Economic activity

Other schools and approaches

• Austrian School, emphasising human action, property rights, and the freedom to contract and transact to have a thriving and successful economy. It also emphasises that the state should play as small a role as possible (if any role) in the regulation of economic activity between two transacting parties. Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises are the two most prominent representatives of the Austrian school.
• Post-Keynesian economics concentrates on macroeconomic rigidities and adjustment processes. It is generally associated with the University of Cambridge and the work of Joan Robinson.
• Ecological economics like environmental economics studies the interactions between human economies and the ecosystems in which they are embedded, but in contrast to environmental economics takes an oppositional position towards general mainstream economic principles. A major difference between the two subdisciplines is their assumptions about the substitution possibilities between human-made and natural capital.