International Journal of New Political Economy

International Journal of New Political Economy

A Comparative Assessment of Major Economic Schools using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Principal Macroeconomic Indicators

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Roghayeh Abdolinejad 1
Hamid Reza Horry 2
Sayed Abdolmajid Jalaee 3
1 Ph. D candidate, International Economics, Faculty of Management and Economics, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran
2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Management and Economics, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran
3 Professor, Faculty of Management and Economics, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran
10.48308/jep.2026.243274.1262
Abstract
This study compared major economic schools of thought using a multi-criteria decision-making approach grounded in key macroeconomic indicators. Five schools—Classical, Keynesian, Marxist, New Classical, and New Keynesian—were evaluated against seven criteria: economic growth, economic welfare, productivity, employment, equitable income distribution, human development, and balance-of-payments equilibrium. The empirical analysis relied on expert judgments collected through an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) questionnaire distributed among fifteen experts, including university faculty members and Ph.D. graduates. AHP was also employed to analyze pairwise comparison matrices, establishing the relative importance of each evaluation criterion and the priorities of the five schools within the proposed framework. Results showed that the most important criteria were economic growth, human development, and productivity. Although economic growth was given the most overall weight, various schools of thought tended to prioritize different criteria; for instance, the Keynesians prioritized employment. Both New Keynesianism and Classicalism shared the priority of macroeconomic criteria. According to expert opinions and established evaluation criteria, the New Keynesian school ranked highest in overall AHP priority. The study findings underscore the value of AHP as a systematic method for comparing economic schools, indicating that growth-related criteria are generally emphasized over human-centered development criteria within this evaluation framework.
Keywords
Economic schools
AHP
economic growth
human development
productivity
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International Journal of New Political Economy

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 08 September 2026

  • Receive Date 22 January 2026
  • Revise Date 01 September 2026
  • Accept Date 08 September 2026
  • First Publish Date 08 September 2026
  • Publish Date 08 September 2026