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495 results
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.
The Strange Non-Death of Mainstream Economics
The objective of the course is to explore the main strengths and weaknesses of orthodox and heterodox paradigms within development economics.
Issues in Development Economics
How can we establish new institutions and practices in order to use fare-free public transport as a beacon for sustainable mobility and a low-carbon lifestyle? The author of this essay elaborates on how practice theory and institutional economics can help to answer this question.
Towards a practice of fare-free sustainability
Fabian Georgi analyses how migration and borders are connected to capitalism.
Recruiting skilled labour, while closing borders? The connection between migration, border regimes and capitalism
In this text, Fred Heussner takes up the debate on anti-fascist economics, places it in the context of existing developments and identifies potential for further development.
Anti-fascist economics? For sure! But what does that mean?
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.
History of Industrial Policy in the EU
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?
The Project of Pluralism
This lecture is based on the “Introducing the Economy” chapter from the Economy Studies book, which introduces the first building block in their framework for transforming the economics education. The aim is to give students a feel and
understanding of the economy as part of a bigger whole. Thus, it is aimed to introduce to students before getting into the economics curriculum with theory and models.
Introducing the Economy
Environmental catastrophe looms large over politics: from the young person’s climate march to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, increasing amounts of political space are devoted to the issue. Central to this debate is the question of whether economic growth inevitably leads to environmental issues such as depleted finite resources and increased waste, disruption of natural cycles and ecosystems, and of course climate change. Growth is the focal point of the de-growth and zero-growth movements who charge that despite efficiency gains, increased GDP always results in increased use of energy and emissions. On the other side of the debate, advocates of continued growth (largely mainstream economists) believe that technological progress and policies can ‘decouple’ growth from emissions.
To Grow or Not to Grow?
Feminist economics focuses on the interdependencies of gender relations and the economy. Care work and the partly non-market mediated reproduction sphere are particularly emphasised by feminist economics.
Feminist Economics
In 18th century Europe figures such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Friedrich List and Jean Baptiste Colbert developed theories regarding international trade, which either embraced free trade seeing it as a positive sum game or recommended more cautious and strategic approaches to trade seeing it as a potential danger and a rivalry and often as a zero-sum game. What about today?
Free trade in economic theories
This paper starts with an evaluation of three common arguments against pluralism in economics: (1) the claim that economics is already pluralist, (2) the argument that if there was the need for greater plurality, it would emerge on its own, and (3) the assertion that pluralism means ‘anything goes’ and is thus unscientific. Pluralist responses to all three arguments are summarized. The third argument is identified to relate to a greater challenge for pluralism: an epistemological trade-off between diversity and consensus that suggests moving from a discussion about ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ towards a discussion about the adequate degree of plurality. We instantiate the trade-off by showing how it originates from two main challenges: the need to derive adequate quality criteria for a pluralist economics, and the necessity to propose strategies that ensure the communication across different research programs. The paper concludes with some strategies to meet these challenges.
Pluralism in economics: its critiques and their lessons
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.
Critical Theory for Heterodox Economists: Questioning the Premises of Supply and Demand
Nancy Fraser starts out by introducing the multidmiensional cirises of the 21st century Three dimensions are especially alarming to her the ecological the financial and social aspects of the crisis Fraser then revives the ideas of Karl Polanyi which he first presented in his 1944 book The great transformation She …
Can societies be commodities all the way down?
Today it feels like everybody is talking about the problems and crises of our times: the climate and resource crisis, Greece's permanent socio-political crisis or the degrading exploitative practices of the textile industry.
At the expense of others?
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
Reclaiming the university: Transforming economics as a discipline
This introductory text explores the political economy of water by defining the subject and examining its key issues.
The political economy of water
This chapter by the Centre for Economy Studies explores how courses on the history of economic thought and methods could look if they were pluralist and interdisciplinary.
Rethinking the History of Economic Thought & Methods
This course focus on the behaviour of individuals from an pluralist economic and an interdisciplinary bevavioural science apprach.
Actors, Behaviours and Decision Processes
This open access book presents an alternative to capitalism and state socialism through the modelling of a post-market and post-state utopia based on an upscaling of the commons, feminist political economy and democratic and council-based planning approaches.
Make Capitalism History
With the onset of an economic crisis that has been universally acknowledged since the end of March, two main questions arise: To what extent is the corona pandemic the starting point (or even the cause) of this crisis? And secondly: can the aid programmes that have been adopted prevent a deep and prolonged recession?
Economic crisis only because of the Corona pandemic?
In this interview Gerd Gigerenzer place bounded rationality into the context of a larger development in thinking about what rationality is He touches on unbounded rationality which remains overrepresented and popular in neoclassical economics he explains different interpretations of bounded rationality and concludes with an ecological interpretation of rationality He …
Gerd Gigerenzer - Bounded Rationality
From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement Meme Wars The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and …
Meme Wars
The 2007-2008 financial crisis exposed the shortcomings of mainstream economic theory with economists unprepared to deal with it. In the face of this, a major rethinking of economics seems necessary and in presenting alternative approaches to economic theory, this book contributes to the rebuilding of the discipline.
Alternative Approaches to Economic Theory
Having dissected what's supposedly wrong with contemporary macroeconomics, Steve Keen, on the leading critics of the mainstream of our times and distinguished economist himself, goes on to present his idea of a New Economics: What premises it should build on, what methods it should use, and yes, what purpose it should serve.
The New Economics
This report by the 'Institute for Global Prosperity' explores the hypothesis that strengthening and extending universal services is an effective way of tackling poverty and improving wellbeing for all.
Universal Basic Services: Theory and Practice
What’s inflation? Why is it relevant? And is there an agreed theory about its roots and causes, or is it a contentious concept? That’s what this text is all about: We define what inflation actually means before we delve into the theoretical debate with an interdisciplinary and pluralist approach: What gives rise to it, what factors might influence it, and, consequently, what might be done about it?
Inflation in economic theory
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.
Decolonizing Economics
This article explores the production function, the prevailing view of capital that underpins it, and the main alternative perspective. By exploring these perspectives, the authors aim to provide students with a foundational understanding of the controversies surrounding the treatment of capital in production, a topic expressly excluded from mainstream textbooks.
Why We Should Think Twice About Production Functions
Asset Management firms control large parts of the global economy Just the three American asset management firms BlackRock Vanguard and State Street manage more than half of the combined value of all shares for companies in the S P 500 Their combined managed assets amount to 22 trillion May 2022 …
Asset Manager Capitalism
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Economic Impact and Possible Disruptions
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a school of monetary and macroeconomic thought that focuses on the analysis of the monetary and credit system, and in particular on the question of credit creation by the state.
Modern Monetary Theory
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