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Since the Middle Ages, literature has portrayed the economic world in poetry, drama, stories and novels. The complexity of human realities highlights crucial aspects of the economy. The nexus linking characters to their economic environment is central in a new genre, the "economic novel", that puts forth economic choices and events to narrate social behavior, individual desires, and even non-economic decisions.
2018
Level: advanced
Economics and Literature
Global Value Chains (GVCs) started to play an increasing and key role in the global economy from the 1990s on. The market mechanism in GVCs supports industrialisation in the Global South and under certain conditions product and process upgrading. But GVCs do not lead to the catching-up of countries in the sense of them approaching real GDP per capita levels comparable with developed countries. These arguments are supported by a critical interpretation of the traditional trade theory, the New Trade Theory and specific approaches to explain GVCs, especially different governance structures and power relationships. Several case studies support these arguments. For catching-up, countries need comprehensive horizontal and vertical industrial policy and policies for social coherence. The small number of countries which managed to catch up did this in different variations.
Level: beginner
Global Value Chains in economic development
This lively introduction to heterodox economics provides a balanced critique of the standard introductory macroeconomic curriculum. In clear and accessible prose, it explains many of the key principles that underlie a variety of alternative theoretical perspectives (including institutionalist economics, radical economics, Post Keynesian economics, feminist economics, ecological economics, Marxist economics, social economics, and socioeconomics).
2015
Level: beginner
Reintroducing Macroeconomics
This historic timeline presents economic events, economic thinkers and schools of thought from the 18th century until the 2007/2008 financial and economic crisis with short texts on the respective event or perspective.
2017
Level: beginner
Economics: An Illustrated Timeline
This text summarizes the content of the 2018 Nobel Prize winner W. Nordhaus. It is extended by some critical perspectives on this topic. The short dossier gives an overview of the most important texts we have read in the climate economics reading group.
2018
Level: beginner
Climate Economics and the DICE Model
The world has changed dramatically in recent years and so has the field of economics, but many introductory economics textbooks have remained stuck in the past. This book provides a new beginning for the study of macroeconomics, fundamentally international in its approach and emphasizing current debates and research trends.
2014
Level: advanced
Macroeconomics
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
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
2017
Level: beginner
Reclaiming the university: Transforming economics as a discipline
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?
This brilliantly concise book is a classic introduction to Marx’s key work, Capital. In print now for over a quarter of a century, and previously translated into many languages, the new edition has been fully revised and updated, making it an ideal modern introduction to one of the most important texts in political economy.
2010
Level: advanced
'Marx's Capital'
The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics presents a comprehensive overview of the latest work on economic theory and policy from a 'pluralistic' heterodox perspective.

Contributions throughout the Handbook explore different theoretical perspectives including: Marxian-radical political economics; Post Keynesian-Sraffian economics; institutionalist-evolutionary economics; feminist economics; social economics.

2019
Level: advanced
The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics
The Great Recession 2.0 is unfolding before our very eyes. It is still in its early phase. But dynamics have been set in motion that are not easily stopped, or even slowed. If the virus effect were resolved by early summer—as some politicians wishfully believe—the economic dynamics set in motion would still continue. The US and global economies have been seriously ‘wounded’ and will not recover easily or soon. Those who believe it will be a ‘V-shape’ recovery are deluding themselves. Economists among them should know better but are among the most confused. They only need to look at historical parallels to convince themselves otherwise.
2020
Level: beginner
Origins & Emergence of the 2020 Great Recession in the US Economy
John Harvey's accessible book provides a non-technical yet rigorous introduction to various schools of thought in economics. Premised on the idea that economic thinking has been stunted by the almost complete rejection of anything outside the mainstream, the author hopes that this volume will open readers' minds and lead them in new and productive directions.
2016
Level: advanced
Contending Perspectives in Economics
In this essay the author elaborates on the EU's perspective on the fast growing sector of the platform economy.
2019
Level: beginner
Sharing is Caring? On the EU- Narrative on Platform Economy
In this essay the author outlines the basis for embracing a post-work agenda, rooted in an emancipatory potential from the domination of waged work, which could help answer both feminist and ecological concerns with work.
2018
Level: beginner
Towards a post-work future: a necessary agenda to reconcile feminist & ecological concerns with work
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

Best-selling books such as Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist have paved the way for the flourishing economics-made-fun genre. While books like these present economics as a strong and explanatory science, the ongoing economic crisis has exposed the shortcomings of economics to the general public.

