economics instead of in Marx's critique of political economy in the original form in which he presented and developed it in Capital.

This cross-fertilization of ideas is creating a new generation of scholarship in which novel combinations of heterodox ideas are being brought to bear on important contemporary and historical problems, such as socially-grounded reconstructions of the individual in economic theory ; the goals and tools of economic measurement and professional ethics ; the complexities of policymaking in today's global political economy ; and innovative connections among formerly separate theoretical traditions ( Marxian, Austrian, feminist, ecological, Sraffian, institutionalist, and post-Keynesian ) ( for a review of post-Keynesian economics, see Lavoie ( 1992 ); Rochon ( 1999 )).

Leading heterodox thinkers have moved beyond the established paradigms of Austrian, Feminist, Institutional-Evolutionary, Marxian, Post Keynesian, Radical, Social, and Sraffian economics — opening up new lines of analysis, criticism, and dialogue among dissenting schools of thought.

* Sraffian economics #

In the Sraffian view, the rate of profit is not a price, and it is not clear that it is determined in a market.

The two schools are often labeled " Sraffian " or " neo-Ricardian " and " neoclassical ", respectively.

Nor do all Marxists embrace the Sraffian model: in fact, such authors as Michael Lebowitz and Frank Roosevelt are highly critical of Sraffian interpretations, except as a narrow technical critique of the neoclassical view.

In any event, few if any participants in the Cambridge Controversy attacked the Sraffian critique on these grounds.

Samuelson gives an example involving both the Sraffian concept of new products made with labor employing capital goods represented by dead or " dated labor " ( rather than machines having an independent role ) and the " Austrian " concept of " roundaboutness " — supposedly a physical measure of capital intensity.

Instead of simply taking a neoclassical production function for granted, Samuelson follows the Sraffian tradition of constructing a production function from positing alternative methods to produce a product.

The backward nature of expectation formulation and the resultant systematic errors made by agents ( see Cobweb model ) was unsatisfactory to economists such as John Muth, who was pivotal in the development of an alternative model of how expectations are formed, called rational expectations.

A situation that has been often cited of this was the oil crisis of the 1970s, which some economists see as a major cause of the inflation experienced in the Western world in that decade.

Alan Marshall, in the Department of Social Sciences at Mahidol University, for example, reflects upon the way Gaia philosophy has been used and advocated by environmentalists, spiritualists, managers, economists, and scientists and engineers ( see The Unity of Nature, 2002, Imperial College Press: London and Singapore ).

Keynesian economists on the other hand see the lack of demand for jobs as potentially resolvable by government intervention.

Some demand theory economists see the inflation barrier as corresponding to the natural rate of unemployment.

Some economists see this scenario as occurring under British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1970s and 1980s.

As an example, Marxist economists often try to explain politics as subordinated to economy, and sociologists sometimes see economy and politics as mere sub-spheres of society.

Each of these strands continues to see further development by later generations of economists, although the school of thought has been marginalized within the academic profession.

An alternative, more normative, definition ( used by some labor economists ) would see " full employment " as the attainment of the ideal unemployment rate, where the types of unemployment that reflect labor-market inefficiency ( such as structural unemployment ) do not exist.

Politicians often consult economists before enacting policy, and many statesmen have academic degrees in economics ( see List of politicians with economics training ).

The courts have long paid lip service to the distinction that economists make between competition — a set of economic conditions — and existing competitors, though it is hard to see how much difference that has made in judicial decisions.

Some economists see similarities between supply-side proposals and Keynesian economics.

Feminist economists see such variation as a crucial factor to be included in economics.

Many anthropological economists ( or economic anthropologists ) are reacting against what they see as the portrayal of modern society as an economic machine that merely produces and consumes.

Those who reconstruct the theory of value in this manner see the determinants of natural prices as being explained by the Classical economists from within the theory of economics, albeit at a lower level of abstraction.

Some classical economists did see that loss of confidence in business or collapse of credit will increase the demand for money which would cut down the demand for goods.

According to Keynes, the implication of Say's " law " is that a free-market economy is always at what the Keynesian economists call full employment ; see also Walras ' law.

Some economists see government spending as a strategy to be used, and some see it as a strategy to be avoided.

Most economists and compensation analysts would consider the idea of predetermined future " cost of living increases " to be misleading for two reasons: ( 1 ) For most recent periods in the industrialized world, average wages have actually increased faster than most calculated cost-of-living indexes, reflecting the influence of rising productivity, efficiency wages, and worker bargaining power rather than simply living costs, and ( 2 ) most cost-of-living indexes ( see above ) are not forward-looking, but instead compare current or historical data.

