This is a guest post from Prof. Marc Lavoie, emeritus professor of economics at the University of Ottawa and winner of the 2025 Galbraith Prize from the Progressive Economics Forum for his lifetime contributions to heterodox theory and practice in Canada and around the world. Prof. Lavoie was recently invited by SSHRC to provide input to a restructuring of the classification categories SSHRC uses to organize grant applications, academic publications, and other scholarly work (a catalogue system SSHRC runs in conjunction with Statistics Canada). In his submission he reflected on the links between economic theory, economic history, and the history of economic thought, all in the context of the evolution of heterodox economics. An adaptation of his submission is posted below.

Heterodox economics: the SSHRC, JEL and Australian classifications

by Marc Lavoie, Professor Emeritus, University of Ottawa

There sometimes is some confusion about the links between heterodox economics, history of economic thought, and even economic history, and their links with economics at large, and in particular with orthodox economics, neoclassical economics or the mainstream, however you want to name it.

Economists who publish in academic journals are aware of the classification provided by the American Economics Association, and more specifically by the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL), since they are usually required to provide the JEL codes that correspond to the topics of their journal submissions.

Some countries also provide nomenclatures to assess the importance of various research fields, often measured by the amount of  research funds obtained in each of these research fields, despite the fact that some research fields do not necessarily require huge some sums of money to acquire new knowledge or useful information.

In Canada there is such a nomenclature of fields of research (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects/standard/crdc/2020v1/introduction#_Overview), the Canadian Research and Development Classification (CRDC), found on a website of Statistics Canada and developed by the various federal research granting agencies, including the SSHRC. It is said that the CRDC, besides the recommendations of the OECD, is also inspired by the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC).

Economics (RDF5020) is one of five classes within a broader ‘Economics and Business Administration” group, which itself is within a “Social Sciences” division (https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p3VD.pl?Function=getVD&TVD=1278187). Within Economics there are 28 subclasses or fields (https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p3VD.pl?Function=getVD&TVD=1278187&CVD=1278241&CPV=RDF50201&CST=01012020&CLV=2&MLV=4). One of these 28 fields is called Economic History and Heterodox Economics (RDF5020101):

• RDF5020101 Economic history and heterodox economics
• RDF5020102 Macroeconomics (including monetary and fiscal theory)
• RDF5020103 Microeconomics
• RDF5020104 Comparative economic systems
• RDF5020105 Econometrics
• RDF5020106 Agricultural economics
• RDF5020107 Economics of development and growth
• RDF5020108 Economics of innovation and technical change
• RDF5020109 Economics of education
• RDF5020110 Economics of health care
• RDF5020111 Environment and natural resources economics
• RDF5020112 Financial economics
• RDF5020113 Industry economics and industrial organization
• RDF5020114 International economics and international finance
• RDF5020115 Indigenous economics
• RDF5020116 Labour and demographic economics
• RDF5020117 Public economics
• RDF5020118 Transport economics
• RDF5020119 Urban, rural and regional economics
• RDF5020120 Economics of international development
• RDF5020121 Welfare economics
• RDF5020122 Economic systems
• RDF5020123 Circular economy
• RDF5020124 Social and solidarity economics
• RDF5020125 Collaborative economy and sharing economy
• RDF5020126 Real estate economics
• RDF5020127 Experimental economics
• RDF5020199 Economics, n.e.c.

A first reaction is that combining Economic History and Heterodox Economics is rather awkward. In addition, it seems that History of Economics, or History of Economic Thought (HET), is associated with Economic History. Obviously, these two subjects are quite different. Also, although it is true that in the past (but probably not as much today) HET was conducted by scholars having some sympathy for non-mainstream approaches, the combination of HET and heterodox economics does not seem appropriate either, because it would imply that Heterodox Economics would be relegated to the study of past history and past theories! Thus, one would think that it would be best to have three separate streams: HET; Economic History; Heterodox Economics.

Indeed, this is what one can find in the Australian and New Zealand nomenclature. Its 2020 version for Economics is the same as the 2008 one, which was heavily discussed in Australia because of a 2007 attempt by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to move HET and Economic History to a new “History, Archaeology, Religion and Philosophy” research class. The proposal was eventually abandoned, as it was pointed out that the large majority of scholars working in economic history and the history of economic thought considered themselves to be economists first and foremost and held positions in Economics departments. Here is how the various classes and fields are set up in Australia and New Zealand:

Economic History, History of Economic Thought and Heterodox Economics are clearly separated. Economic History belongs to the field of Applied Economics; History of Economic Thought belongs to Economic Theory; and Heterodox Economics, is within Other Economics, along with Ecological Economics, which today has several links with heterodox economics in general and post-Keynesian economics in particular. It would be nice if Canada could adopt a similar setup for these three fields.

What about the classification provided by the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL)? Its classification contains 20 key codes, one of which is a code entirely devoted to Economic History (code N), with multiple subcodes. Many N subcodes are devoted to the economic relations between Canada and the USA.  It is true that there are historians who successfully deal with economic topics, a name that comes to mind today is Adam Tooze, at Columbia University, but Tooze was trained at Cambridge (UK) at a time when historians had to take seminars in economics.   

With respect to Heterodox Economics, the JEL classification is a bit messy. It has a B code, called History of Economic Thought (B1-B3), Methodology (B4) and Heterodox Economics (B5). The JEL classification says that: “The categories for B5 were created to accommodate the recent substantial developments in non-mainstream (non-neoclassical) economic approaches to contemporary economic problems. Studies about an economic subject (or subjects) adopting a given heterodox approach should be cross-classified under the appropriate B5 category and also under the appropriate subject category (or categories)”. This is confirmed by the fact that several heterodox schools also appear in the E category (Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics), more specifically in the E1 code (Aggregative models), along with Neoclassical economics (the mainstream):

Modern Monetary Theory (in my view a branch of Post-Keynesian Economics) also appears in E6 (Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook), within E62 (Fiscal policy)!

As claimed earlier, despite its detailed coding, or perhaps because of it, the JEL classification is somewhat confusing. For instance, post-Keynesian economics and Kaleckian economics, which appear in code E11 and E12 are not found among the heterodox schools listed in B5.

Coming back to the Canadian nomenclature, one would think that Heterodox Economics, History of Economic Thought and Economic History are three different subjects that ought to belong to the Economics research class. Economic History has clearly no or very little relationship with the other two fields. Putting together Heterodox Economics and History of Economic Thought would be an improvement over the current Canadian classification, but could only be a second-best solution, since it would give the impression that Heterodox Economics only deals with verbal discussions of past ideas and theories, whereas numerous scholars linked to Heterodox Economics use algebraic modeling and empirical analysis, including econometrics, and are involved in economic policy analysis. The Australian and New Zealand classification looks like the most appropriate one with regards to the three fields being considered in this note. A new Canadian classification is planned to be announced by Statistics Canada sometime in June.