RETHINK
ECONOMICS
RETHINK
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Pluralism includes mainstream economics. Our campaign for pluralism, including this series, have generally focused on ideas outside the mainstream on the basis that it gets plenty of attention already so we want to spend our time exposing people to alternatives. Nevertheless, mainstream ideas deserve some attention. On top of this, a curious feature of modern economics education is that some of the best ideas from mainstream economics are not even taught to undergraduates! During this series I will explore such ideas, starting today with the market construction technique known as ‘matching’.
2020
Level: beginner
It's a match!
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
2020
Level: beginner
Yes, Money is Endogenous. Who Cares?
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
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
After completing the workshop in Post Keynesian Economics participants should be able to describe the main differences and similarities between PKE and other schools of thought.
2021
Level: beginner
Post Keynesian Economics
One of the pluralist theories which has gained prominence following the 2008 financial crisis is Hyman Minsky and his Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH). Minsky was unique in viewing balance sheets and financial flows as the primary components of capitalist economies, and his focus on the financial system meant he was well-equipped for foresee a crisis much like 2008. Although he died long before 2008 his framework anticipated many of the processes which led to the crash, particularly increased risk-taking and financial innovation which would outstrip the abilities of regulators and central banks to manage the system.
2020
Level: beginner
Minsky’s Moments
After completing the module, participants should be able to understand the economic consequences of gender inequality. They should be able to explain the contradictions between capital and care, analyze the labor market with a gender perspective and develop the ability to describe phenomena such as public policies taking into account "gender" as a category of analysis.
2021
Level: beginner
Feminist 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
Complexity economics focuses on interactions and interdependencies between individuals and structures in economic systems. Those are systems of organised complexity. High importance is given to the analysis of networks.
Complexity Economics
How long the COVID-19 crisis will last, and what its immediate economic costs will be, is anyone's guess. But even if the pandemic's economic impact is contained, it may have already set the stage for a debt meltdown long in the making, starting in many of the Asian emerging and developing economies on the front lines of the outbreak.
2020
Level: beginner
The COVID-19 Debt Deluge
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?
In this essay the author reviews empirical studies in economics that analyze factors behind the rise of nationalist and populist parties in Western countries. He stresses that economic factors (e.g., trade shocks and economic crisis) play a crucial role in the rise of populist parties; however, the discussion of mechanisms driving this trend remains unsatisfying
2019
Level: advanced
The Economics of Populism in the Present
This book arose from our conviction that the NNS-DSGE approach to the analysis of aggregate market outcomes is fundamentally flawed. The practice of overcoming the SMD result by recurring to a fictitious RA leads to insurmountable methodological problems and lies at the root of DSGE models’ failure to satisfactorily explain real world features.
2011
Level: advanced
Macroeconomics from the Bottom-up
Participants should be able to distinguish the strictly non-cooperative (methodological individualist) foundations of traditional neoclassical economics as being couched in self-interested individuals, as well as having basic knowledge of an alternative set of theories based on the primacy cooperation and social norms and extending the breadth of economic analysis beyond exchange.
2021
Level: beginner
Cooperative Economics
After completing the module, participants should be able to have general overview on the theory of commons. They can differentiate between neoclassical, new institutional and social/critical commons theory and can use these theories to assess real life common-pool resource management and commoning pratices.
2021
Level: beginner
Future of Commons
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
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
After completing the module, participants should have knowledge and understanding about the theory of Critical Political Economy and its basic methods. They should be able to apply central concepts to analyse critical questions regarding the embeddedness of economic relations within broader social, political and ecological relations.
2021
Level: beginner
Marxist Political Economy
This course introduces students to political economy and the history of economic thought. We will cover the core ideas in various schools of economic thought, positioning them in the historical and institutional context in which they were developed. In particular, we will cover some economic ideas from the ancient world and the middle ages; the enlightenment; the emergence of and main ideas in classical political economy (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and others); Marx, Mill, and Keynes; European versus American economic thought through history; the rise of mathematical economics; economic theories around state-managed economies versus socialism; Austrian economics; behavioral economics; and the future of economics.
2020
Level: beginner
Political Economy and the History of Economic Thought
The article pursues the two related questions of how economists pretend to know and why they want to know at all. It is argued that both the economic form of knowledge and the motivation of knowing have undergone a fundamental change during the course of the 20th century. The knowledge of important contemporary economic textbooks has little in common with an objective, decidedly scientifically motivated knowledge. Rather, their contents and forms follow a productive end, aiming at the subjectivity of their readers.
2019
Level: beginner
An essay on the putative knowledge of textbook economics
This syllabus provides an overview of the contents of the course "Understanding Economic Models" at the University of Helsinki.
2018
Level: beginner
Understanding Economic Models
The chapter by the Centre for Economy Studies introduces interdisciplinary economic subdisciplines and their importance for economics education.
2021
Level: beginner
Interdisciplinary Economics
Usually, Critical Theory and Economics are, for better or worse, no longer seen to be in a continuum. This article by Lukas Meisner serves as an introduction to Critical Theory for all (heterodox) economists, who want to understand and explain what they can, otherwise, just state and describe.
2024
Level: beginner
Critical Theory for Heterodox Economists: Questioning the Premises of Supply and Demand
What is money and how is it used? After answering these questions, Dirk Bezemer analyses how finance can be dysfunctional for the real economy.
2016
Level: beginner
When is Finance Bloated and Dysfunctional?
The premise of this workshop is that we, as knowledge producers - especially within westernized universities (Grosfoguel, 2013), are significantly implicated in neoliberal imaginaries that are often in service of hierarchical, binary, competitive and linear narratives of growth as civilizational progress.
2021
Level: beginner
Decolonizing Economics
Currency hierarchy and policy space: A research agenda for development economics Barbara Fritz
2017
Level: advanced
Currency hierarchy and policy space
Completing the Economics of Discrimination module, the students should have acquired knowledge and understanding of the existing similarities and differences of the definition and analysis of discrimination across economic theory and cultural theory.
2021
Level: beginner
Economics of discrimination
Economists like to base their theories on individual decision making. Individuals, the idea goes, have their own interests and preferences, and if we don’t include these in our theory we can’t be sure how people will react to changes in their economic circumstances and policy. While there may be social influences, in an important sense the buck stops with individuals. Understanding how individuals process information to come to decisions about their health, wealth and happiness is crucial. You can count me as someone who thinks that on the whole, this is quite a sensible view.
2020
Level: beginner
Decision by Sampling, or ‘Psychologists Reclaim Their Turf’
After completing the module, participants should be able to analyse the concepts of degrowth, ecological unequal exchange, Green New Deal, and embeddedness by applying theories situated within the fields of academic research of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology.
2021
Level: beginner
Political ecology, Degrowth and the Green New Deal
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 goal of the course is to deepen students’ understanding of the Latin American development experience by viewing it through a gender lens.
2014
Level: advanced
Gender in Latin American Development
Mr Minsky long argued markets were crisis prone His moment has arrived The Wall Street Journal In his seminal work Minsky presents his groundbreaking financial theory of investment one that is startlingly relevant today He explains why the American economy has experienced periods of debilitating inflation rising unemployment and marked …
2008
Level: advanced
Stabilizing an Unstable Economy

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This project is brought to you by the Network for Pluralist Economics (Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik e.V.).  It is committed to diversity and independence and is dependent on donations from people like you. Regular or one-off donations would be greatly appreciated.

 

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