Our paper aims to capture the key elements of the evolution of economics over the last half-century.  To achieve such an ambitious task, we proceed in two ways. On the one hand, we engage in a history-of-economics analysis in which we bring out two methodological turns. The first is the rise of a theoretical mainstream amounting to adopting the methodological standards prevailing in microeconomics in other fields of economics. This turn, we claim, occurred over the 1970-1990 period. The second turn is the so-called empirical turn associated with the different sub-specializations forming the experimental economics family.  It arose in the 1990s and has kept its ‘new game in town’ image until now.  It gave rise to another type of methodological mainstream,  the empirical mainstream.  On the other hand, we construct three taxonomies: the ‘mainstream/non-mainstream’ taxonomy,  the ‘theory without measurement/theory and measurement/measurement without theory’ taxonomy, and the ‘explanandum of economics’ taxonomy. These two paths are hardly independent.

Section II explains the content and workings of the three taxonomies. The next three sections provide our history of economics analysis. In Section III, we characterize the state of economics around the 1970s. We also settle a few classification issues. In Section IV, we argue that the 1970-1990 period testified to the rise of what we call the ‘theoretical mainstream.’ We document this claim by examining four case studies on macroeconomics, industrial organization, labor economics, and development economics.  Section V focuses on the 19990-2010 period, the ‘economic turn’ years. Its main components are laboratory experiments, randomized trials (henceforth RCT), and natural experiments, with behavioral economics arising as a major theoretical offspring. In Section VI, we briefly return to the three taxonomies to elicit how the different specializations studied in the previous two sections can be allocated in them.  Thereby, the way is paved for Section VII in which we provide an empirical verification of our claims about the evolution of economics over the last half-century.