Orthodox economics

Mainstream economics is the body of knowledge, theories, and models of economics, as taught across prominent universities, that are widely accepted by scholars in the field. It can be contrasted to heterodox economics, which encompasses various schools or approaches that are only accepted by their expositors, with little influence on the majority of academic economists. Mainstream economics has been associated with neoclassical economics and with the neoclassical synthesis, which combines neoclassical methods and a Keynesian approach to macroeconomics.

In the United States, mainstream economists are not generally separated into schools, but two major contemporary economic schools of thought have been the "saltwater and freshwater schools." In the early 1970s, so-called "fresh-water economists" challenged the prevailing consensus in macroeconomics research. Key elements of their approach were that macroeconomics had to be dynamic, quantitative, and based on how individuals and institutions make decisions under uncertainty.

Many of the proponents of this radically new approach to macroeconomics were associated with Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Chicago, the University of Rochester and the University of Minnesota. They were referred to as the "freshwater school" since Pittsburgh, Chicago, Rochester, and Minneapolis are located nearer to the Great Lakes. The established consensus was primarily defended by economists at the universities and other institutions located near the east and west coast of the United States, such as Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. They were therefore often referred to as "the saltwater schools". Today, mainstream economists do not, in general, identify themselves as members of a particular school.

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