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Mainstream economics is the term used to distinguish economics in general from heterodox approaches and schools such as feminist economics and Austrian economics or Marxian economics. Mainstream economists do not, in general, identify themselves as members of a particular school; they may, however, be associated with approaches within a field such as the rational-expectations approach to macroeconomics.

The term came into common use in the late 20th century.^[1] This followed a synthesis of neoclassical microeconomics and Keynesian macroeconomics^[2] and development of theories of market and government failure. These developments allowed for a range of views on the desirability or otherwise of government intervention.

Mainstream economics may employ axioms or postulates in stating a theory. Testing the theoretical and empirical implications of those postulates is a standard method of mainstream economics.

Some fields may be described as being partly within mainstream economics, partly within heterodox economics. Examples, some of them emerging, include behavioral economics, evolutionary economics, neuroeconomics and non-linear complexity theory. ^{[3] [4]} They may use neoclassical economics as a point of departure.

A countervailing trend is the expansion of mainstream methods to such seemingly distant fields as crime ^[5] the family, law, politics, and religion. ^[6] The latter phenomenon is sometimes referred to as economic imperialism.^[7]

1. ^ Exemplified by its appearance in the influential text by Paul A. Samuelson and William D Nordhaus (2001), 17th ed.,Economics, "Family Tree of Economics," inside back cover.
2. ^ Olivier Jean Blanchard (1987), "neoclassical synthesis," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 634-36.
3. ^ David Colander, Richard P. F. Holt, and Barkley J. Rosser, Jr. (2004), "The Changing Face of Mainstream Economics," Review of Political Economy, 16(4), pp.485-499. (abstract)
4. ^ John B. Davis (2006), "The Turn in Economics: Neoclassical Dominance to Mainstream Pluralism?", Journal of Institutional Economics, 2(1), pp. 1-20. (PDF article link)
5. ^ David D. Friedman (2002), "Crime," The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics,[1]
6. ^ Laurence R. Iannaccone (1998), "Introduction to the Economics of Religion," Journal of Economic Literature, 36(3), pp. 1465-1496. [[2]
7. ^ Edward Lazear (2000), "Economic Imperialism". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. , 115(1), pp. 99-146.[3]