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Reforming economic knowledge: Basic principles


TERRA ECONOMICUS, Vol. 24, No 2

Citation: Balatsky E.V. (2026). Reforming economic knowledge: Basic principles. Terra Economicus 24(2), 6–24 (in Russian). DOI: 10.18522/2073-6606-2026-24-2-6-24

Acknowledgment: The article was prepared withing the state assignment of the Government of the Russian Federation to the Financial University for 2026 on the topic “A new paradigm of modern economic theory in the context of a changing global world order”.Acknowledgement: The author expresses his sincere gratitude to Sergey Tolkachev for useful comments on the manuscript of the article.

The article discusses the urgent need to reform modern economic knowledge. To specify the accumulated contradictions within the discipline, seven dogmas (persistent erroneous norms) are examined. The first three are ontological in nature and are associated with researchers’ incorrect perceptions of the social world: one-sided evaluation of phenomena; a binary system of institutions and solutions; and ignoring the factor of the state’s political sovereignty. The other four dogmas belong to the methodological category and involve erroneous instrumental imperatives in research and managerial decision-making: maintaining linear logic regarding nonlinear phenomena; claims to the universality of economic models; the complexity of economic constructs detached from real-world processes; and the autonomy of events and factors in constructing economic theories. To overcome these dogmas, six alternative principles are proposed as new norms for economic knowledge: the unity of dialectical essences and the elimination of evaluative unambiguity; a shift from pure strategies to mixed strategies; the unity of political sovereignty and economic efficiency; a transition to a parabolic form of economic dependencies; rejection of the universality of economic outcomes and the search for contexts; bridging the gap between economic theory and management practice; and event-factor synthesis. The article notes that the proposed innovations are open to debate, but concludes that such discussions, followed by a thorough inventory of contemporary economic science, will help overcome the methodological deadlock in which it currently finds itself.

Keywords: dogma; principles; methodology; ontology; economic development
JEL codes: B40, B41, B49



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Publisher: Southern Federal University
ISSN: 2073-6606












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