Laszlo Zsolnai ‘The Importance of Meta-economics.’ , in Responsible Economics. E.F. Schumacher and His Legacy for the 21st Century, ed. Hendrik Opdebeeck, Peter Lang Academic Publishers, Oxford, 2013.
Meta-economics is the basic assumptions about the subject-matter, value-orientation and methodology of economics. The paper attempts to reconstruct the meta-economic foundation of mainstream economics and that of alternative economics initiated by Schumacher. It shows how the emerging alternative economics transcends the erroneous meta-economic assumptions of mainstream economics by considering the total economic process, choosing sustainable livelihood as basic value-orientation, and employing a constructive methodology.