Reframing Economics

The objectives of this book are twofold. Firstly, it proposes that economics should be defined as a study of imperfect cooperation. Secondly, it elucidates the continuities that extend from classical political economy through the neoclassical, Keynesian, and modern economics of the twenty-first century. Roger McCain explores economics as the study of cooperative arrangements, or the ways in which people work together. He asserts that there is no 'new paradigm', but rather a more encompassing cognitive frame. In the same spirit, the book borrows freely, without doctrinairism, from Austrian and other heterodox traditions - including Marxism where it is helpful - and social philosophers in the social contract tradition. Game theory of both branches plays a key role throughout. Presenting an innovative new framework for the major topics that together make up economic theory, this highly accessible book will strongly appeal to economics scholars, researchers and students, especially those in the fields of heterodox economics and the history of economic thought.