IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ico/wpaper/170.html

Transforming Economics from the Side Lane? The New Economy Space and its Think Tanks

Author

Listed:
  • Lukas Baeuerle

    (Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
    Socio-Ecological Transformation Lab, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
    Department of Socioeconomics, University of Hamburg, Germany)

  • Sabine Maasen

    (Department of Socioeconomics, University of Hamburg, Germany)

Abstract

Contemporary societies face a persistent polycrisis in which socioeconomic, ecological, technological, and geopolitical challenges intersect and reinforce each other. This volatility exposes the limitations of linear, mono-paradigmatic responses and places new demands on the production and circulation of knowledge. This is also true for economic matters, policies and rationales: While mainstream economics remains characterised by abstraction, disciplinary closure, and expertocratic policy advisory, an alternative ecosystem has emerged, also in the German-speaking world: the New Economy Space (NES). This article reconstructs the NES as a boundary-spanning dispositif of knowledge production that combines critical resources from pluralist economics with broader societal trends towards transdisciplinarity and impact orientation. Drawing on interviews, organisational documents, and observations of networking events, the study identifies three defining features of NES knowledge production: the continuous establishment of agile addresses, a pronounced orientation towards political impact, and the organisation of transversality across fields. NES think tanks thereby translate heterogeneous knowledges and normative positions into strategically crafted interventions for policymakers, media, and civil society. The article situates NES practices in contrast to academic economics and highlights their potential to reshape the epistemic and institutional foundations of economic expertise. It concludes by reflecting on the implications of this emerging model for the future of economics as a science and as a mode of public intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Lukas Baeuerle & Sabine Maasen, 2025. "Transforming Economics from the Side Lane? The New Economy Space and its Think Tanks," ICAE Working Papers 170, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    • Handle: RePEc:ico:wpaper:170
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jku.at/fileadmin/gruppen/108/ICAE_Working_Papers/wp170.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Etzkowitz, Henry & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2000. "The dynamics of innovation: from National Systems and "Mode 2" to a Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 109-123, February.
    2. Davis, John B., 2006. "The turn in economics: neoclassical dominance to mainstream pluralism?," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 1-20, April.
    3. David Colander & Richard Holt & Barkley Rosser, 2004. "The changing face of mainstream economics," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 485-499.
    4. Amanda Bayer & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2016. "Diversity in the Economics Profession: A New Attack on an Old Problem," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 221-242, Fall.
    5. Rommel, Florian & Urban, Janina, 2022. "A Survey of German Economics," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264131, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Vinca Bigo & Ioana Negru, 2008. "From Fragmentation to Ontologically Reflexive Pluralism," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 1(2), pages 127-150, March.
    7. repec:bla:germec:v:9:y:2008:i::p:457-472 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Daniel Feser, 2023. "Innovation intermediaries revised: a systematic literature review on innovation intermediaries’ role for knowledge sharing," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 17(5), pages 1827-1862, July.
    9. Michael Graber & Andrey Launov & Klaus Wälde, 2008. "Publish or Perish? The Increasing Importance of Publications for Prospective Economics Professors in Austria, Germany and Switzerland," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 9(4), pages 457-472, November.
    10. Leonhard Dobusch & Jakob Kapeller, 2012. "Heterodox United vs. Mainstream City? Sketching a Framework for Interested Pluralism in Economics," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 1035-1058.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lukas Bäuerle & Rouven Reinke, 2026. "Pluralising the economic knowledge of politics. Evidence from a German case study," ICAE Working Papers 180, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Urban, Janina & Rommel, Florian, 2020. "German economics: Its current form and content," Working Paper Serie des Instituts für Ökonomie 56, Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung (HfGG), Institut für Ökonomie.
    2. William A. Jackson, 2018. "Strategic Pluralism and Monism in Heterodox Economics," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 50(2), pages 237-251, June.
    3. Beckenbach, Frank, 2019. "Monism in modern science: The case of (micro-)economics," Working Paper Serie des Instituts für Ökonomie Ök-49, Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung (HfGG), Institut für Ökonomie.
    4. Jakob Kapeller & Stephan Puehringer & Christian Grimm, 2022. "Paradigms and policies: the state of economics in the German-speaking countries," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 1183-1210, July.
    5. Angela Ambrosino & Magda Fontana & Anna Azzurra Gigante, 2018. "Shifting Boundaries In Economics: The Institutional Cognitive Strand And The Future Of Institutional Economics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 767-791, July.
    6. Gruszka, Katarzyna & Scharbert, Annika Regine & Soder, Michael, 2017. "Leaving the mainstream behind? Uncovering subjective understandings of economics instructors' roles," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 485-498.
    7. Lukas Baeuerle & Michelle Meixieira Groenewald, 2025. "From monoculture to pluricultures. Recent trends in economics education," ICAE Working Papers 172, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    8. Claudius Gräbner & Birte Strunk, 2020. "Pluralism in economics: its critiques and their lessons," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 311-329, October.
    9. Yann Giraud, 2017. "The Contestable Marketplace of Ideas: Paul Samuelson’s Defense of Mainstream Economics through Textbook Making, 1967-1976," Thema Working Papers 2017-19, THEMA (Théorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), CY Cergy-Paris University, ESSEC and CNRS.
    10. Angela Ambrosino & Mario Cedrini & John B. Davis, 2024. "Today’s economics: one, no one and one hundred thousand," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 59-76, January.
    11. Matthias Aistleitner & Jakob Kapeller & Stefan Steinerberger, 2018. "Citation Patterns in Economics and Beyond," Working Papers Series 85, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    12. Pessali, Huascar & Berger, Bruno, 2010. "A teoria da perspectiva e as mudanças de preferência no mainstream: um prospecto lakatoseano [Prospect theory and preference change in the mainstream of economics: a Lakatosian prospect]," MPRA Paper 26104, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Ambrosino, Angela & Fontana, Magda & Gigante, Anna Azzurra, 2015. "Shifting Boundaries in Economics: the Institutional Cognitive Strand," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201544, University of Turin.
    14. Iazdi, Oz, 2023. "Vieses orto-heterodoxos e os algoritmos economistas do ChatGPT [Ortho-Heterodox biases and the economist algorithms of ChatGPT]," MPRA Paper 117655, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Michele Di Maio, 2013. "Are Mainstream and Heterodox Economists Different? An Empirical Analysis," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(5), pages 1315-1348, November.
    16. Katarzyna Gruszka & Annika Scharbert & Michael Soder, 2016. "Changing the world one student at a time? Uncovering subjective understandings of economics instructors' roles," Ecological Economics Papers ieep7, Institute of Ecological Economics.
    17. Sepehr Ghazinoory & Meysam Narimani & Shiva Tatina, 2017. "Neoclassical versus evolutionary economics in developing countries: convergence of policy implications," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 555-583, July.
    18. Valentina Erasmo, 2022. "“Econosophy”: Venturing a Transdisciplinary Approach to Philosophy and Economics," Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Torino (Italy), vol. 56(2), pages 127-144, December.
    19. Aigner, Ernest, 2021. "Global dynamics and country-level development in academic economics: An explorative cognitive-bibliometric study," SRE-Discussion Papers 07/2021, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    20. Robert Garnett, 2011. "Pluralism, Academic Freedom, and Heterodox Economics," Working Papers 201107, Texas Christian University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ico:wpaper:170. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Teresa Griesebner The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Teresa Griesebner to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/igjkuat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.