2015
Level: advanced
Economics Made Fun
Inequality is an issue we all face every day, from income disparities to gender discrimination. In this first lecture in the Institute for New Economic Think...
2020
Level: beginner
Inequality 101 with Branko Milanovic & Arjun Jayadev
Why are some nations more prosperous than others? Why Nations Fail sets out to answer this question, with a compelling and elegantly argued new theory: that it is not down to climate, geography or culture, but because of institutions.
2012
Level: advanced
Why Nations Fail
The book’s central theme is to develop a new theory of speculative capital related to other forms of capital, the world market, and the state. Unlike most marxist and heterodox theories, the book distinguishes credit and fictitious capital from speculative capital to show its hegemony today in the capital markets.
2022
Level: advanced
Financial Capital in the 21st Century
The Elgar Companion to Neo-Schumpeterian Economics surveys the achievements of the most visible scholars in this area. The contributions to the Companion give both a brief survey on the various fields of neo-Schumpeterian economics as well as insights into recent research at the scientific frontiers.
2007
Level: advanced
Elgar Companion to Neo-Schumpeterian Economics
This book provides a new methodological approach to money and macroeconomics. Realizing that the abstract equilibrium models lacked descriptions of fundamental issues of a modern monetary economy, the focus of this book lies on the (stylized) balance sheets of the main actors. Money, after all, is born on the balance sheets of the central bank or commercial bank.
2017
Level: beginner
Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics
The course will teach students to analyze the goals, implementation, and outcomes of economic policy.
2019
Level: advanced
Advanced Economic Policy
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
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.
2017
Level: advanced
The Metamorphosis of the World
This unique up-to-date volume not only provides state-of-the-art discussions of the most recent developments in modern macroeconomics but also includes a series of interviews with leading economists that shed new light on the major intellectual and policy issues of the 1990s. The book is at once an invaluable text and a superb overview that will be welcomed by teachers and students alike.
1994
Level: beginner
A Modern Guide to Macroeconomics
This paper provides a logical framework for complexity economics Complexity economics builds from the proposition that the economy is not necessarily in equilibrium economic agents firms consumers investors constantly change their actions and strategies in response to the outcome they mutually create This further changes the outcome which requires them …
2013
Level: beginner
Complexity Economics : A Different Framework for Economic Thought
"Why information grows" by Cesar Hidalgo and the atlas of economic complexity. César visits the RSA to present a new view of the relationship between the individual and collective knowledge, linking information theory, economics and biology...
2015
Level: advanced
Why information grows and the atlas of economic complexity.
This reports presents empirical findings of research conducted by Michelle Holder, assistant professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York, with regard to the impact of what she terms a "double gap"- gender wage gap and ethnic minority wage gap - on the U.S. labour market.
2020
Level: advanced
The "Double Gap" and the Bottom Line: African American Women’s Wage Gap and Corporate Profits
This article explores if power dynamics in the household can be changed, and if so, how. In this context the focus is laid on government childcare policy and its various channels of possible influence.
Level: beginner
How can childcare policy affect intra-household power dynamics?
Quinn Slobodian a historian of modern Germany and international history analysis of current development in the Mont Pèlerin Society and therefore neo-liberalism. He sees neo-liberalist thinkers less as believers in the self-healing power of markets, but more as ordo-liberal Globalists who wanted to protect the markets from post-war politics and especially mass democracy. Their goal of global capitalism is still strong, however sceptics in the Mont Pèlerin Society are rising, which see international migration as a threat to Globalisation. Therefore, turning neo-liberal policies away from international institutions like the EU back towards the national states as new defenders of the markets as well as international trade and investments. (A development which can be seen in the Friedrich A. von Hayek-Gesellschaft and especially in the "liberal" wing of the German rightwing populist party AfD)
2019
Level: advanced
Neo-liberal Globalism and the Backlash from Within
Banner and Pastor debunk granted assumptions of the neoclassical theory, such as self-interested human behavior, the necessity of inequality and growth, to pull the threads between the new possible foundations of our society, "prosperity, security and community".
2020
Level: beginner
Solidarity Economics—for the Coronavirus Crisis and Beyond

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