Change In and Changing Economics

The paper first discusses the methodological problem of identifying change in economics, given that change is always present in any discipline. It rejects ‘inventory’ methods that subjectively compare ‘new’ and ‘old’ concepts, and argues we should focus on economics’ disciplinary boundaries. To set out different possibilities for disciplinary interaction, the paper then distinguishes four principles forms of disciplinary interaction, ranging from when a discipline is the most closed to the most of open type of discipline.To model boundary crossings the paper uses a modern Classical economics development of open and closed systems thinking from Sraffa to argue that the core of mainstream thinking is only incompletely closed and needs completion from thinking in its periphery, from both within economics and other disciplines.The paper moves to external forces acting on economics that might influence its change on two levels: (i) forces affecting the evolution in scientific research practices in economics; (ii) forces associated with popular expectations and social values regarding the role and nature of economics from the World Values Survey. The paper’s argument is that current mainstream economics is an interdisciplinary type field, but this may be unstable and be replaced by it becoming a more pluralistic multidisciplinary type field. Whether this will occur is addressed in terms of how the two sets of external forces acting upon it together influence its internal development and relationships to other disciplines