What is the economy, really? Is it a “market sector,” a “general equilibrium,” or the “gross domestic product”? Economics today has become so preoccupied with methods that economists risk losing sight of the economy itself.

Meanwhile, other disciplines, although often intent on criticizing the methods of economics, have failed to articulate an alternative vision of the economy. Before the ascent of postwar neoclassical economics, fierce debates raged, as many different visions of the economy circulated and competed with one another. In The Real Economy, Jonathan Levy returns to the spirit of this earlier era, which, in all its contentiousness, gave birth to the discipline of economics.

Writing for anyone interested in the study of the economy, Levy provides an invaluable provocation for a broader debate in the social sciences and humanities concerning what “the economy” is.