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319 results

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
Institutional economics focuses on the role of social institutions in terms of laws or contracts, but also those of social norms and patterns of human behaviour that are connected to the social organisation of production, distribution and consumption in the economy.
Institutionalist Economics
Aim of this intensive workshop is to understand macroeconomic workings of climate change as as the background of sustainable finance; to analyse financial assets with ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria attached to them and their markets and important institutional players; to develop a critical perspective on the current setup of sustainable finance; and to synthesise this knowledge by applying it on in-depth case studies.
2020
Level: beginner
Sustainable Finance
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?
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?
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
Environmental catastrophe looms large over politics: from the young person’s climate march to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, increasing amounts of political space are devoted to the issue. Central to this debate is the question of whether economic growth inevitably leads to environmental issues such as depleted finite resources and increased waste, disruption of natural cycles and ecosystems, and of course climate change. Growth is the focal point of the de-growth and zero-growth movements who charge that despite efficiency gains, increased GDP always results in increased use of energy and emissions. On the other side of the debate, advocates of continued growth (largely mainstream economists) believe that technological progress and policies can ‘decouple’ growth from emissions.
2020
Level: beginner
To Grow or Not to Grow?
This course provides future change makers in public and private sectors with a comprehensive overview on the structures and actors that shape markets.
2019
Level: beginner
The Governance of Markets in Challenging Times: From Classic Authors to New Approaches
Extractivism is a development model based on exploiting and exporting raw materials. It is fundamental to reproducing entire societies, mainly in the Global South, while generating manifold dilemmas. This text situates extractivism within the broader landscape of global economic asymmetries, emphasizing the role of rents—excess revenues generated from resource extraction due to international price differentials—as a central analytical lens.
2025
Level: beginner
The Political Economy of Extractivism
How did the coronavirus almost bring down the Global Financial System? What effects does monetary policy have on inequality? What role do Central Banks have in the social-ecological transformation? How could Central Banks tackle climate change? What is Central Bank Digital Currency?
2021
Level: advanced
Next Generation Central Banking
Maria Nikolaidi on how Minsky’s theory has been modelled over past decades and how one can use these models in order to analyse contemporary issues such as financial fragility and financial instability caused by climate change.
2016
Level: advanced
Minsky's theory about financial fragility and financial instability
"Change the system, not the climate" is a common demand in the climate movement. But what kind of system do we want?
2023
Level: beginner
Outgrow the System
Can pluralism in economics be useful to tackle the fight against climate change? How can diversity in methods and ideas allow for a better understanding of the issue of the climate crisis? What solutions do different schools of thought offer to overcome the most pressing challenge of the 21st Century?
2020
Level: beginner
Clips on Climate: Ecological Economics
Can pluralism in economics be useful to tackle the fight against climate change? How can diversity in methods and ideas allow for a better understanding of the issue of the climate crisis?
2020
Level: beginner
Clips on Climate: Behavioral Economics
This video explains what the term 'Feminist Economics' describes and goes into detail on how feminist economists use methodology differently, why they advocate for diversity in research and how to look into preconditions for the functioning of our economies. It, additionally, highlights the link between feminist economics and the study of climate change.
2020
Level: beginner
What is Feminist Economics & what does it have to do with studying the climate crisis?
This panel was part of the conference "Next Generation Gentral Banking - Climate Change, Inequality, Financial Instability" 03. - 05.02.2021.
2021
Level: advanced
NextGen Central Banking: How the coronavirus almost brought down the global financial system
This panel was part of the conference "Next Generation Gentral Banking - Climate Change, Inequality, Financial Instability" 03. - 05.02.2021.
2021
Level: advanced
NextGen Central Banking: Central Banking Beyond Inflation
The workshop deals with the contribution of Plural Economics to the urgently  needed change of the economic system towards sustainability and global  responsibility.  After completing the module, participants should be able to demarcate and  explain different economic approaches to sustainability. They should be able to  evaluate the respective concepts based on their contribution to the ecological  transformation of the economic system.
2022
Level: beginner
Pluralist Economics for a Sustainable Economic Future
This course provides a simple introduction to problems that social scientists are working on (e.g. racial disparities, inequality and climate change) in a manner that does not require any prior background in Economics or Statistics.
