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259 results

What is universal basic income? This video gives a first, short introduction.
2016
Level: beginner
What is Universal Basic Income?
This report by the 'Institute for Global Prosperity' explores the hypothesis that strengthening and extending universal services is an effective way of tackling poverty and improving wellbeing for all.
2019
Level: beginner
Universal Basic Services: Theory and Practice
Our public services are in dire need of investment. But in the middle of a debate over competing spending plans, isn’t it also time to ask what we want our public services to actually do for us? That’s the view of group of economists and campaigners who are pushing for something called ‘Universal Basic Services’ – a radical expansion of high-quality public services for all to areas like transport, childcare and social care.
2019
Level: beginner
Universal Basic Services
Could the Brazilian measures of income support carried out during 2020 be considered one way towards UBI? This questions is broadly addressed in the video.
2020
Level: beginner
Brazil and Basic Income & Covid
In this keynote lecture during the conference „The Spectre of Stagnation? Europe in the World Economy“, Till van Treek presents research on how changes in income distribution lead to macroeconomic instability and crisis, focusing on currents accounts. Treek presents the relative income hypothesis in contrast to other mainstream and Post-Keynesian explanations. The relative income hypothesis proposes that aggregate demand increases and savings decrease with rising personal income inequality due to upward looking status comparison – but effects depend on the quantile where income inequality increases. Treek points to the importance of accounting for both income and functional income distribution and underlines his arguments with data comparing different pattern in Germany and the U.S.
2015
Level: expert
Macroeconomics of inequality & instability - Inequality, imbalances and the crisis
Throughout 2022 it has become increasingly difficult for people around the world to meet their basic needs – even those who live in relative affluence in the Global North. This 30-minute classroom exercise takes this common recent experience as a starting point for an exploration of the different economic mechanisms and organisations that can be used to provide for people’s basic needs.
2022
Level: beginner
Meeting Basic Needs
The outbreak of COVID-19 has substantially accelerated the digitalization of the economy. Yet, this unprecedented growth of digital technology brought novel challenges to the labour market. Rise in income inequalities and precarious working conditions or polarization of jobs. In this essay, we try to assess what tools to use to counter these trends.
2021
Level: beginner
Post-pandemic future of work - How does digitization impact labour?
In this essay the authors take a look at how welfare could be provided in a degrowth society.
2019
Level: beginner
Bidding farewell to growth: How to provide welfare in a degrowth society
Exploring Economics, an open-access e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
2020
Level: advanced
Impact of FDI on economic growth: The role of country income levels and institutional strength
In this lecture, Branko Milanovic gives an overview of the concept of inequality as conceptualized within the classical school of thought.
2020
Level: beginner
Income Inequality in Quesnay, Smith, Ricardo and Marx (Part 1: Quesnay, Smith)
From religious leaders to heads of state, everyone is talking about economic inequality. What form can such inequality take in different countries? What impact does it have on society? And why should it matter to you?
Level: beginner
Challenging Wealth and Income Inequality
What the heck is the yield curve? And why is it considered a powerful predictor of economic crisis? Here you'll get to know.
2015
Level: beginner
Killik Explains: Fixed Income Basics - the yield curve
What is “equitable growth” and how do we measure it? A better understanding of equitable growth—and how to measure it—can improve our understanding, inform decisions and lead to better outcomes for all.
2017
Level: beginner
Why current definitions of family income are misleading, and why this matters for measures of inequality
This paper investigates how the concept of public purpose is used in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). As a common denominator among political scientists, the idea of public purpose is that economic actions should aim at benefiting the majority of the society. However, the concept is to be considered as an ideal of a vague nature, which is highly dependent on societal context and, hence, subject to change over time. MMT stresses that government spending plans should be designed to pursue a certain socio-economic mandate and not to meet any particular financial outcome. The concept of public purpose is heavily used in this theoretical body of thought and often referred to in the context of policy proposals as the ideas of universal job guarantee and banking reform proposals show. MMT scholars use the concept as a pragmatic benchmark against which policies can be assessed. With regards to the definition of public propose, MMT scholars agree that it is dependent on the social-cultural context. Nevertheless, MMT scholars view universal access to material means of survival as universally applicable and in that sense as the lowest possible common denominator.
2020
Level: advanced
Modern Monetary Theory and the public purpose
This book highlights the political economy of wealth and income inequality in Latin America. The author segments his analysis to separately evaluate the economic, social, and political costs of inequality building on country case studies. It draws well-contextualized lessons from the Latin American experience that is important to consider for other regional contexts, especially for social policies of nations within the 'Middle Income Trap'.
2020
Level: beginner
The Costs of Inequality in Latin America
This multimedia dossier is part of the series „Understanding Finance“ by Finance Watch. The dossier focuses on universal banks – banks that pursue commercial and investment banking and points out several problems of those megabanks, especially in the context of the financial crisis (too big to fail).
2014
Level: beginner
Splitting megabanks?
With the collapse of the planned economies of Eastern Europe, the market is extending its reach and at the same time claiming its universal applicability. But this is occurring while paradoxically it is becoming more difficult to define "the market". The authors, all outstanding scholars in the booming field of socio-economics, explore how concrete markets are built up and stabilized.
