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972 results

Dani Rodrik reflects in this book on important questions about how economics works and what might be wrong with it. He points out flaws and weakness of the discipline, but also argues that certain criticisms which have brought forward against are without merit. His central point is that there is not just one economic model, but a variety of them and it is important to apply judgment when selecting the most suitable one for a particular situation.
2016
Level: beginner
Economics Rules
This book gives a very clear overview of the history of Macroeconomics and how it has evolved. It reflects on the different perspectives and debates that have defined the field, with valuable insight into the history and theory of economic policy.
2005
Level: advanced
Modern Macroeconomics
This book is about history of monetary economic thought. From the 18th century with Hume and Smith to the early 20th, the author explains the different schools of thought regarding the monetary theories and policies and specially the central banking theory.
2012
Level: advanced
Monetary Theory and Policy from Hume and Smith to Wicksell
This blog post reviews "Democratizing Finance", an edited volume that analyses and provides policy proposals to ensure that the financial system serves the public good. Mquzama undertakes the task of summarising the main takeaways from each essay in the book as well as an exposition of its shortfalls. While he acknowledges the necessity of the book's reimaging capitalism and the financial system in a way that is practical within the current economic and political structures, he also highlights its failure to look beyond the United States of America.
2022
Level: beginner
Book Review: Democratizing Finance
Introduction Economics is by necessity a multi paradigmatic science Several theoretical structures exist side by side and each theory can never be more than a partial theory Rothschild 1999 Likening scientific work to the self coordinating invisible hand of the market Michael Polanyi cautioned strongly against centralized attempts to steer …
2021
Level: beginner
Making Many Maps: Why We Need an Interested Pluralism in Economics and How to Get There
Marxian Political Economy focuses on the exploitation of labour by capital. The economy is not conceived as consisting of neutral transactions for exchange and cooperation, but instead as having developed historically out of asymmetric distributions of power, ideology and social conflicts.
Marxian Political Economy
Due to the IMF’s focus on gender budgeting, this essay will mainly examine its gender budgeting recommendations as an example of its general inclination towards gender issues and its conception of gender equality. What does the IMF’s focus on gender equality really mean from a critical feminist perspective? What are its main objectives? What does it seek to change and to maintain? What concept or idea of women does it follow and what are the underlying theoretical foundations?
2017
Level: beginner
The Gender strategy of the IMF: The way to go towards gender equality or a mere instrumentalisation of feminism?
Deforestation is estimated to be responsible for about 12-29% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This essay will explore ecological economics as an alternative lens through which to approach forest conservation and the acceleration of climate change.
2018
Level: beginner
Ecological Economics: A Solution to Deforestation?
This syllabus provides an overview of the contents of the course "The Philosophy and Methodology of Economics" at the Duke University
2022
Level: beginner
The Philosophy and Methodology of Economics
MERCOSUR (Mercado Común del Sur or Common Southern Market) was the first formalized attempt to integrate South American countries economically and politically.
2018
Level: beginner
How can MERCOSUR move forward?
In this essay the author elaborates on the EU's perspective on the fast growing sector of the platform economy.
2019
Level: beginner
Sharing is Caring? On the EU- Narrative on Platform Economy
In parallel to rising inflation numbers, the concept of profit inflation has clearly risen to prominence in recent years. But what is it exactly? This dossier aims not only to collect the most important publications on profit inflation but also intends to map out the development of the discourse and the different positions within the debate.
2024
Level: advanced
Profit Inflation: Mapping the debate
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?
This syllabus provides an overview of the content of the Philosophy and Economics course at the University of Waterloo.
2019
Level: beginner
Philosophy and Economics
This essay deals with the concepts of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) and Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).
2018
Level: beginner
The importance of a Land Degradation Neutrality approach to achieving Sustainable Land Management
The general idea of a Job Guarantee (JG) is that the government offers employment to everybody ready, willing and able to work for a living wage in the last instance as an Employer of Last Resort. The concept tackles societal needs that are not satisfied by market forces and the systemic characteristic of unemployment in capitalist societies. Being a central part of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), attention for the JG concept rose in recent years.
2020
Level: beginner
The Job Guarantee
In this essay the authors argue for a wider concept of care work that includes community building, civic engagement and environmental activism. On the basis of the case of Cargonomia, a grassroot initiative in Budapest, they show that such a wider concept of care work could allow for different narratives that promote sustainable lifestyles with a milder environmental and social impact on the planet and its communities.
2019
Level: beginner
Reimagining the world of (care)work: the case of Cargonomia
This introductory text explores the political economy of water by defining the subject and examining its key issues.
