George Soros, the fund manager, has pledged $50m to back a new think-tank with the mission of reconceiving the field of economics, which he describes as “a dogma whose time has passed”.

The group, to be called the Institute of New Economic Thinking, will gather luminaries in the field of economics to reflect on the ideas that allowed the latest economic crisis to transpire and to bring new ideas to a profession that some argue has become too deeply entrenched in free-market ideology.