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343 results

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
This chapter by the Centre of Economy Studies provides a map through the complex jungle of economic theories. It provides key insights and ideas for thirteen core topics in economics, organised by selecting the most relevant theoretical approaches per topic and contrasting them with each other.
2021
Level: beginner
Pragmatic Pluralism
This is a hands on four chapter course to learn how to better understand and act when faced with complex situations By the end of the course students will be able to take a story from the news describe what makes the situation complex and identify opportunities for effective action …
Level: beginner
Thinking Complexity
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’
How should we discuss welfare when understanding the role of growth and the viability of Growth-led development? One option is to look at subjective happiness. This provides an anti-materialistic view which may superficially appear more compatible with significant reductions in consumption in order to remain within safe ecological limits.
2021
Level: beginner
Degrowth, Happiness and and wellbeing
Feminist economics critically analyzes both economic theory and economic life through the lens of gender, and advocates various forms of feminist economic transformation. In this course, we will explore this exciting and self-consciously political and transformative field.
2015
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
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.
2025
Level: advanced
On Democratic Economic Planning and Macroeconomic Transformation
This article by Rüdiger Bachmann et.al. discusses the economic effects of a potential cut-off of the German economy from Russian energy imports.
2022
Level: advanced
What if? The Economic Effects for Germany of a Stop of Energy Imports from Russia
Western sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine quickly led the Ruble to lose more than 45 percent of its value. But these days, the Russian currency is back to its pre-war value. Cameron and Adam explain the turnaround and discuss what it means for the war.
2022
Level: beginner
How the Russian Ruble Bounced Back
The lecturer focuses on his own paper The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and Anonymous Decentralized Trust on the Blockchain analysing the innovation of cryptocurrencies particularly bitcoin and its economic credibility The innovator of cryptocurrency Satoshi Nakamoto incorporated an interesting combination of computer sciences and economics The paper argues the limitations …
2022
Level: beginner
The Economics of Cryptocurrencies
Die Planwirtschaft hat in den letzten Jahren ein unerwartetes Revival gefeiert Die These Im Zeitalter von Big Data künstlicher Intelligenz und neuen Kommunikationstechnologien sei der Markt eine veraltete Technologie der Vergangenheit Angesichts des Scheiterns effizienter politischer und wirtschaftlicher Koordination in der Pandemie und der Klimakrise kommt diese Debatte gerade rechtzeitig …
2022
Level: advanced
Digitale Planwirtschaft? Eine Einführung
The dominant view of inflation holds that it is macroeconomic in origin and must always be tackled with macroeconomic tightening. In contrast, we argue that the US COVID-19 inflation is predominantly a sellers’ inflation that derives from microeconomic origins, namely the ability of firms with market power to hike prices.
2023
Level: expert
Sellers’ Inflation, Profits and Conflict: Why can Large Firms Hike Prices in an Emergency?
This course is part of the SDG initiative addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, specifically for the following SDGs [1, 8, 10 and 16].
Level: beginner
Political Economy of Institutions and Development
Understanding the American stock market boom and bust of the 1920s is vital for formulating policies to combat the potentially deleterious effects of busts on the economy.
2014
Level: advanced
The Great Crash of 1929
In China's Gilded Age, Yuen Yuen Ang maintains that all corruption is harmful, but not all types of corruption hurt growth. Ang unbundles corruption into four varieties: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money.
2020
Level: beginner
China's Gilded Age
Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. In From Here to Equality, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen confront these injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery.
2020
Level: advanced
From Here to Equality
The 2007–08 credit crisis and the long recession that followed brutally exposed the economic and social costs of financialization. Understanding what lay behind these events, the rise of “fictitious capital” and its opaque logic, is crucial to grasping the social and political conditions under which we live. Yet, for most people, the operations of the financial system remain shrouded in mystery.
2017
Level: advanced
Fictitious Capital
A comprehensive account of how government deficits and debt drive inflation
2023
Level: advanced
The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
Financialization is one of the most innovative concepts to emerge in the field of political economy during the last three decades, although there is no agreement on what exactly it is. Profiting Without Producing by Costas Lapavitsas puts forth a distinctive view defining financialization in terms of the fundamental conduct of non-financial enterprises, banks and households.
2014
Level: advanced
Profiting Without Producing
The module is designed to first present some of the main schools of thought from a historical and methodological perspective. Each week we explore and critically assess the main tenants of each school of thought. In the second part of the module we link history of economic thought and methodology to a specific and contemporary economic question. The second part allows you to engage with current economic issues with an awareness of methodology and methodological differences and with some knowledge of the history of economics.
2019
Level: beginner
History of Economic Thought
The core idea of ecological economics is that human economic activity is bound by absolute limits. Interactions between the economy, society and the environment are analysed, while always keeping in mind the goal of a transition towards sustainability.
Ecological Economics
The concept of financialisation has undergone a similar career as ‘globalisation’, ‘neoliberalism’ or even ‘capitalism’, in the course of which it changed from the explanandum to the explanans; the process of financialisation is taken for granted, while the concrete historical and empirical causal conditions of its realisation and perpetuation are being moved into the background.
2023
Level: expert
A holistic theory of financialisation
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
In this overview paper, Laura Porak reviews the history of industrial policy in the European Union before the background of a Cultural Political Economy approach.
2023
Level: beginner
History of Industrial Policy in the EU
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?
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
The productive work of widely distributed academic research has contributed substantially, over the postwar period, to important advances in our understanding. It has also offered a clearer recognition of many unresolved problems. Never theless, the progress achieved over the last decades, ex hibited by the systematic application of "theory" to actual issues and observable problems, could not overcome a per vasive sense of dissatisfaction.
2012
Level: advanced
Economics Social Institutions
The course will teach students to analyze the goals, implementation, and outcomes of economic policy.
2018
Level: advanced
Advanced Economic Policy 2
This syllabus provides an overview of the content of the Philosophy of Economics course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
2015
Level: beginner
Philosophy of Economics
A Heterodox Approach to Economic Analysis This important new book introduces students to the fundamental ideas of heterodox economics presented in a clear and accessible way by top heterodox scholars It offers not only a critique of the dominant approach to economics but also a positive and constructive alternative Students …
2016
Level: advanced
An Introduction to Macroeconomics
In this book, the author, Intan Suwandi, engages with the question of imperialism through the specific channel of Global Value Chains.
2019
Level: beginner
Value Chains

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