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Firms are the primary places where economic activity takes place in modern capitalist economies: they are where most stuff is produced; where many of us spend 40 hours a week; and where big decisions are made about how to allocate resources. Establishing how they work is hugely important because it helps us to understand patterns of production and consumption, including how firms will react to changes in economic conditions and policy. And a well-established literature – led by post-Keynesians and institutionalists – holds that the best way to determine how firms work is to…wait for it...ask firms how they work. This a clearly sensible proposition that is contested in economics for some reason, but we’ll ignore the controversy here and just explore the theory that springs from this approach.
The ‘How Firms Work’ Approach to How Firms Work
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.
GDP Growth: It’s Complicated
Sebastian Thieme geht der Sache auf den Grund und widmet sich auch der Frage, wo Alternativen liegen können, die eine ökonomische Misanthropie einzuschränken vermögen.
Ökonomische Misanthropie? Grundmuster und Konsequenzen für die Soziale Frage
Economics has long been the domain of the ivory tower, where specialized language and opaque theorems make it inaccessible to most people. That’s a problem.
Economics for People
In der Schreibwerkstatt Post-Growth Economics hat Ariane Isidorczyk ein Dossier zum Zusammenhang zwischen der Indusstriellen Revolution und dem Klimawandel verfasst und schlägt eine Lernmethode für Schüler:innen und Studierende vor, die die Simulation und das emotionale Erfassen von globalen Zusammenhängen zwischen Wirtschaft, technischer Entwicklung und dem CO2 -Ausstoß ermöglicht. #postgrowthwritingworkshop
Wie das Wirtschaftswachstum unser Klima veränderte - Die Industrielle Revolution als Klimafeind
What influence do changes in tax policy or state decisions on expenditure have on economic growth? For decades, this question has been controversially debated.
What is the fiscal multiplier and why is it so controversial?
The most successful multialternative theories of decision making assume that people consider individual aspects of a choice and proceed via a process of elimination. Amos Tversky was one of the pioneers of this field, but modern decision theorists – most notably Neil Stewart – have moved things forward. At the current stage the theories are able to explain a number of strictly ‘irrational’ but reasonable quirks of human decision making, including various heuristics and biases. Not only this, but eye movements of participants strongly imply that the decision-making process depicted in the theories is an accurate one.
The Quirks of Human Decisions, Explained
In both economics textbooks and public perceptions central banks are a fact of life. On the wall of my A-level economics classroom there was the Will Rogers quote “there have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking”, summarising how many economists view the institution. There is a widespread belief that there is something different about money which calls for a central authority to manage its operation, a view shared even by staunch free marketeers such as Milton Friedman. This belief is not without justification, since money underpins every transaction in a way that apples do not, but we should always be careful not to take existing institutions for granted and central banking is no exception. In this post I will look at the idea of private or free banking, where banks compete (and cooperate) to issue their own currency.
Whither Central Banks?
In this Ted Talk, Oxford economist Kate Raworth argues that instead of prioritizing the growth of nations, the world should rather prioritize meeting the needs of all people living on the planet within ecological limits.
A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow
Richard Werner touches on a number of topics in this Odd Lots Podcast episode. As one of the pioneers when it comes to money and credit creation, he gives interesting insights into his early research on this topic. He then explains what he calls the “Quantity Theory of Credit” and is an alternative to the "Quantity Theory of Money".
Japanification, Quantitative Easing, money creation and Re-Igniting the U.S. Economy
An overview of the last century economic theories asking what makes a heterodox economist. This lecture focuses on the evolution of the various academic traditions in economics. Lavoie presents his own typology for categorising seminal work within the post-Keynesian tradition while leaving space to acknowledge that categories are not binary, but can be used to help understand the different traditions, and how they have developed over the last decades.
History and fundamentals of Post Keynesian Macroeconomics
This Perspective argues that ergodicity — a foundational concept in equilibrium statistical physics — is wrongly assumed in much of the quantitative economics literature. By evaluating the extent to which dynamical problems can be replaced by probabilistic ones, many economics puzzles become resolvable in a natural and empirically testable fashion.
The ergodicity problem in economics
One method of economic modelling that has become increasingly popular in academia, government and the private sector is Agent Based Models, or ABM. These simulate the actions and interactions of thousands or even millions of people to try to understand the economy – for this reason ABM was once described to me as being “like Sim City without the graphics”. One advantage of ABM is that it is flexible, since you can choose how many agents there are (an agent just means some kind of 'economic decision maker' like a firm, consumer, worker or government); how they behave (do they use complicated or simple rules to make decisions?); as well as the environment they act in, then just run the simulation and see what happens as they interact over time.
