ABSTRACT
Esther-Mirjam Sent is Professor of Economics at Radboud University, where she has been since 2004. She is also a member of the Senate of the Netherlands, the Social Science Council of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and many advisory boards. They define “mainstream” economics as the research frontier in economics, as mostly a sociological category, and they define “heterodox” economics as anything that does not fit into the orthodoxy and mainstream. It is important to note that history and philosophy of economics has undergone a transition. At least in the Netherlands people have the Central Planning Bureau, and it makes predictions, it calculates the programmes that political parties have, but it is all based upon very questionable assumptions, a model that presumes that people respond rationally to incentives. The more traditional money streams have been less forthcoming, but that is also because the competition is just so strong.
