Traditional
neo-classical economics starts by a utility-maximization assumption to generate models that try to predict how people make economic choices.
must take its ultimate criterion from outside economics." (202)
Neo-classical economics is based largely on the assumption of self-interest in the name of income, profit, or wealth maximization.
Currently, the political dominance of neo-liberalism suggests economic aims which are dictated by the
neo-classical economics that underpins neo-liberalism.
In the spirit of both traditions the book takes issue with orthodoxy, especially
neo-classical economics, from its outset and seeks to present a heterodox alternative to business-as-usual analyses of the all and ever more important built environment.
As an 'anti-economics' textbook, Credo provides a radical, ecological economics critique of a range of
neo-classical economics principles as they are taught today as well as the practices that they inform.
As Khan writes, '[t]he heterodox authors or approaches reviewed in this chapter identify limitations of
neo-classical economics as an adequate framework for understanding development' (76).
Orthodox
neo-classical economics, as Geoffrey Ingham has noted, 'does not attach much theoretical importance to money', seeing it simultaneously as one more commodity subject to standard microeconomic analysis and as a pure medium of exchange, a 'neutral veil' (2004, 7).
Exhibiting his brilliance and departure from
neo-classical economics by placing emphasis on aggregate demand, Keynes soon came to become a contemporary and great economist in his own right--arguably, at the expense of Pigou and his social welfare approach to econometrics.
Belich shuns cultural superiority factors--common law, Protestant work ethic, representative institutions--in an effort to provide "a new explanation for the explosive growth of English-speaking societies in the nineteenth century (p.548)." His snipping at
neo-classical economics, his emphasis on hype and irrationality in economic development (pp.96-7; 163), may be an instance of current events informing history.
McIntyre asserts that there is little division between
neo-classical economics and contemporary human rights.
It presents a comprehensive overview of theoretical explanations offered by the classical political economy, Marx's analysis of capitalism,
neo-classical economics, institutional economics, Keynesian economics, new classical economics, post Keynesian economics and neoliberalism.
(9) Although not the result of quite the same influences, a profound deficiency arose in classical liberal thought in the nineteenth century as the emphasis came to rest almost exclusively on economic theory (classical and
neo-classical economics), seen as a science rather than a larger philosophy.