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102 results

In this article, Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei and Camden Goetz discuss the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Africa’s natural resources.
2021
Level: beginner
A History of Resource Plunder
Maria Kader provides an overview of the ECB's crisis policies in recent years. She outlines the measures taken, their effects, and their shortcomings.
2024
Level: beginner
The European Central Bank in a State of Crisis: Policies, Effects and Downsides
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
The world is still feeling reverberations from the financial crisis of 2008 foreseen by neither politicians nor economists The history of capitalism has been punctuated by major crises exposing the fragility of our entire economic system How has capitalism despite these ruptures managed to each time resurface more resilient and …
Level: beginner
The Global Financial Crisis
Photo by Kaitlyn Ashley on Unsplash The world is still feeling reverberations from the financial crisis of 2008 foreseen by neither politicians nor economists The history of capitalism has been punctuated by major crises exposing the fragility of our entire economic system How has capitalism despite these ruptures managed to …
2012
Level: beginner
The Future of Capitalism
Colonial Global Economy is a module of the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project and examines the ongoing significance of colonial relations in the structure of the global economy It consists of 7 introductory lectures which range between 17 and 39 minutes of length In addition further readings resources and questions for …
2020
Level: beginner
Colonial Global Economy
An article in the New York Times from early 2025 suggests that the political influence of mainstream economics is declining. While economists have been highly influential in supporting and shaping free-market policies in recent decades, their expertise has become less relevant during intensified economic crises that necessitate state interventions.
2025
Level: beginner
The Strange Non-Death of Mainstream Economics
Why has heterodox economics not been more successful in making inroads into the mainstream? And why has “pluralist economics,” the most prominent alternative paradigm to mainstream economics, not been more successful in changing the curriculum?
Level: advanced
The Project of Pluralism
The Wealth of Ideas traces the history of economic thought, from its prehistory (the Bible, Classical antiquity) to the present day.
2005
Level: beginner
The Wealth of Ideas

Following an unprecedented economic boom fed by foreign investment, the Russian Revolution triggered the worst sovereign default in history. Bankers and Bolsheviks tells the dramatic story of this boom and bust, chronicling the forgotten experiences of leading financiers of the age.

