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employees up to the point that the cost of the additional hire is just balanced by the value of output that the ad-
ditional employee would produce.
The neoclassical vision thus involves economic "agents", be they households or firms, optimizing (doing as
well as they can) subject to all relevant constraints. Value is linked to unlimited desires and wants colliding
with constraints, or scarcity. The tensions, the decision problems, are worked out in markets. Prices are the sig-
nals that tell households and firms whether their conflicting desires can be reconciled.
At some price of cars, for example, I want to buy a new car. At that same price others may also want to buy
cars. But manufacturers may not want to produce as many cars as we all want. Our frustration may lead us to
"bid up" the price of cars, eliminating some potential buyers and encouraging some marginal producers. As the
price changes, the imbalance between buy orders and sell orders is reduced. This is how optimization under
constraint and market interdependence leads to an economic equilibrium. This is the neoclassical vision.
Neoclassical economics is what is called a metatheory. That is, it is a set of implicit rules or understandings
for constructing satisfactory economic theories. It is a scientific research program that generates economic theo-
ries. Its fundamental assumptions are not open to discussion in that they define the shared understandings of
those who call themselves neoclassical economists, or economists without any adjective. Those fundamental
assumptions include the following.
1. People have rational preferences among outcomes.
2. Individuals maximize utility and firms maximize profits.
3. People act independently on the basis of full and relevant information.
Theories based on, or guided by, these assumptions are neoclassical theories.
Thus, we can speak of a neoclassical theory of profits, or employment, or growth, or money. We can create
neoclassical production relationships between inputs and outputs, or neoclassical theories of marriage and di-
vorce and the spacing of births. Consider layoffs, for example. A theory which assumes that a firm's layoff de-
cisions are based on a balance between the benefits of laying off an additional worker and the costs associated
with that action will be a neoclassical theory. A theory that explains the layoff decision by the changing tastes
of managers for employees with particular characteristics will not be a neoclassical theory.
What can be contrasted to neoclassical economics? Some have argued that there are several schools of
thought in present-day economics. They identify (neo-)Marxian economics, (neo-)Austrian economics, post-
Keynesian economics, or (neo-)institutional economics as alternative metatheoretical frameworks for construct-
ing economic theories. To be sure, societies and journals promulgate the ideas associated with these perspec-
tives. Some of these schools have had insights that neoclassical economists have learned from; the Austrian in-
sights on entrepreneurship are one example. But to the extent these schools reject the core building blocks of
neoclassical economics – as Austrians reject optimization, for example – they are regarded by mainstream neo-
classical economists as defenders of lost causes or as kooks, misguided critics, and antiscientific oddballs. The
status of non-neoclassical economists in the economics departments in English-speaking universities is similar
to that of flat-earthers in geography departments: it is safer to voice such opinions after one has tenure, if at all.
One specific attempt to discredit neoclassical economics developed from British economist Joan Robinson
and her colleagues and students at Cambridge in the late fifties and early sixties. The so-called Two Cam-
bridges Capital Controversy was ostensibly about the implications, and limitations, of Paul Samuelson and
Robert Solow's aggregating "capital" and treating the aggregate as an input in a production function. However,
this controversy really was rooted in a clash of visions about what would constitute an "acceptable" theory of
the distribution of income. What became the post-Keynesian position was that the distribution of income was
"best" explained by power differences among workers and capitalists, while the neoclassical explanation was
developed from a market theory of factor prices. Eventually the controversy was not so much settled as laid
aside, as neoclassical economics became mainstream economics.
How did such an orthodoxy come to prevail? In brief, the success of neoclassical economics is connected
to the "scientificization" or "mathematization" of economics in the twentieth century. It is important to recog-
nize that a number of the early Marginalists, economists like William Stanley Jevons and F.Y. Edgeworth in
England, Leon Walras in Lausanne, and Irving Fisher in the United States, wanted to legitimize economics
among the scholarly disciplines. The times were optimistic about a future linked to the successes of technology.
Progress would be assured in a society that used the best scientific knowledge. Social goals would be attainable
if scientific principles could organize social agendas. Scientific socialism and scientific management were
phrases that flowed easily from the pens of social theorists.
Neoclassical economics conceptualized the agents, households and firms, as rational actors. Agents were
modeled as optimizers who were led to "better" outcomes. The resulting equilibrium was "best" in the sense
that any other allocation of goods and services would leave someone worse off. Thus, the social system in the
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