How Capitalism, University and Mathematics as Institutions Shaped Mainstream Economics

The article shows that mainstream economics, which now includes such current as new institutional economics, is the result of an evolution shaped by three institutions (capitalism, university and mathematics) by imposing to the profession of economists their founding beliefs. These beliefs are: ‘laissez-faire’; ‘economic knowledge has a priori and exegetical character’; ‘all mathematical entities exist in reality’; ‘beauty is a criterion for theoretical constructions’; ‘scientific research is a play with axioms and rules of inference’. Because of these beliefs mainstream economics, based on mathematical constructions arbitrarily borrowed from the physics of the nineteenth century, remains cognitively sterile and socially detrimental.