Level: beginner
Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems
As the world's energy system faces a period of unprecedented change, a global struggle over who controls the sector--and for what purposes--is intensifying. The question of "green capitalism" is now unavoidable, for capitalist planners and anti-capitalist struggles alike.
2010
Level: advanced
Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution
Some economic events are so major and unsettling that they “change everything.” Such is the case with the financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007 and is still a drag on the world economy. Yet enough time has now elapsed for economists to consider questions that run deeper than the usual focus on the immediate causes and consequences of the crisis.
2013
Level: advanced
Rethinking the Financial Crisis
The global economic and political order is undergoing rapid and profound transformation. We are witnessing a far-reaching "organic" crisis of the global economic world order, which may have started with the financial crisis of 2007/2008 but now enters a new, much more dynamic phase.
Level: advanced
Towards a New Economics of Collapse and Construction
Capitalism cannot fulfil the promises of the French revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Why? Richard Wollf elaborates on Marx's analysis of the distribution and organisation of surplus in society and his conclusion that there is something inherently wrong in capitalist class structure that still causes economic crisis in our modern times. Change requires changing the organisation of the production. This goes far beyond a discussion of 'more-state' vs. 'less-state'.
2011
Level: beginner
Intro To Marxian Economics
In this radio interview, Andrew Sayer first outlines some features of neoliberalism and policies that are associated with it. Then a difference between wealth creation via investment and wealth extraction by means of lending money to those deprived of it or by acquiring property such as real estate or financial assets on the secondary market as absentee owner is established. In this context reference is made to J.A. Hobson's concept of "improperty." Finally, there are some words on the power dynamics associated with capitalism and its relation to climate change.
2015
Level: beginner
Why We Can’t Afford the Rich
Mark Blyth criticises the political inability to solve the persistent economic crisis in Europe against the background of a deflationary environment. Ideological blockades and impotent institutions are the mutually reinforcing causes of European stagnation. The deeper roots lie in the structural change of the economic system since the 1980s, when neoliberalism emerged as hegemonic ideology. This ideology prepared the ground for austerity and resulting deflationary pressures and a strategy of all seeking to export their way out of trouble. Worryingly this is breeding populist and nationalist resentments in Europe.
2015
Level: beginner
Policies to avert stagnation: The Crisis and the Future(s) of the Euro
In this article, Gareth Dale analyzes and compares the main characteristics and differences of two visions that are currently emerging to tackle Climate Change: the Green New Deal and Degrowth. Which are the consequences from the environmental, economic and political point of view? And what are the underlying doctrines?
2019
Level: expert
Degrowth and the Green New Deal
The current Great Recession, the worst crisis that capitalism has faced since the Great Depression, has failed, at least so far, to generate a change in the teaching and practice of Macroeconomics. This seems bizarre as if nothing has happened and the economists are just going about doing business as usual. In light of this, the current paper attempts to address how Macroeconomics ought to be taught to students at the advanced intermediate level, which gives them an overall perspective on the subject.
Level: beginner
Plurality in Teaching Macroeconomics
Recording of the Workshop “The collateral supply effect on central banking”, 04.02.2021, part of the "Next Generation Central Banking - Climate Change, Inequality, Financial Instability" conference by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung
2021
Level: advanced
NextGen Central Banking: The collateral supply effect on central banking
This essay analyses how the role of central banks changed since the global financial crisis, and how this directional change was accelerated by the outbreak of Covid-19.
2021
Level: advanced
Revolution without revolutionaries: interrogating the return of monetary financing
Is our system capable of energy transition and climate protection? How plural is economic policy in practice and who makes the big decisions? What kind of change do we want?
2021
Level: beginner
Energy and Climate Economics - Where do we come from and where do we have to go?
As the global economic landscape evolves, demographics shift, inequality expands, climate change gets worse and technology continues to advance at breakneck speed, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is struggling to stay relevant.
2021
Level: beginner
Beyond GDP - Wellbeing Economy, Happiness Index and the postgrowth debate
The article discusses whether the turning point in EU's Russia policy with sanctions aimed directly at Putin's war chest of foreign reserves will change the landscape of countries' foreign assets.
2022
Level: beginner
The Monetary Consequences of Vladimir Putin

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