2025
Level: beginner
The political economy of water
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.
2020
Level: beginner
Qualitative Methods in Economics: "You Can Observe a Lot Just by Watching"
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
As seen with the United Nations significant promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the past few years, the issue of global development is of growing concern to many international organizations. As humanity continues to become more interconnected through globalization, the inequalities and injustices experienced by inhabitants of impacted countries becomes increasingly clear. While this issue can be observed in the papers of different types (e.g., different schools of thought) of economists throughout the world, the work of behavioral and complexity economists offer a unique, collaborative perspective on how to frame decisions for individuals in a way that can positively reverberate throughout society and throughout time.
2018
Level: beginner
Behavioural vs Complexity Economics: Approaches to Development
This essay draws on several analyses on the gender impact of the recession and of austerity policies, in which authors acknowledge a threat to women’s labour market integration and a potential backlash to traditional gender labour structures. We contribute to that literature by asking whether recession and austerity convey a gender effect on educational attainment. Our aim in this essay is to portray the likely effects of austerity measures on gender equality with a focus on women’s participation in tertiary education and to hypothesize the implications of these scenarios for labour market effects, to be tested in future empirical research.
2017
Level: beginner
The impact of Austerity on Gender in Tertiary Education: A Theoretical Analysis
An essay of the writing workshop on contemporary issues in the field of Nigerian economics: Labour and all the dynamics, such as laws, mobility, gender participation, regulation etc., that are associated with it cements the need for this paper which seeks to objectively review, analyse, and if deemed necessary, give plausible recommendations.
Level: beginner
Labour market: Applicable Labour Market Models and Gender Issues
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a school of monetary and macroeconomic thought that focuses on the analysis of the monetary and credit system, and in particular on the question of credit creation by the state.
2020
Level: beginner
Modern Monetary Theory
It is perhaps fitting that the seriousness of the coronavirus threat hit most of the Western world around the Ides of March, the traditional day of reckoning of outstanding debts in Ancient Rome. After all, problems and imbalances have accumulated in the Western capitalist system over four decades, ostensibly since it took the neoliberal road out of the 1970s crisis and kept going along it, heedless of the crises and problems it led to.
2020
Level: beginner
The Unexpected Reckoning: Coronavirus and Capitalism
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
2020
Level: advanced
The Role of Women in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
This article reviews insights of existing literature on global care chains. A specific focus is laid on the impact that the refugee crisis has on global care chains and in turn how the crisis impacts the de-skilling of the women in the migrant workforce.
2017
Level: beginner
Global care chains, refugee crisis, and deskilling of workers
The last 15 years have seen extensive research into ecosystem service valuation (ESV), spurred by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 (Baveye, Baveye & Gowdy, 2016). Ecosystem services are defined as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems” (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, p.V). For example, ecosystems provide the service of sequestering carbon which helps regulate the climate. Valuation means giving ecosystems or their services a monetary price, for example researchers have estimated that the carbon sequestration services of the Mediterranean Sea is between 100 and 1500 million euros per year. The idea of ESV was a response to the overuse of natural resources and degradation of ecosystems, allegedly due to their undervaluation and exclusion from the monetary economy. ESV can be used (1) for policy decision-making, for example allocating funding to a reforestation project (2) for setting payments to people who increase ecosystem services, for example a farmer increasing the organic carbon content of their soil, and (3) for determining fees for people who degrade ecosystem services, for example a company that causes deforestation.
2021
Level: beginner
A Pluralist Perspective on Ecosystem Service Valuation Introduction
‘We cannot afford their peace & We cannot bear their wars’: ​​​​​​​Value, Exploitation, Profitability Crises & ‘Rectification’
2022
Level: beginner
Political Economy based on Marx
This article explores the production function, the prevailing view of capital that underpins it, and the main alternative perspective. By exploring these perspectives, the authors aim to provide students with a foundational understanding of the controversies surrounding the treatment of capital in production, a topic expressly excluded from mainstream textbooks.
2024
Level: beginner
Why We Should Think Twice About Production Functions
This is an introductory level core course in macroeconomics for those expecting to take further courses in economics. It provides a theoretical and applied approach of introductory macroeconomics, with an international perspective and applications to account for the growing importance of the global economy and the rising openness of economies.
2021
Level: advanced
Introduction to Macroeconomics
This article, looks at the complex interaction between an urban economy and the vegetation within that urban area. In summary, numerous studies have found a positive link between increased vegetation and social as well as personal health. It makes a case for increasing urban vegetation as a way to benefit local economies.
2018
Level: beginner
Urban Arbonomics | The Complex Nature of Urban Vegetation

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