In 1999, he wrote a book entitled Open Australia, which explored how information technology could be used to enhance social justice and economic equality ; and he also wrote a number of articles on targeted, " micro " ways of addressing globalisation and the decline of large-scale manufacturing, in which he suggested there was little substance to the notion put forward by neoclassical economists of a " simulated free market " in East Asian economies that explains their " emergence " ( see 1997 Asian Financial Crisis ).

After spending billions of dollars rescuing financial institutions only to see the economy spiral even deeper into crisis, both liberal and conservative economists and lawmakers pushed to redirect an economic stimulus bill to what they saw as the core problem: the housing market.

He was one of the first economists to see the significance of tourism.

Ricardo, other classical economists, and Marx began their expositions with the assumption that value in exchange was equal to or proportional to this labor value.

The assumption that hoarding is irrational was attacked by underconsumptionist economists, such as John M. Robertson, in his 1892 The Fallacy of Saving,

The flypaper theory of tax incidence is a pejorative term used by economists to describe the assumption that the burden of a tax, like a fly with flypaper, sticks wherever it first lands.

Of course, economists must abandon the representative agent assumption when differences between individuals are central to the question at hand.

Most economists see the assumption of continuous market clearing as not very realistic.

When some economists ' studies do not embrace the rationality assumption, they are seen as placing the analyses outside the boundaries of the Neoclassical economics discipline ( Landsberg 1989, 596 ).

Wu Jinglian, one of China's leading economists and a longtime champion of its transition to free markets, says that it faces two starkly contrasting futures: a market economy under the rule of law or crony capitalism.

Laissez-faire economists oppose crony capitalism as well disparaging governmental favors as incompatible with a true free market.

Free to Choose ( 1980 ) is a book ( ISBN 978-0-15-633460-0 ) and a ten-part television series broadcast on public television by economists Milton and Rose D. Friedman that advocates free market principles.

For example, in the Austrian view — often shared by neoclassical and other " free market " economists — the primary factor of production is the time of the entrepreneur, which, when combined with other factors, determines the amount of output of a particular good or service.

Hayek visited Chile in the 1970s and 1980s during the Government Junta of general Augusto Pinochet and accepted being named Honorary Chairman of the Centro de Estudios Públicos, the think tank formed by the economists who transformed Chile into a free market economy.

The meaning of " free market " has varied over time and between economists, the ambiguous term " free " facilitating a diversity of uses.

To illustrate the ambiguity: classical economists such as Adam Smith believed that an economy should be free of monopoly rents, while proponents of laissez faire believe that people should be free to form monopolies.

Because no national economy in existence fully manifests the ideal of a free market as theorized by economists, some critics of the concept consider it to be a fantasy – outside of the bounds of reality in a complex system with opposing interests and different distributions of wealth.

During the financial crisis of 2007 – 2010, several Keynesian economists such as James Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz blamed the free market philosophy of Friedman and the Chicago school for the economic turmoil.

Classical economists reject the conception of cyclical unemployment and alternatively suggest that the invisible hand of free markets will respond quickly to unemployment and underutilization of resources by a fall in wages followed by a rise in employment.

Yugoslav economists Jaroslav Vanek and Branko Horvat promoted a model of market socialism dubbed the Illyrian model, where firms were socially-owned by their employees and based on worker's self-management, competing in open and free markets.

One of the few cases in which neoclassical economists support government provision of goods or intervention in markets, markets for public goods, which may attract free rider problems, will not come to rest at the appropriate equilibrium when left to the invisible hand alone.

Comparative advantage is used by most economists as a basis for their support of free trade policies.

Most mainstream economists instead support free trade.

Most economists, including Nobel prize winners Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman, believe that free trade helps workers in developing countries, even though they are not subject to the stringent health and labour standards of developed countries.

In the economic argument of exchange rate regimes ( one of the most divisive issues among economists ), the Journal has a tendency to support fixed exchange rates over floating exchange rates in spite of its support for the free market in other respects.

While conventional neoclassical economic theories of the 1960s and 1970s explained these as the result of free choices made by women and men who simply had different abilities or preferences, feminist economists pointed out the important roles played by stereotyping, sexism, patriarchal beliefs and institutions, sexual harassment, and discrimination.

Classical economists claimed that free markets regulate themselves, when free of any intervention.

Ironically, considering the attachment of many classical economists to the free market, the largest school of economic thought that still adheres to classical form is the Marxian school.

In most interpretations, classical economists such as Adam Smith maintained that the free market would tend towards economic equilibrium through the price mechanism.