A Case for Design and Speculative Economics: Leveraging Interdisciplinary Pressure to Disrupt Economic Orthodoxy

Abstract

This article provides historical context for the current state of discourse in academic economics and an assessment of disparate and viable heterodox economic methodologies to support a proposal for establishing the disciplines of design economics and speculative economics. Coherent, modern, and viable academic challenges to economic orthodoxy exist but are largely ignored by departments of economics. This proposal addresses the disconnect between economics and the rest of academia with a collaborative and interdisciplinary effort based on three tenets. Borrowing from established foresight methods design economics and speculative economics create a framework from which economics can evolve to embrace paradigm change.

Keywords:

• Design economics framework
• post-neoliberal
• speculative economics
• speculative futures