10 Principles of Institutional Economics

• Economics is about social provisioning, not merely choices and scarcity.
• Both scarcity and wants are socially defined and created.
• Economic systems are human creations; no particular economic system is "natural".
• Ecological literacy (economy-ecology interface) is essential to economics.
• Valuation is a social process.
• The government defines the economy; laissez faire capitalism is an oxymoron.
• The history of economic thought is critical to the study of "basic principles" of economics.
• Economic theory ("logical economics") and real world economics are often very different things.
• Race, gender, and class shape economic processes, outcomes, and policies in the real world economy.
• There are many types of economists who do not agree on many things. This reflects the fact that economics is not "value free" and ideology shapes our analyses and conclusions as economists.

From: Janet Knoedler, Jennifer Long, Reynold Nesiba, Janice Peterson, Geoff Schneider, James Swaney, and Daniel Underwood (1998). "10 Things for Economic Pedagogy", Association for Evolutionary Thought, Western Social Science Association, Denver Colorado. (See here.)