The article investigates the reasons for the emergence, formation and development of economic analysis as a type of practical activity. The main idea of the article is to establish causal links between the emergence and development of methodology and methods of economic analysis and stages of development of socio-economic formations. The historical necessity and expediency of the evolution of the tools of economic analysis as a response to the information needs of owners and managers of farms and enterprises are substantiated. The use of a systematic approach, comparative analysis, the principle of historicism, general scientific methods of dialectics, induction, deduction, synthesis led to the formation and justification of the research hypothesis. The main characteristics and trends of evolution of economic analysis, which are improving in the conditions of neo-institutionalism in the XXI century, are identified. The main characteristic features of the methodology and methodological methods of analysis, which were formed in the period of pre - monopoly capitalism, are determined and the trend of their use in modern economic conditions is traced. Also on the basis of systematization of the practice of analytical work the methodical approaches of the economic analysis in an epoch of monopolistic capitalism which are actual for business in the conditions of neoinstitutionalism are formulated.