Core tradition
Keynesian
Demand shortfalls can keep output and employment weak for longer than markets self-correct.
Schools
Macro Schools
Use these pages when the disagreement itself is the object: filter the schools by theme, read where they align or split, then open the school detail only after the conflict is visible.
HelpTraditions
The same macro event can be diagnosed several different ways.
Read the schools when the disagreement itself is the product. Start with the theme, see which traditions line up or split, then open the school page only after the conflict is visible.
Next move
Pick the theme first. Then read where the schools split.
Filter by theme
Growth, inflation, and unemployment are the fastest way into the disagreement.
Highlight the schools that disagree most directly about recessions, real shocks, and stabilization.
More themes
Hover a stance tag to highlight aligned schools.
Lineage
Core traditions
These are the four traditions most readers expect to compare first when inflation, recessions, or policy rules are in dispute.
Core tradition
Monetarist
Inflation and instability usually trace back to money growth and policy mistakes.
Core tradition
New Classical
Expectations and credible rules limit how much surprise policy can move the real economy.
Core tradition
New Keynesian
Sticky prices and expectations make monetary policy powerful in the short run.
Lineage
Heterodox critiques
These schools push hardest on money creation, institutions, care, ecological limits, and the distributional structure the core lanes often flatten.
Critical branch
Post-Keynesian
Endogenous money and uncertainty keep demand, finance, and instability tightly linked.
Critical branch
Marxian
Class conflict, profitability, and accumulation pressure make crises part of the system.
Critical branch
Institutionalist
Rules, bargaining, and institutional design shape macro outcomes more than frictionless theory admits.
Critical branch
Feminist
Care work, unpaid labor, and power relations belong inside the macro model, not outside it.
Critical branch
Ecological
Growth, inflation, and policy must be read against physical limits and resource use.
Critical branch
Modern Monetary Theory
Sovereign currency issuers face real resource limits before they face financial ones.
Lineage
Adjacent traditions
These lineages are still central to the macro debate, but they usually enter as extensions, rivals, or modern recalibrations of the core arguments.
Adjacent route
Classical / Neoclassical
Markets eventually reprice and reallocate if policy does not block adjustment.
Adjacent route
Real Business Cycle
Real shocks and productivity changes can explain cycles without leaning on demand failure first.
Adjacent route
Austrian
Credit distortion and mispriced rates create booms that later unwind painfully.
Adjacent route
Modern Heterogeneous-Agent Macro
Household differences and balance-sheet constraints change how shocks and policy actually transmit.
Next step
Need the rows side by side instead of the map?
Open Compare when you want explicit recession, inflation, policy, and model rows instead of the school grid.
Sources & References
- Snowdon, B. and Vane, H. R. Modern Macroeconomics: Its Origins, Development and Current State.
- Lavoie, M. Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations.
- Wray, L. R. Modern Money Theory.
- Raworth, K. Doughnut Economics.