Agents, agents everywhere
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Role of Women in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
In the history of the social sciences, few individuals have exerted as much influence as has Jeremy Bentham. His attempt to become “the Newton of morals” has left a marked impression upon the methodology and form of analysis that social sciences like economics and political science have chosen as modus operandi.
Bentham’s Two Sovereign Masters - Examining Bentham’s Influence on the Social Sciences
Dieses Seminar untersucht wie gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Transformationen im Kontext der Klimakrise aussehen können und was diese gegenwärtig behindert.
Transformative Ökonomie
If there’s one method economists have neglected the most, it’s qualitative research. Whereas economists favour mathematical models and statistics, qualitative research seeks to understand the world through intensive investigation of particular circumstances, which usually entails interviewing people directly about their experiences. While this may sound simple to quantitative types the style, purpose, context, and interpretation of an interview can vary widely. Because of this variety, I have written a longer post than usual on this topic rather than doing it a disservice. Having said that, examples of qualitative research in economics are sadly scant enough that it doesn’t warrant multiple posts. In this post I will introduce qualitative research in general with nods to several applications including the study of firm behaviour, race, Austrian economics, and health economics. More than usual I will utilise block quotes, which I feel is in the spirit of the topic.
Qualitative Methods in Economics: "You Can Observe a Lot Just by Watching"
The global financial crisis (GFC) led to increasing distrust in economic research and the economics profession, in the process of which the current state of economics and economic education in particular were heavily criticized. Against this background we conducted a study with undergraduate students of economics in order to capture their view of economic education.
What economics education is missing: The real world
This lecture takes a look at the consequences of COVID 19 from a feminist economics perspective Professor Kabeer analyses a range of different impacts associated with COVID 19 and explores the kinds of policies that such a feminist economics lens would suggest for a more resilient and equitable future Naila …
Gender and COVID-19: a feminist economics lens
This collection of videos offers a short introduction to ecological economics and its main differences with respect to environmental economics.
Short lectures on ecological economics
Jason Smith takes a stab at blind faith in the efficiency of the price mechanism to provide market information. To do so, he calls upon Information Theory and Generative Adversarial Networks to argue the price mechanism is faulty and skewed towards supply.
Hayek Meets Information Theory. And Fails
Als Produktivität bezeichnet man das Verhältnis zwischen der Ausbringungsmenge (Output) und dem dafür benötigten Einsatz an Produktionsfaktoren (Input).
Produktivitätsverhältnis
The course will teach students to analyze the goals, implementation, and outcomes of economic policy.
Advanced Economic Policy
The course will teach students to analyze the goals, implementation, and outcomes of economic policy.
Advanced Economic Policy 2
This module examines current socio-political issues through the lens of pluralism, that is pluralism of theory, pluralism of method and interdisciplinary pluralism
Pluralist Economic Analysis
Teil 2: Adam Smith und der Wohlstand der NationenWoher kommt der Kapitalismus? Ist er eine natürliche Folge der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung ? Oder resulti...
Der Kapitalismus – Adam Smith und der Wohlstand der Nationen (2/6)
Teil 3: David Ricardo und Thomas Malthus, soll das Freiheit sein?Woher kommt der Kapitalismus? Ist er eine natürliche Folge der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklun...
Der Kapitalismus – David Ricardo und Thomas Malthus, soll das Freiheit sein? (3/6)
Teil 4: Und wenn Karl Marx doch Recht gehabt hätte?Woher kommt der Kapitalismus? Ist er eine natürliche Folge der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung ? Oder resul...
Der Kapitalismus – Und wenn Karl Marx doch Recht gehabt hätte? (4/6)
Diese Lehrveranstaltung ist eine Einführung in die Medienökonomik, in deren Zentrum das komplexe Verhältnis von Ökonomie und Massenmedien steht, welches besonders in Zeiten eines rasanten Medienwandels noch einmal von größerer Bedeutung ist.
Medienökonomik I
Ziel dieses Seminars ist, eine Einführung in die wissenschaftstheoretischen und methodischen Grundlagen der Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften zu bieten.
Wissenschaftstheorie und Einführung in die Methoden der Sozioökonomie
On July 2020 ZOE-Institute published a unique platform for transformative policymaking: Sustainable Prosperity. Building on insights from new economic thinking the platform provides knowledge about ideas, arguments and procedures that support effective promotion of political change. It aims to strengthen change makers in public policy institutions, who are working on an ambitious green and just transition. As such, it provides convincing arguments and policy ideas to overcome the reliance of economic policy on GDP growth
Sustainable Prosperity
Teil 5: Keynes versus Hayek, ein Scheingefecht? Woher kommt der Kapitalismus? Ist er eine natürliche Folge der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung?
Der Kapitalismus – Keynes versus Hayek, ein Scheingefecht? (5/6)
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