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This course introduces students to the relevance of gender relations in economics as a discipline and in economic processes and outcomes. The course covers three main components of gender in economics and the economy: (1) the gendered nature of the construction and reproduction of economic theory and thought; (2) the relevance and role of gender in economic decision-making; and (3) differences in economic outcomes based on gender. We will touch on the relevance of gender and gender relations in at least each of the following topics: economic theory; the history of economic thought; human capital accumulation; labor market discrimination; macroeconomic policy, including gender budgeting; household economics; basic econometrics; economic history; and economic crises.
2019
Level: beginner
Feminist Economics
The last 15 years have seen extensive research into ecosystem service valuation (ESV), spurred by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 (Baveye, Baveye & Gowdy, 2016). Ecosystem services are defined as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems” (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, p.V). For example, ecosystems provide the service of sequestering carbon which helps regulate the climate. Valuation means giving ecosystems or their services a monetary price, for example researchers have estimated that the carbon sequestration services of the Mediterranean Sea is between 100 and 1500 million euros per year. The idea of ESV was a response to the overuse of natural resources and degradation of ecosystems, allegedly due to their undervaluation and exclusion from the monetary economy. ESV can be used (1) for policy decision-making, for example allocating funding to a reforestation project (2) for setting payments to people who increase ecosystem services, for example a farmer increasing the organic carbon content of their soil, and (3) for determining fees for people who degrade ecosystem services, for example a company that causes deforestation.
2021
Level: beginner
A Pluralist Perspective on Ecosystem Service Valuation Introduction
This module examines current socio-political issues through the lens of pluralism, that is pluralism of theory, pluralism of method and interdisciplinary pluralism
2020
Level: beginner
Pluralist Economic Analysis
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of work-related gender issues and to enable students to analyze the issues using the tools of economics.
2015
Level: beginner
Women, Men, & Work
‘We cannot afford their peace & We cannot bear their wars’: ​​​​​​​Value, Exploitation, Profitability Crises & ‘Rectification’
2022
Level: beginner
Political Economy based on Marx
The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the deep structural rifts in modern capitalist economies. It has exposed and exacerbated the long-lasting systemic inequalities in income, wealth, healthcare, housing, and other aspects of economic success across a variety of dimensions including class, gender, race, regions, and nations. This workshop explores the causes of economic inequality in contemporary capitalist economies and its consequences for the economy and society in the post-pandemic reality, as well as what steps can be taken to alleviate economic inequality in the future. Drawing from a variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary insights, the workshop encourages you to reflect on your personal experiences of inequality and aims to challenge the way in which the issue is typically approached in economics.
2022
Level: beginner
Inequality in the Post-pandemic Era
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
Capitalism is dissolving boundaries - not only in the sense of ever-expanding global trade flows, but also in the concrete everyday working lives of individuals. What implications does this have for our understanding of freedom, work and borders?
Level: beginner
Capitalism & Boundaries
Caring activities are one central element of feminist economists' analysis – also since in particular unremunerated work is a blind spot in mainstream economics and most other economic paradigms. Those focus on the market sphere: activities are considered as productive and as real labour if they are remunerated and market-intermediated. Goods and services are considered as labour if they create a value which can be traded on the market. Feminist Economics remarks that this perspective creates certain dichotomies and consequent devaluations: unproductive – productive; private – public; unpaid – remunerated OR paid less – well paid; female – male; soft work – hard work; caring – rationality.
2016
Level: beginner
Reproductive Labour and Care
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
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 multimedia dossier explores the production chain of smartphones. In particular due to the violation of workers' rights and low payments, the author Benjamin Selwyn calls those production structures global poverty chains. In this context, he points to the importance of workers' struggles.
2016
Level: beginner
Production Chain of Smartphones
Anwar Shaikh explores alternative economic explanations, emphasizing 'real competition' theory and the role of imperfections in economic patterns.
2017
Level: advanced
Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crisis
Donald Trump won in 2016 largely because enough voters in three states, all in the Rustbelt, which had voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, switched their electoral votes from Democratic to Republican.
