RETHINK
ECONOMICS
RETHINK
ECONOMICS
... and receive personalised notifications on
new pluralistic content directly into your inbox!

1142 results

2016
Level: beginner
Dani Rodrik reflects in this book on important questions about how economics works and what might be wrong with it. He points out flaws and weakness of the discipline, but also argues that certain criticisms which have brought forward against are without merit. His central point is that there is not just one economic model, but a variety of them and it is important to apply judgment when selecting the most suitable one for a particular situation.
2013
Level: advanced
The economics of worker cooperatives is a branch of economic inquiry with a long and esteemed pedigree, dating at least from the work of John Stuart Mill in the mid-nineteenth century.
2022
Level: beginner
The workshop deals with the contribution of Plural Economics to the urgently  needed change of the economic system towards sustainability and global  responsibility.  After completing the module, participants should be able to demarcate and  explain different economic approaches to sustainability. They should be able to  evaluate the respective concepts based on their contribution to the ecological  transformation of the economic system.
2019
Level: advanced
An overview of the last century economic theories asking what makes a heterodox economist. This lecture focuses on the evolution of the various academic traditions in economics. Lavoie presents his own typology for categorising seminal work within the post-Keynesian tradition while leaving space to acknowledge that categories are not binary, but can be used to help understand the different traditions, and how they have developed over the last decades.
2016
Level: advanced
This book introduces 40 critical pointers for those who wish to see the theory in a broader, more realistic context. The material is suitable for introductory and intermediate courses and can be included selectively by students for additional reading or in lectures or tutorials as discussion points. "Students of mainstream economics need a guide like this to help them understand the underlying assumptions, limitations and inbuilt biases of what they are studying. It helps them open their eyes to a broader view of how real economies work."
2021
Level: advanced
The first book to bring together the key writings and speeches of civil rights activist Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander--the first Black American economist In 1921, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander became the first Black American to gain a Ph.D. degree in economics. Unable to find employment as an economist because of discrimination, Alexander became a lawyer so that she could press for equal rights for African Americans.
2016
Level: advanced
This lecture is all about the challenge to include heterodox approaches into macroeconomics. After giving an overview of recent approaches to that problem Professor Michael Roos presents the theoretical framework of Complexity Economics as a means to combine behavioral aspects with macroeconomics.
2018
Level: beginner
In this essay, the principle of capital accumulation, as well as the idea of homo economicus as the basis of the growth model, are located and analyzed from a feminist perspective. The sufficiency approach is presented as an alternative to these two economic logics.
2020
Level: beginner
Exploring Economics Dossier on the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the structural crisis of globalization. COVID-19 encounters a structural crisis of globalization and the economic system that drives it, with an uncertain outcome. We asked economists worldwide to share with us their analysis of current events, long-term perspectives and political responses. The dossier will be continuously expanded.
2017
Level: beginner
Due to the economic crisis of 2008/2009, households faced drastic decreases in their incomes, the availability of jobs. Additionally, the structure of the labour market changed, while austerity measures and public spending cuts left households with less support and safeguards provided by the state. How have these developments affected the burden of unpaid labour and what influence did this have on gender relations?
2021
Level: beginner
We collect selected high quality working papers from the leading international universities and research institutes in the field of plural and heterodox economics. The working papers in our selection present economic schools of thought and debates in a first-class way and give an insight into the latest research.
Level: advanced
This course seeks to interpret capitalism using ideas from biological evolution. The lectures are foundational on neoclassical economics and economist, as well as their roles in the proliferation of capitalist ideology. However, it is less concerned with the ultimate judgment of capitalism than with the ways it can be shaped to fit more specific objectives.
2003
Level: advanced
The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen´s text analyzes three main figures in social sciences and the relation between them: the Italian economist Piero Sraffa, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the Italian politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci.
2017
Level: advanced
The article compares market fundamentalism and right-wing populism on the basis of its core patterns of thinking and reasoning. Based on an analysis of important texts in both fields we find many similarities of these two concepts in their "inner images". Thus, we develop a scheme of the similar dual social worlds of right-wing-populism and market fundamentalism and offer some recent examples of market fundamentalism and right-wing populism mutually reinforcing each other or serving as a gateway for each other. We then apply our scheme for the analysis of the recent political developments and its ideological roots in the US under Donald Trump.
2021
Level: beginner
Recovery from the Covid-19 crisis provides a chance to implement economic measures that are also beneficial from environmental and social perspectives. While ‘green’ recovery packages are crucial to support economies tracking a low-carbon transition in the short-term, green measures such as carbon pricing are also key to improving welfare in the long-term. This commentary specifies the need for carbon pricing, outlines its implications for our everyday lives, and explains how it works alongside value-based change in the context of climate action and societal well-being.
2009
Level: advanced
Economics has become a monolithic science, variously described as formalistic and autistic with neoclassical orthodoxy reigning supreme. So argue Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine in this new major work of critical recollection.
2015
Level: advanced
This course is an introduction to Development Economics and is concerned with how economists have sought to explain how the process of economic growth occurs, and how – or whether – that delivers improved well-being of people.
