Search for Synthesis in Economic Theory

First published in 1986. Since the late 1960s the seeming inability of traditional monetary and fiscal policies to combat ' stagflation' and address other macroeconomic issues has accelerated the erosion of confidence in the prevailing economic paradigm , the ' neoclassical synthesis.' * Dissensions among the members of the economics profession on both sides of the Atlantic have grown in number. By the 1970s, a majority of economists had recognized a ' crisis' in economic theory. Parallel to this development, a crisis has also emerged in the Marxian camp. This volume is a discussion from the various schools of thought around three of the salient common grounds follows: the theory of a monetary economy, the disequilibrium foundations of a general equilibrium theory, and a rekindled interest in institutional factors.