Faith struggles in science: Academic schools as religious sects

Particularly in the social sciences, scientific debates can be understood as a special expression of academic discourse and ideally support the progress of knowledge within a discipline. Very often, there are competing academic schools with greatly differing theoretical foundations, as we have seen, for example, in social sciences-especially by the “Methodenstreit” in economics, or the “Positivismusstreit” in Sociology. This paper aims to introduce a new approach to study academic schools and would like to contribute to the literature on the economics of science. To this end, the paper uses the economic theory of religion in general and the economics of sects in particular by transferring the approach to academic schools for the first time. Our results can help to extend the understanding of scientific decision-making and to explain the membership to an academic school. Although the model is presented in relationship to social sciences in general and economics in particular, the basic model of academic schools is generally transferable. JEL Classification: A12, B13, B21, B40, B53, Z12