There has been an increasing trend for ideas and methods from economics to be applied in wider contexts. Economic analysis focuses on decision making, and has been applied, with varying degrees of success, to various fields where people are faced with alternatives – education, marriage, health, law, crime, war, and religion. This has sometimes been described as economic imperialism by critics. Gary Becker at the University of Chicago was one of the important pioneers in this imperialistic endeavor. In a collection of his early influential articles, he advanced the view that economics is not to be defined by its subject matters, but should be defined as an approach of explaining human behaviors.

Many mainstream economists feel that the combination of rigorous theory and empirical data ultimately gives the best understanding of real-world phenomena. Towards this end, economics has undergone a massive formalization of its ideas, concepts and methods – according to critics, sometimes to the detriment of its real-world relevance. This creates a tension in the profession on what economists should do. The traditional Chicago School, with its emphasis on economics being an empirical science aimed at explaining real-world phenomena, has insisted on the powerfulness of price theory as the tool of analysis. On the other hand, some economic theorists have formed the view that a consistent economic theory may be useful even if at present no real world economy bears out its prediction.