Introductory Course: "Degrowth: What?!"

How countries achieve long-term GDP growth is up there with the most important topics in economics. As Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas put it “the consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.” Ricardo Hausmann et al take a refreshing approach to this question in their Atlas of Economic Complexity. They argue a country’s growth depends on the complexity of its economy: it must have a diverse economy which produces a wide variety of products, including ones that cannot be produced much elsewhere. The Atlas goes into detail on exactly what complexity means, how it fits the data, and what this implies for development. Below I will offer a summary of their arguments, including some cool data visualisations.

Dr. Katherine Trebeck explains some reasons why we should believe the future of the economy should be a wellbeing economy.

Der Umbau zu einer nachhaltigen, CO2-armen und solidarischen Ökonomie erfordert besonders in der Transformationsphase massive Investitionen sowohl in Institutionen und Infrastrukturen, die ein sozial gerechtes Leben für alle ermöglichen (ökologische Landwirtschaft, dezentrale erneuerbare Energien, ökologisches Wohnen, kollektive Mobilität etc.) als auch in Projekte zur Anpassung an und Entschärfung von Klimawandel und ökologischen Zerstörungen sowie finanzielle Transfers vom globalen Norden in den globalen Süden, die aus der historisch angehäuften Klimaschuld folgen.

Recovery from the Covid-19 crisis provides a chance to implement economic measures that are also beneficial from environmental and social perspectives. While ‘green’ recovery packages are crucial to support economies tracking a low-carbon transition in the short-term, green measures such as carbon pricing are also key to improving welfare in the long-term. This commentary specifies the need for carbon pricing, outlines its implications for our everyday lives, and explains how it works alongside value-based change in the context of climate action and societal well-being.

How can we establish new institutions and practices in order to use fare-free public transport as a beacon for sustainable mobility and a low-carbon lifestyle? The author of this essay elaborates on how practice theory and institutional economics can help to answer this question.