2018
Level: advanced
Bankers and Bolsheviks
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
Finance at the Threshold offers a unique perspective from an English economic and monetary historian. In it the author asks: Why did the banks stop lending to one another, and why now? Was it merely a matter of over-loose credit due to the relaxation of traditional prudence, or did global finance find itself at its limits?
2016
Level: advanced
Finance at the Threshold
This book analyzes the transition of chocolate from an exotic curiosity to an Atlantic commodity. It shows how local, inter-regional, and Atlantic markets interacted with one another and with imperial political economies. It explains how these interactions, intertwined with the resilience of local artisanal production, promoted the partial democratization of chocolate consumption as well as economic growth.
2020
Level: advanced
Empire, Political Economy, and the Diffusion of Chocolate in the Atlantic World
The book is offered, in the first instance, to students who are beginners in economics, but some parts of it may be of wider interest. The three topics, Economic Doctrines, Analysis and Modern Problems, might be the subject of concurrent courses or they may be studied consecutively.
1973
Level: beginner
An Introduction to Modern Economics
"Despite the rediscovery of the inequality topic by economists as well as other social scientists in recent times, relatively little is known about how economic inequality is mediated to the wider public of ordinary citizens and workers. That is precisely where this book steps in: It draws on a cross-national empirical study to examine how mainstream news media discuss, respond to, and engage with such important and politically sensitive issues and trends.
2020
Level: advanced
Economic Inequality and News Media
In this new book Smith returns to Solow s classic productivity paradox which essentially states that we can see automation everywhere like the spheres of leisure sociality and politics but not in the productivity statistics He examines why labor saving automation in the service age in the Global North has …
2020
Level: advanced
Smart Machines and Service Work
From the Dissolution of the Soviet Union to the Conflict in Ukraine The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the creation of new states and territorial conflicts of different levels of intensity Scrutinising the post Soviet period this volume offers explanations for both the frequency and the intensity of …
2021
Level: advanced
Crises in the Post-Soviet Space
Most mainstream neoclassical economists completely failed to anticipate the crisis which broke in 2007 and 2008. There is however a long tradition of economic analysis which emphasises how growth in a capitalist economy leads to an accumulation of tensions and results in periodic crises. This paper first reviews the work of Karl Marx who was one of the first writers to incorporate an analysis of periodic crisis in his analysis of capitalist accumulation. The paper then considers the approach of various subsequent Marxian writers, most of whom locate periodic cyclical crises within the framework of longer-term phases of capitalist development, the most recent of which is generally seen as having begun in the 1980s. The paper also looks at the analyses of Thorstein Veblen and Wesley Claire Mitchell, two US institutionalist economists who stressed the role of finance and its contribution to generating periodic crises, and the Italian Circuitist writers who stress the problematic challenge of ensuring that bank advances to productive enterprises can successfully be repaid.
2014
Level: advanced
Finance and Crisis: Marxian, Institutionalist and Circuitist approaches
This text provides an easy to understand introduction to complexity economics for non-specialist audiences such as bachelor's students.
2023
Level: beginner
Think Complexity Economics is too Complicated? Then this is for you.
The world is coping with a global disaster, as the new Coronavirus takes a toll on many lost lives and a severe impact on economic activity. To provide a long-run perspective, this column documents the international response to a variety of disasters since 1790. Based on a new comprehensive database on loans extended by governments and central banks, official (sovereign-to-sovereign) international lending is much larger than generally known. Official lending spikes in times of global turmoil, such as wars, financial crises or natural disasters. Indeed, in these periods, official capital flows have repeatedly surpassed total private capital flows in the past two centuries. Wars, in particular, were accompanied by large surges in the volume of official cross-border lending.
2020
Level: advanced
Coping with disasters: Lessons from two centuries of international response
Behavioural economics deals with observing behaviour and economic decision making behaviour.
Behavioral Economics
For a long time, price controls were considered taboo, as neoliberal economic theory assumes that prices are supposedly formed freely by supply and demand. But especially in times of crisis, the state must intervene and cap prices to protect wage earners from excessive burdens. However, the how matters.
2025
Level: beginner
Price Controls Against Inflation
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
Professor Jennifer Clapp explains the dynamics of financialization of land and agricultural commodities in Subsaharan Africa. She points to the historical roots of accelerated land speculation and their connection to financial institutions, both generating and reinforcing the process of financialization of African land. Besides talking about roots and dynamics of speculation with land on financial markets, she puts the perspective of scholarly investigation onto the investor's side in discussing guidelines of responsible investment and regulation in the front instead of focussing on the receiving countries.
2013
Level: beginner
Land and Financialization: Role of International Financial Actors in Land Deals in Africa
This is an overview of (possibly transformative) proposals to address the economic consequences of the corona crisis
2020
Level: beginner
Overview of proposals to combat the economic consequences of the Corona crisis
Markets are the focus in modern economics: when they work, when they don’t and what we can or can’t do about it. There are many ways to study markets and how we do so will inevitably affect our conclusions about them, including policy recommendations which can influence governments and other major organisations. Pluralism can be a vital corrective to enacting real policies based on only one perspective and a plethora of approaches provide alternatives to the canonical view. Although they have differing implications, these approaches share the idea that we should take a historical approach, analysing markets on a case-by-case basis; and they share a faith in the power of both individuals and collectives to overcome the problems encountered when organising economic activity.
2020
Level: beginner
Markets, How Do They Work?
A historical glimpse of how economists of the 19th century debated the usefulness of mathematics to economics
2020
Level: beginner
Mathematical Economics in the 19th Century
Since the 1980s, the financial sector and its role have increased significantly. This development is often referred to as financialization. Authors working in the heterodox tradition have raised the question whether the changing role of finance manifests a new era in the history of capitalism. The present article first provides some general discussion on the term financialization and presents some stylized facts which highlight the rise of finance. Then, it proceeds by briefly reviewing the main arguments in the Marxian framework that proposedly lead to crisis. Next, two schools of thought in the Marxian tradition are reviewed which consider financialization as the latest stage of capitalism. They highlight the contradictions imposed by financialization that disrupt the growth process and also stress the fragilities imposed by the new growth regime. The two approaches introduced here are the Social Structure of Accumulation Theory and Monthly Review School. The subsequent part proceeds with the Post-Keynesian theory, first introducing potential destabilizing factors before discussing financialization and the finance-led growth regime. The last section provides a comparative summary. While the basic narrative in all approaches considered here is quite similar, major differences stem from the relationship between neoliberalism and financialization and, moreover, from the question of whether financialization can be considered cause or effect.
2016
Level: advanced
Financialization and the crises of capitalism
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
‘We cannot afford their peace & We cannot bear their wars’: ​​​​​​​Value, Exploitation, Profitability Crises & ‘Rectification’
2022
Level: beginner
Political Economy based on Marx
The usual background and distinctions between complexity and neoclassical economics are presented Neoclassical economics deals with perfectly rational representative agents this creates states of equilibrium On the other hand complexity economics relaxes these assumptions to deal with responsive agents in an uncertain dynamic environment this creates states of disequilibrium More …
2021
Level: beginner
Foundations of complexity economics
In the course Sociology and Socialism, students engage with classical theories of socialism as well as their applications in a variety of historical and international contexts. Staunchly interdisciplinary, the course utilizes expertise in philosophy, history, economics, sociology, anthropology and political theory.
2020
Level: beginner
Socialism and Sociology

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