Are those the only schools/lines of action?

Economic science does not constitute a homogeneous and generally accepted body of knowledge. The concerns and the answers to economic problems differ according to the schools of thought and, naturally, according to the position or the interest that explicitly or implicitly is assumed by the researchers. The two lines presented above (Neoclassical and Keynesian) and under which we will erect this dossier, constitute the opposite points of a wide spectrum that includes other economic schools that are distributed closer to one or the other. 

For example, the monetarist school (also known as the Chicago school) is an important current that strongly criticized the weight of the State in the economy, as well as the use of fiscal mechanisms as the main instrument for dealing with economic imbalances. Led by Milton Friedman, this anti-interventionist current supported the autonomous logic of the market and an economic policy centred on monetary policy instruments. Therefore it is clearly situated on the spectrum next to the neoclassical current. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the post-Keynesian economy has given more strength to four elements in Keynes’ initial analysis: income distribution, financial institutions, and trade unions and multinational companies. According to this school, which is logically closer to Keynesian theories, in times of crisis fiscal policy should be used to ensure that the level of aggregate demand is such as to ensure full employment. So far this aligns with Keynes’ original position, but differs in that it advocates designing an economic policy mix that combines wage policy with a robust redistribution mechanism, and adds a recognition of the need for a downsizing and restructuring of the financial system. 

Apart from these two schools, and without forgetting the classical and Marxist roots, alternative currents have not ceased to proliferate, calling for a different reading of economic problems.  Among them we can find the structuralist school, the institutionalist school, the ecological economy and the feminist perspective. All these pathways are located closer to or further from the Neoclassical or Keynesian political choices of crisis management depending on their similarity to the aforementioned, and will be the subject of our chapter on economic theories.