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Orthodox economics operates within a hypothesized world of perfect competition in which perfect consumers and firms act to bring about supposedly optimal outcomes. The discrepancies between this model and the reality it claims to address are then attributed to particular imperfections in reality itself.
Capitalism
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.
Book Review: Democratizing Finance
Is capitalism the context where gender inequalities are reproduced, or is capitalism something more than a context? What are the differences among women and how can we place them theoretically and politically. Reproductive work, is it a women’s work? These questions are disscused in a three-session workshop.
Feminist Economics
Prof. Robert Guttmann looks at the current transformation of the international world order through the lenses of global money and finance.
Multipolar Capitalism
This paper surveys the development of the concept of socialism from the French Revolution to the socialist calculation debate. Karl Marx’s politics of revolutionary socialism led by an empowered proletariat nurtured by capital accumulation envisions socialism as a “top-down” system resting on political institutions, despite Marx’s keen appreciation of the long-period analysis of the organization of social production in the classical political economists. Collectivist thinking in the work of Enrico Barone and Wilfredo Pareto paved the way for the discussion of socialism purely in terms of the allocation of resources. The Soviet experiment abandoned the mixed economy model of the New Economic Policy for a political-bureaucratic administration of production only loosely connected to theoretical concepts of socialism. The socialist calculation debate reductively recast the problem of socialism as a problem of allocation of resources, leading to general equilibrium theory. Friedrich Hayek responded to the socialist calculation debate by shifting the ground of discussion from class relations to information revelation
Socialist alternatives to capitalism I: Marx to Hayek
Exploring Economics, an open-access e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
Socialist alternatives to capitalism II: Vienna to Santa Fe
In this book, Blakely tells us a story of the class nature of capitalism, in which she centers the role of the financial sector and its rapid growth.
Stolen
'This Cambridge professor delights in paradox. And myth-busting . . . he does this with charm and a desire to see how things work in the real world' Guardian, 'In Praise of Ha-Joon Chang' In this revelatory book, Ha-Joon Chang destroys the biggest myths of our times and shows us the truth about how the world really works, including- there's no such thing as a free market.
23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism
The workshop introduces into the field of critical political economy and tries to identify the role of finacial markets in capitalism, the reason for financial crises and the relevance of Marx in regard to these topics.
Marxian Political Economy
Galbraith gives an overview of economic history from the 18th century until the end of the 19th century covering issues such as the industrial revolution the enclosure of the Scottish highlands the Irish famine and the colonization of North America Additionally the ideas of economists such as Smith Ricardo Malthus …
The Age of Uncertainty Episode 1 - The Prophets and Promise of Classical Capitalism
Does Karl Polanyi's work “The Great Transformation” serve to analyse the current multiple crisis and social movements? Nancy Fraser revises Polanyi's concept of a double movement to capture social forces in the aftermath of the economic crisis of the 1930s – on the one side marketization and on the other hand social protection. Fraser proposes to talk about a triple movement and to account for emancipatory struggles. In the lecture, she discusses interactions as well as conflicts between those three forces, in particular conflicting aims of social protection. The lecture presents the content of her paper “A TRIPLE MOVEMENT? Parsing the Politics of Crisis after Polanyi“ in the New Left Review (2013).
Crisis of Capitalism, Crisis of Governance: Re-reading Karl Polanyi in the 21st Century
Galbraith first explores the social darwinism of Herbert Spencer and others that served as apology for the highly unequal distribution of wealth in the US at the end of the 19th century and naturalized differences in wealth by appealing to the concept of natural selection of the fittest. Then some instances of the unscrupulous business practices (i.e. robberies) of the American railroad tycoons and other business magnates are recounted. Lastly, Galbraith lines out some of the arguments of Thorstein Veblen, who delegitimized and ridiculed the business and leisure activities of the rich by putting them in the same category as predatory and ritualized practices of primitive or ancient societies.
The Age of Uncertainty Episode 2 - The Manners and Morals of High Capitalism
Ha Joon Chang exposes the main ideas of his book Bad Samaritans, namely that historically states have developed and industrialized by making policy interventions related to industry protection, tariffs and subsidies and not by opening their markets to free trade. Chang elaborates on the examples of Japan, the US, Singapore and Germany amongst others to show that an interventionist path to development has been the regularity and not an anomaly. In the end of the lecture, he argues that they idea of a level playing field should be replaced by a trade order that accounts for differences in power and economic capacities of different countries. The last 20 minutes are questions and answers.
Ha-Joon Chang - Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
Anwar Shaikh explores alternative economic explanations, emphasizing 'real competition' theory and the role of imperfections in economic patterns.
Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crisis
Mainstream economic narratives notably the concept of comparative advantage trade theory which assumes the equal balance of power between parties are deployed to support the merits of Global Value Chains that the global integration via trade creates mutual gains for both developed and developing countries This narrative is advanced in …
World Development under Monopoly Capitalism
In this short video, John Holmwood problematizes Marxian Economics from a post-colonial perspective.
Marx: Colonialism, Class and Capitalism
Capitalism + Patriarchy = Women's Hidden Work
This is an introductory course into economics that navigates the intellectual history of political economy in a self-contained and non-technical manner. The course centres on the classical concept of political economy by emphasizing the moral and ethical problems that markets solve or may not solve.
Capitalism & Political Economy
Anwar Shaikh seeks in his lectures for alternative explanations for empirically observed macro and microeconomic patterns of economic fluctuations, price volatility, and economic development.
Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crisis
The 2022 FIFA World Cup (including the construction work required for it) provides a clear example of economic activity that has taken place despite the financial costs to the Qatari state being an order of magnitude larger than the financial benefits it will receive. Whilst this is a fairly extreme case in terms of how many different costs and benefits are involved and how unequally they have been spread, many economic decisions are more complicated than mere financial calculations and it is therefore vital for students to be able to think about multiple dimensions involved in economic decisions.
The Economics of a World Cup in Qatar
The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) is rapidly spreading around the world. The real economy is simultaneously hit by a supply shock and a demand shock by the spread of coronavirus. Such a twin shock is a rare phenomenon in recent economic history.
How to Manage the Economic Fallout of the Coronavirus
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.
Towards a New Economics of Collapse and Construction
We live in a world that is increasingly difficult to understand. It is not just changing: it is metamorphosing. Change implies that some things change but other things remain the same capitalism changes, but some aspects of capitalism remain as they always were. Metamorphosis implies a much more radical transformation in which the old certainties of modern society are falling away and something quite new is emerging.
The Metamorphosis of the World
"Leveraged" provides an authoritative guide to the new economics of our crisis-filled century with a focus on financial crises and financial economics.
Leveraged
Once in a while the world astonishes itself. Anxious incredulity replaces intellectual torpor and a puzzled public strains its antennae in every possible direction, desperately seeking explanations for the causes and nature of what just hit it. 2008 was such a moment. Not only did the financial system collapse, and send the real economy into a tailspin, but it also revealed the great gulf separating economics from a very real capitalism.
Modern Political Economics
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 article addresses the current debate on democratic economic planning and the question of how and by which instruments a post-capitalist planning system, embedded in a broader agenda of macroeconomic transformation, can be developed.
On Democratic Economic Planning and Macroeconomic Transformation
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.
Why We Can’t Afford the Rich
This paper attempts to clarify how the European economic crisis from 2007 onwards can be understood from the perspective of a Marxian monetary theory of value that emphasizes intrinsic, structural flaws regarding capitalist reproduction. Chapter two provides an empirical description of the European economic crisis, which to some extent already reflects the structural theoretical framework presented in chapter three. Regarding the theoretical framework Michael Heinrich's interpretation of 'the' Marxian monetary theory of value will be presented. Heinrich identifies connections between production and realization, between profit and interest rate as well as between industrial and fictitious capital, which represent contradictory tendencies for which capitalism does not have simple balancing processes. In the context of a discussion of 'structural logical aspects' of Marx's Critique of the Political Economy, explanatory deficits of Heinrich's approach are analyzed. In the following, it is argued that Fred Moseley's view of these 'structural logical aspects' allows empirical 'applications' of Marxian monetary theories of value. It is concluded that a Marxian monetary theory of value, with the characteristics of expansive capital accumulation and its limitations, facilitates a structural analysis of the European economic crisis from 2007 onwards. In this line of argument, expansive production patterns are expressed, among other things, in global restructuring processes, while consumption limitations are mitigated by expansive financial markets and shifts in ex-port destinations.
The European economic crisis from 2007 onwards in the context of a global crisis of over-production of capital - a Marxian monetary theory of value interpretation
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
Mariana Mazzucato explains how we lost sight of what value means and why we need to rethink our current financial systems so capitalism can be steered toward a bold, innovative and sustainable future that works for all of us.
What is economic value, and who creates it?
Islamic finance's phenomenal growth owes to the Shariah compliant nature of its financial instruments. Shariah forbids the charging of interest (Riba) and instead promulgates risk-sharing and trade-based modes of financing. The Islamic financial industry has been subject to both critique and admiration. Critics argue that Islamic instruments (bearing debt-based structures) differ from their conventional counterparts only in legal lexicon and not in economic impact.
Rethinking Islamic Finance
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