1998
Level: advanced
Laws of the Markets
In this book, the authors, Cinzia Aruzza, Tithi Bhattcahrya, and Nancy Fraser, move away from the myopic view of feminism for a select few to focus on a universal idea of feminism.
2019
Level: beginner
Feminism for the 99 Percent
The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the deep structural rifts in modern capitalist economies. It has exposed and exacerbated the long-lasting systemic inequalities in income, wealth, healthcare, housing, and other aspects of economic success across a variety of dimensions including class, gender, race, regions, and nations. This workshop explores the causes of economic inequality in contemporary capitalist economies and its consequences for the economy and society in the post-pandemic reality, as well as what steps can be taken to alleviate economic inequality in the future. Drawing from a variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary insights, the workshop encourages you to reflect on your personal experiences of inequality and aims to challenge the way in which the issue is typically approached in economics.
2022
Level: beginner
Inequality in the Post-pandemic Era
Post-Keynesians focus on the analysis of capitalist economies, perceived as highly productive, but unstable and conflictive systems. Economic activity is determined by effective demand, which is typically insufficient to generate full employment and full utilisation of capacity.
Post-Keynesian Economics
The goal of the class is to acquire familiarity with recently-published research in alternative macroeconomics with a focus on the distribution of income and wealth, cyclical growth models, and technical change.
2021
Level: beginner
Theory Seminar Macro-Distribution
Why are income inequalities so large and why do they continue to increase in so many countries? What role can minimum wages play in reducing social and economic inequalities? What is a good system of wage bargaining? What constitutes a fair wage?
Level: beginner
Fair Wage Strategies in a Global Economy
The goal of this course is to explore these differences in economic outcomes observed among women and men, measured by such things as earnings, income, hours of work, poverty, and the allocation of resources within the household. It will evaluate women’s perspectives and experiences in the United States and around the world, emphasizing feminist economics.
Level: beginner
Economics of Gender
Mainstream inflation theories in economics do little to explain the recent acceleration in price increases. The associated economic policy recommendations further increase the misery of low-income groups.
2023
Level: beginner
The inflation conundrum
This book challenges the mainstream paradigm, based on the inter-temporal optimisation of welfare by individual agents. It introduces a methodology for studying how institutions create flows of income, expenditure and production together with stocks of assets and liabilities, thereby determining how whole economies evolve through time.
2012
Level: advanced
Monetary Economics
As the Covid-19 fueled economic downturn begins to intensify this winter, an extended study of the Italian cooperative sector’s historical resilience in times of crisis can serve as a learning experience for other countries seeking to create policies that foster more stable economies, with job security, care for marginalized communities and adequate counter-cyclical policies. Particularly, the Italian cooperative sector’s contributions to three aspects should be noted in closing. Firstly, the innovative phenomenon of cooperative enterprises has contributed to social inclusion of immigrant communities, the activation of youth, the unemployed and people with disabilities, a true compensation for both a market and state failure. Secondly, they have contributed to a reduction in income and wealth inequalities at a time when the issue of inequality is of global significance. Thirdly, the Italian cooperative movement has helped local communities revitalize in the face of demographic shifts and rendered them more resilient to the ravages of globalization. Each of these in their own right is a remarkable achievement.
2020
Level: beginner
How to strengthen the social economy
The economist Thomas Piketty presents a central argument of his book Capital in the Twenty-First century: if the rate of return to capital generally exceeds an economy's growth rate, this leads to a higher concentration of wealth in the long run. He furthermore shows with historical data how wealth and income inequality increased within the past decades.
2014
Level: advanced
New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century
Eckhard Hein criticises the mainstream's view of secular stagnation as the result of a negative real equilibrium interest rate. Arguing in a Keynesian spirit with particular reference to Steindl, secular stagnation is considered to be a result of shift in the functional income distribution, and oligopolistic organisation of industries, leading to excess capacity and reluctance to invest. This acts as a drag on effective demand and results in secular stagnation. Distributional policies and public investment can, however, overcome stagnation its tendencies.
2015
Level: advanced
Secular Stagnation or stagnation policy? Steindl after Summers
In her short contribution, the author questions how the value of goods and services is shaped in current neoclassical teaching. She criticizes the principle of pricing based on marginal income. She discusses what can be called wealth generating, what kind of wealth we need and points out a lack of a value theory.
2018
Level: advanced
Takers and Makers: Who are the Real Value Creators?
Mainstream economics almost completely ignores the role power plays in determining economic outcomes, which means it can only provide partial explanations of the distribution of wealth and income, and of the problems associated with inequality and poverty.
2016
Level: advanced
Power and Neoclassical Economics
Covering Institutionalist, Post-Keynesian, Marxist, and Feminist perspectives, Heterodox Economics of Military Spending provides a comprehensive analysis of the effect of military expenditures on the economy.The impact of military spending on economic growth has always been a crucial issue for policymakers and academics. There exists an extensive body of literature on how military spending affects macroeconomic variables, including but not limited to economic growth, profit rates, income inequality, gender inequality, and employment.
2025
Level: advanced
Heterodox Economics of Military Spending
Although sometimes used as synonyms, economic growth and economic development refer to different processes. While economic growth refers to an increase in real national income and output (i.e., GDP growth rate), economic development refers to an improvement in the quality of life and living standards (i.e., life expectancy).
2018
Level: beginner
Could gender equality help the economy?

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