Economics in concerto with other social sciences: Leading discipline or active interaction in contemporary times ?

We are currently in times in which an increased discussion on interdisciplinarity is on the agenda. Economics tends to go into directions of sociology, history, and psychology, taking topics of their domains. If economics changes the portrait so significantly, one may ask if this is still the form of economics, which many people have come to know through the study of textbooks. Where is economics coming from and where is it going to, what is the domain of economics and to what extent do different approaches in economics coexist? The question of what is the matter of economics has a long tradition. The often quoted statement by Jacob Viner “economics is what economists do” (quoted in Barber 1997: 87) was already completed by Frank Knight when he added “and economists are those who do economics” (quoted in Buchanan 1964: 213).

 With respect to the definition of what economics is and how it is organized into different subfolders, two trends overlap each other. (I) We have a long-term trend of the development of economics in which the discipline increasingly gained firm ground and recognition and in which a process of differentiation started to evolve. The field of economics also started to become a professional system with clear curricula, degrees, academic societies and university departments with an increasing number of publications and related journals. (II) Parallel to the consolidation process of economics, the subject formed borderlines to neighboring fields, which were formerly an extended part of economics.

 “Pure economics” proved to be a program of abstractness, which had problems when it was confronted with competing empirical material, since pure economics was related to an economy in a vacuum. This type of thought emerged and became a predominant paradigm of thought during the 20^th century, which in its nucleus served to be a kind of academic religion (Nelson 2001).

 In recent years, economics has been moving increasingly in the direction of social topics and sociological ground. The “imperialism of economics”, which is criticized by Granovetter (1993) and claimed by Lazear (2000), is moving ever closer towards the traditional academic fields of history, psychology, and sociology. Which domains can economic sociology, economic psychology and economic and social history claim as being their exclusive ground ? The paper will explore observed trends in detail, but contemporaries differ in giving comments, making judgements, and providing forecasts.