I have a favor to ask of the subscribers:  I am trying to figure 
out how to explain or label the multitude of different kinds of 
CURRENT research in the area of political economy -- which I would 
describe as the study of the relationship among the economy, the culture, 
and political/social/economic institutions.  It seems to me that 
there is more than one school of study within the discipline of 
economics itself.  I hate to call _anything_ specifically  
"neoclassical", because several different schools of study within 
mainstream economics derive from variants on the basic neoclassica 
model and could be said to operate within that tradition.  That also 
leads to what I believe is a very misleading habit of economists -- 
behaving as if there is One Great Truth that all mainstream economists 
adhere to.  While there does seem to be SOME willingness to acknowledge 
the coexistence of a variety of schools of analysis with regard to 
MACROeconomic policy -- Chicago, Minnesota, MIT-Princeton-Wharton, 
Buchanan -- there seems to be no way to label the variety of schools 
of applied microeconomic study.  I have heard Buchanan's narrowest 
formulations of rent-seeking described as "neoclassical", but that 
runs into the problem I just noted:  everyone I have asked who works 
in the "new institutional" economics considers their own work to be 
within the neoclassical tradition as well.  Only post-Walrasians or 
the (handful of) neo-Marxists would make a distinction, I guess.   
Would students of LSE-style economics call themselves "empiricists"? 
     Then when you LEAVE economics departments, there are scholars 
currently working on what would be called problems of political 
economics in anthropology, sociology, political science, and history 
-- not to mention business school and urban studies and schools of 
general policy analysis.   
     So.  If anyone has suggestions for (a) identifiable CURRENT 
schools of political economy, within or between scholarly disciplines; 
and (b) favorite WORKS of political economy, would you do me a 
favor and send me a private message, and I'll collate them all into 
one big posting for the list?  Thanks. 
     -- Mary Schweitzer, Dept. of History, Villanova University 
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