2019
Level: beginner
The Rise of Trumpism
In this podcast, Laura Basu speaks with a range of expert academics and public speakers – such as Jayati Ghosh, Yanis Varoufakis, Walden Bello, and Ashish Kothari about how the rules of the global economy are fostering the inequality and underdevelopment we see today.
2020
Level: beginner
Decolonising the Global Economy
This study aims to provide insights on how the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) is contributing to the future of work.
2019
Level: beginner
The Contribution of the Social and Solidarity Economy and Social Finance to the Future of Work
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
“Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses1.” This is how Lionel Robbins came to define economics in the early 1930s and there is a good chance that many of you heard a variant of this definition in your first Economics 101 lecture.
2021
Level: beginner
What is “Economics”?
This is an introductory level core course in macroeconomics for those expecting to take further courses in economics. It provides a theoretical and applied approach of introductory macroeconomics, with an international perspective and applications to account for the growing importance of the global economy and the rising openness of economies.
2021
Level: advanced
Introduction to Macroeconomics
This course will introduce key concepts, theories and methods from socioeconomics. The first part of the course, will deal with the main economic actors and how their interactions are governed. Markets are seen as sets of social institutions. Institutions shape how consumers, firms and other economic actors behave. While it is difficult to understand how novelty emerges, we can study the conditions that are conducive to innovation. We will review how economic performance, social progress and human wellbeing are measured and what progress has been made. In the second part of the course, we will study a specific macroeconomic model that accounts for biophysical boundaries and inequality.
2020
Level: advanced
Foundations in Socioeconomics
This course focus on the behaviour of individuals from an pluralist economic and an interdisciplinary bevavioural science apprach.
2020
Level: advanced
Actors, Behaviours and Decision Processes
This part is devoted to simulation experiments based on the simulation model developed in part I from the value theoretic reconstruction of the main parts of Marx s critique of Political Economy After introducing the main parameters and the range of their variation Section 1 a singular run as well …
2020
Level: advanced
A value-theoretic approach to economic dynamics and evolution—synthesizing different Marxian modules in a simulation model Part II
Recent events such as the Black Lives Matter protests the the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis US and the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol UK have exposed existing racism colonialism and sexism in our society and in Economics While calls to improve diversity in Economics …
2021
Level: beginner
Decolonising Economics in Practice
The need for the movement Black Lives Matter and the tragic events that preceded it are the clear manifestation of the problem of discrimination today, which we all intuitively perceive as a poignant socio-economic question of our times.
2021
Level: beginner
Economics of Discrimination - A CBD Perspective
The world is regularly shaken by crises some are bigger others are smaller in scope Local turmoil military conflicts commodity scarcity bank runs health threats the history of mankind can be written as a history of crises Three major global crises occurred in the last fifty years alone the oil …
2021
Level: beginner
Understanding Crises - What to take from here for better policy advice in the future?
Karl Marx was the greatest champion of the labor theory of value. The logical problems of this theory have, however, split scholars of Marx into two factions: those who regard it as an indivisible component of Marxism, and those who wish to continue the spirit of analysis begun by Marx without the labor theory of value.
1993
Level: expert
Use-Value, Exchange Value, and the Demise of Marx's Value Theory of Labor
This archive contains open access copies of most of the written work, including the books of Karl William Kapp (1910-1976) was one of the forefathers of Ecological Economics.
Level: advanced
K. William Kapp archive
Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx s ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008 09 The crisis triggered the deepest global recession in 70 years and prompted the US government to spend more than 1 …
2011
Level: beginner
Marx Reloaded
Yao Graham, coordinator of Third World Network- Africa, reflects on lessons learned from past Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), specifically as they relate to the Post-Cotonou Agreement.
2020
Level: beginner
Lessons From Economic Partnership Agreements to the Post- Cotonou Framework
The world has seen the emergence of a rather different system of international lender of last resort organized as a network of central bank liquidity swap lines largely limited to the core countries of the Global North In this system central banks swap their own currency for dollars which they …
2021
Level: expert
“Where’s My Swap Line?”: A Money View of International Lender of Last Resort
The article discusses whether the turning point in EU's Russia policy with sanctions aimed directly at Putin's war chest of foreign reserves will change the landscape of countries' foreign assets.
2022
Level: beginner
The Monetary Consequences of Vladimir Putin

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