Abstract
Edward P. Lazear, a leading neoclassical economist specializing in labor economics, has recently argued that economic imperialism is successfully colonizing other social sciences as a result of its own scientific status. His account, however, leaves several lacunae, including an explanation for the depth, variety, and timing of economic imperialism. These issues are addressed by emphasizing the importance of recent developments in micro-foundations in rendering economics more palatable to other social sciences that are themselves retreating from the extremes of influence of postmodernism and, like economics, neoliberalism. Further, once questioning the claims of economics as the only rigorous science, and recognizing the understandable antipathies to it by other disciplines, then the latter's interest in renewing contact with the economic is liable to see debate emerge over how to analyze the economy. In this, radical political economy and heterodox economics can play a part, even though they have been dismissed by mainstream economics itself.
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