Choice blindness

Planet Money and The Indicator aim to explain current economic events in an easy, fun and accessible manner.

In this lecture Ben Fine aims at stimulating interest for and explaining the relevance of Marxist Political Economy. Ben Fine dedicates the first half of his comprehensible lecture to the question on how mainstream economics became the way it is by explaining its key concepts and how those evolved during the past 150 years. While critically reflecting those concept he also emphasizes that mainstream economics does not consider historical processes. This is the point of departure on his presentation of the core terms and crucial categories of Marxist Political Economy: e.g. the production process and class relations (Part 1). Part 2 examines the consequences of the capitalist mode of production and its propensity to crises. Ben Fine illustrates this Marxist analysis with the example of the current crisis and explains current conditions for the accumulation of capital.

Mitch Jeserich interviews Professor Richard D. Wolff, a professor of economics at the New School University, who presents an explanatory theory of how inflation occurs in an economy. This analysis is presented through the lens of Marxian political economy (explicitly) and institutional economics (implicitly through corporate structure). Check out this new content in our discover section! posted 08.06.2022

The short clip gives a basic introduction to the concept of the market equilibrium and its graphical representation: taking the example of a market for apples, it presents supply and demand curves as well as scenarios how prices and quantities adapt, leading to an equilibrium.