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Schools of economic thought: five hundred years of argument, on one timeline.

Twelve schools, grouped by the lineage they belong to. Pick any one to see its central claim, the people who made it, and roughly when it held the floor.

Pre-classical

Classical lineage

Marxist critique

Austrian lineage

Keynesian

Behavioural

Keynesian

1936–1973

Core claim

When private spending collapses, markets do not self-correct quickly — governments should step in to keep total demand high.

Key figures

John Maynard Keynes 1883–1946
The General Theory (1936) argued depressions could persist for years without state intervention.
Paul Samuelson 1915–2009
Synthesised Keynes with neoclassical micro into the dominant postwar textbook.
John Hicks 1904–1989
Distilled Keynes into the IS–LM diagram — the simple graph that taught macro for forty years.

Key ideas

Total spending — consumption, investment, government, net exports — drives output and jobs.
Wages are sticky downwards, so falling demand causes unemployment, not lower prices.
Government deficit spending can pull an economy out of recession.
Monetary policy alone is too weak when interest rates are near zero (the 'liquidity trap').

What came next

The 1970s broke the Keynesian consensus. Stagflation — high inflation *and* high unemployment together — was not supposed to happen in the Keynesian model. Monetarists (Friedman) and New Classicals (Lucas) argued Keynesian policy itself had caused the inflation. Modified Keynesian ideas survive in 'New Keynesian' macro and in central-bank stimulus during deep slumps.

In the course

Aggregate Demand & Supply →Fiscal Policy →

Schools of economic thought: five hundred years of argument, on one timeline.Five hundred years of argument, on one timeline.

Schools of economic thought: five hundred years of argument, on one timeline.