The Inaugural Conference @ King's, Institute for New Economic Thinking, Session 1: The Living History of the Last 30 years: Economic Theory, Politics and Policy Economic theory has modeled itself on theoretical physics. It has sought to establish timelessly valid laws that govern economic behavior and can be used reversibly both to explain and to predict events. But instead of seeking laws capable of being falsified through testing, economics has increasingly turned itself into an axiomatic discipline consisting of assumptions and mathematical deductions similar to Euclidean geometry.