Among the references in the paper hinted by indigo_luc, there's one (Mearman, 2011), which [was apparently the first that] has surveyed some (43) self-styled heterodox economists and applied factor analysis as well as cluster analysis to their ideas:
[The first factor is addressed in the next para.] The second
factor has high loadings on class, power, labor, gender and (negatively)
markets. Factor 2 might thus be called a “radical” (or perhaps
Marxist-feminist) grouping. Factor 3 might be an “Austrian” grouping,
associating uncertainty, individualism and fallibilism. Factor 4 is
perhaps a “Post Keynesian” group that stresses money and history.
Factor 5 suggests an “ecological economics” group that stresses natural
systems, but also the use of mathematics.
Factor 1 might be called a mainstream factor. Significantly, this
factor groups rational, equilibrium and scarcity. This may reflect a bias
within heterodox economics as to what constitutes the mainstream:
i.e., if heterodox economists associate scarcity, equilibrium and rationality
with the mainstream, they may reject them more easily. The
finding also partly supports Davis’ (2009) definition of the mainstream
in terms of equilibrium, rationality and individualism. However, the
adoption of individualism by Austrian economists means that the
adoption of individualism alone cannot be a definition of the mainstream;
it also complicates the division between mainstream and
heterodox. Further, the mean scores for “mainstream concepts,”
although consistently lower than heterodox concepts, are consistently
non-zero. Also, although there was a significant negative correlation
between mainstream and heterodox, the correlation coefficient was
only |0.438|, meaning that many respondents regard themselves
mainly as clearly defined heterodox economists—yet with an important
element of mainstream economics thrown in. Heterodox economists
are a mixture of concepts and influences. An alternative
interpretation is that heterodox and mainstream are overlapping categories.
This would be significant given that treatments of mainstream
and heterodox often treat them as strictly distinct. The other clear
finding for this group is that in terms of concepts, heterodox economics
remains a concatenation of ideas (echoing Lee’s (2010) term) and
groupings of individuals.
As for cluster analysis:
Cluster A, the largest, is
characterized by a rejection of the label “mainstream” and to some
extent of mainstream concepts (apart from individuals and markets).
The second feature of cluster A is an acceptance of the label as
heterodox and pluralist and a matching acceptance of general heterodox
concepts such as class, uncertainty, fallibilism, power, money and
history. It could be argued that this cluster exemplifies the recently
developing picture of heterodoxy as being non-mainstream but pluralist,
with a concern for methodological issues. Almost all of the
female respondents to the survey are in this group, although it is far
from clear why this would occur.
Cluster B is different, exhibiting
much stronger rejection of the mainstream and its concepts, maximum
scores for class and labor and much lower scores than the other
clusters for uncertainty and fallibilism. Methodologically this group
scored much higher than cluster A on the need for maths in
economics. Cluster B seems like a Marxist group and indeed its cluster
members are self-identified radicals.
Cluster C is different from clusters A and B in that it does not
reject the label of being mainstream, whilst accepting the labels of
heterodox and pluralist. This cluster is similar to cluster A but more
pluralist. The members of this cluster reject the strict distinctions
between the three categories. Further, although this cluster accepts
many of the traditional heterodox concepts such as power, labor
and class, it also accepts mainstream notions such as rational, equilibrium,
positive, maths and crucially, scarcity. Above, when factor
analysis was conducted, a factor was extracted that was labeled
“mainstream” whereas the view of cluster C suggests instead this use
of mainstream concepts alongside heterodox ones is another exhibition
of pluralism. Unfortunately these individuals are difficult to
identify from the information gleaned so it is difficult to draw too
many conclusions. It should also be noted that in the dendrogram,
arguably cluster C might have been split into two, so perhaps not
too much coherence should be expected.
Cluster D is in some ways
the most interesting cluster because it contains most of the cases
identified as peripheral. The cluster score for mainstream is similar
to cluster C, but the score for heterodox is lower. Accordingly,
scores for core heterodox concepts such as class, power, gender
and particularly labor are clearly lower than for the other clusters.
As a corollary, cluster D’s scores for individuals, markets and rational
are much higher than for the other clusters. Looking at the
cases who are members of this cluster, they appear to be
members of underrepresented elements of heterodox thought, such
as behavioral economics, Austrian economics and American
institutionalism.
