Economics is a difficult subject at the best of times, but taking an unconventional approach makes it doubly so. It is hard enough to keep up with current research as it is, so there must be important reasons for asking the reader to take the trouble to look at the world in a different way.

Moreover, some efforts at a new approach may give one cause to be skeptical. A good deal of the best work is chiefly critical (which is emphatically not the case here). Such work is widely ignored, or cited only in obscure footnotes. It is generally acknowledged that neo-Classical theory has significant flaws – but it is equally widely believed to be the only useful and relevant scientific approach. Neo-Ricardian theory, for example, is just as abstract, calls for a counter-intuitive interpretation of Keynesian macroeconomics, and has little or no behavioral theory. Its approach to policy and empirical work is underdeveloped, to say the least. The post-Keynesian school has a better record on policy and empirical work, and begins from a reasonable position in macroeconomics, but has an eclectic approach to pricing, and, indeed, to theory in general. Some would say it is more an attitude than a doctrine.

By contrast, neo-Classical theory is not only fully articulated in virtually every area of interest, but is able to find room for almost any position on any issue. It has become the language of economics, and like a language it has a grammar.