Unfortunately, too many policymakers in advanced economies allowed themselves to believe that such heterodox policies are only for emerging markets. In fact, advanced countries have resorted to heterodox policies to reduce debt overhangs on many occasions.

One reason is that liberal neo classical economists like Stiglitz and Krugman share values with heterodox economists, and shared values are easily conflated with shared analysis. Another reason is that heterodox and MIT School economists also often agree on policy, even if their reasoning is different.

Rather strong but unorthodox policy intervention was an integral part of their successful brand of heterodox gradualism tailored to local conditions (Birdsall, et al, 2005 145)

We can have our cake, it seems, and eat it, too. That is a striking result all the more so because it comes from the IMF, an institution hardly known for heterodox or radical ideas.

Interestingly, Reinhart and Rogoff broadly agree with this recommendation (at least for the US), and they even support heterodox policies such as writing down mortgages and targeting a higher inflation rate. But their paper is really about a different subject.

CAMBRIDGE The International Monetary Fund s acknowledgement that Greece s debt is unsustainable could prove to be a watershed moment for the global financial system. Clearly, heterodox policies to deal with high debt burdens need to be taken more seriously, even in some advanced countries.

Heterodox economics includes core theoretical concepts that are fundamentally incompatible with neoclassical economics in either of its two contemporary forms. These concepts result in significantly different explanations of the real world, including income distribution and the determinants of economic activity and growth.

On the one hand, delegations from developing countries pointed to the creative, and often heterodox, policies that played a central role in accelerating structural change and capital formation in China and India, while other countries that adhered more to orthodox structural reforms have mostly shown disappointing performances.

Independence in thought and deed is vital for any company to function and to build things that last and contribute to economic growth and prosperity. In Plato s Apology, Socrates advocates for the examined life the habit of rigorous self reflection and posing hard, heterodox, and possibly upsetting questions.

There is clearly a trend. The climate threat is so great and democracies are doing so little about it that people conclude that maybe democracy is part of the problem, and that perhaps people ought not to be allowed to express heterodox opinions on such an important topic.

The many recipes thesis enriches neo classical economics contribution to the development debate, and many of its policy proposals will find support from heterodox economists. However, it fails to engage the deep intellectual divisions regarding economic development, trade, and globalization, because it refuses to admit the legitimacy of such disagreements.

The many recipes thesis enriches neo classical economics contribution to the development debate, and many of its policy proposals will find support from heterodox economists. However, it fails to engage the deep intellectual divisions regarding economic development, trade, and globalization, because it refuses to admit the legitimacy of such disagreements.

That said, there is clearly room for allowing more heterodox thinking. So it is encouraging that the BoE is experimenting with a platform that enables a wider variety of views to be heard a blog called Bank Underground (a reference to the Tube station beneath the Bank s headquarters) that publishes posts by junior staff challenging or supporting prevailing policy.

In particular, the experience of other countries suggests that a quick supply response is likely to require selective, discretionary policies in favor of exporters, rather than the horizontal policies that advocates of conventional structural reform prefer. Therein lies a paradox The more orthodox Greece s macro and fiscal strategy is, the more heterodox its growth strategy will have to be.

Generally, economies that have succeeded in terms of both economic growth and poverty reduction over the last three decades have done so by adopting pragmatic, heterodox policies. Often invoking investor and market friendly language, they have generally encouraged private investment, especially in desired economic activities, such as those that create more job opportunities or offer increasing returns to scale.

In addition to short term policy headaches, stronger currencies carry potentially significant costs in terms of hollowing out industrial and service sectors. So, after a varying mix of tolerance and heterodox responses, officials are pulled into loosening their own monetary policy in order to weaken their countries currencies or, at a minimum, limit the pace of appreciation.

CAMBRIDGE Ever since the late nineteenth century, when economics, increasingly embracing mathematics and statistics, developed scientific pretensions, its practitioners have been accused of a variety of sins. The charges including hubris, neglect of social goals beyond incomes, excessive attention to formal techniques, and failure to predict major economic developments such as financial crises have usually come from outsiders, or from a heterodox fringe.

In Rogoff s view, what Krugman described as a long term return to depression economics was a temporary condition, the consequence of failures to regulate properly and curb debt accumulation. This phenomenon, which he identified as the cause of the economic turbulence, inevitably ended in catastrophe, which could be resolved only through painful deleveraging and heterodox government enforced debt write downs.

These differences reflect the intellectual richness of neo classical economics, but they provide no justification for the claim that there is one economics. On the contrary, heterodox economists like Thorsten Veblen and Joseph Schumpeter long ago raised many of today s cutting edge issues in neoclassical economics, including the role of social norms and the relationship between technological innovation and business cycles.

But the profession s internal critics are wrong to claim that the discipline has gone wrong because economists have yet to reach consensus on the correct models (their preferred ones of course). Let us cherish economics in all its diversity rational and behavioral, Keynesian and Classical, first best and second best, orthodox and heterodox and devote our energy to becoming wiser at picking which framework to apply when.

Since the Cold War s end, it has fractured into a far more heterodox grouping whose members range from leftist regimes, as in Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela, to the conservative monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar) of the Persian Gulf. So it should be no surprise that ideological cacophony has severely diluted the group s founding impulse of avoiding entanglement in the disputes of the world s superpowers.