2023
Level: beginner
Economics for Emancipation (E4E) is a seven-module introductory curriculum with interactive and participatory workshops. It offers a deep critical dive into the current political economic system, exploration of alternative economic systems, and dynamic tools to dream and build the economy that centers care, relationship, and liberation.
2022
Level: beginner
In this book, distinguished economist Edith Kuiper shows us that the history of economic thought is just that, a his-story, by telling the herstory of economic thought from the perspective of women economic writers and economists. Although some of these women were well known in their time, they were excluded from most of academic economics, and, over the past centuries, their work has been neglected, forgotten, and thus become invisible.
2019
Level: beginner
What are the implications of the politics of "behavioural change"? Alexander Feldmann took a closer look for you on nudging and framing and if this is a legitimate instrument being used by the state to make us behave better in terms of our carbon footprint.
2015
Level: beginner
How do we get our dinner? And who cooked Adam Smith's dinner? Starting with Smith's answer on the origin of a dinner, Katrine Marçal problematizes and illustrates how unpaid labour was and is still being ignored by economic theory and how the homo economics represents characteristics perceived as male.
2014
Level: advanced
What is innovation, what drives innovation and the process that differentiates firms? What is competition and what kind of dynamics lie behind the differences between firms and their innovative activities? Mariana Mazzucato elaborates on those questions from an evolutionary economics' and Schumpeterian perspective. The slides of her lecture are not visible, hence some visualizations can't be followed.
2011
Level: advanced
Once in a while the world astonishes itself. Anxious incredulity replaces intellectual torpor and a puzzled public strains its antennae in every possible direction, desperately seeking explanations for the causes and nature of what just hit it. 2008 was such a moment. Not only did the financial system collapse, and send the real economy into a tailspin, but it also revealed the great gulf separating economics from a very real capitalism.
Level: beginner
Galbraith first explores the social darwinism of Herbert Spencer and others that served as apology for the highly unequal distribution of wealth in the US at the end of the 19th century and naturalized differences in wealth by appealing to the concept of natural selection of the fittest. Then some instances of the unscrupulous business practices (i.e. robberies) of the American railroad tycoons and other business magnates are recounted. Lastly, Galbraith lines out some of the arguments of Thorstein Veblen, who delegitimized and ridiculed the business and leisure activities of the rich by putting them in the same category as predatory and ritualized practices of primitive or ancient societies.
2015
Level: expert
In this keynote lecture during the conference „The Spectre of Stagnation? Europe in the World Economy“, Till van Treek presents research on how changes in income distribution lead to macroeconomic instability and crisis, focusing on currents accounts. Treek presents the relative income hypothesis in contrast to other mainstream and Post-Keynesian explanations. The relative income hypothesis proposes that aggregate demand increases and savings decrease with rising personal income inequality due to upward looking status comparison – but effects depend on the quantile where income inequality increases. Treek points to the importance of accounting for both income and functional income distribution and underlines his arguments with data comparing different pattern in Germany and the U.S.
2015
Level: beginner
Departing from an analysis of women's employment and changing gender regimes in the pre crisis period, Jill Rubery illustrates how the crisis affects men's and women's employment differently. Afterwards, she discusses the crisis' impact on gender relations. Based on empirical findings, she shows how men were more affected by the recession and women more by austerity and presents possible explanations. Those are furthermore linked to women's employment decisions and prevalent gender regimes. In particular, Rubery discusses cut backs in public spendings on care, flexibilization and the role of conservative gender ideologies.
2019
Level: advanced
This report presents the results of the “Financial Mechanisms for Innovative Social and Solidarity Economy Ecosystems” project, designed to foster a better understanding of the different ways in which financial resources can be made available and accessed to support the growth of social and solidarity economy (SSE) organizations and their ecosystems. The project is supported by the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social and Solidarity Economy of the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
2014
Level: advanced
The volume has been conceived with current and future economics students in mind: they will be the economists of the future. One of the main ideas underlining the book is that "being an economist" in the XXI century requires a radical change in the training of economists and such change requires a global effort.
2015
Level: beginner
This syllabus provides an overview of the content of the Philosophy of Economics course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
2020
Level: advanced
This paper investigates how the concept of public purpose is used in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). As a common denominator among political scientists, the idea of public purpose is that economic actions should aim at benefiting the majority of the society. However, the concept is to be considered as an ideal of a vague nature, which is highly dependent on societal context and, hence, subject to change over time. MMT stresses that government spending plans should be designed to pursue a certain socio-economic mandate and not to meet any particular financial outcome. The concept of public purpose is heavily used in this theoretical body of thought and often referred to in the context of policy proposals as the ideas of universal job guarantee and banking reform proposals show. MMT scholars use the concept as a pragmatic benchmark against which policies can be assessed. With regards to the definition of public propose, MMT scholars agree that it is dependent on the social-cultural context. Nevertheless, MMT scholars view universal access to material means of survival as universally applicable and in that sense as the lowest possible common denominator.
Level: beginner
Education policy seeks to ensure equality in access, equality within the classroom and in teaching- learning processes, and equality in outcomes. This course encourages students to assess and evaluate the extent to which these objectives are met in practice and the ways in which educational outcomes are shaped by, as well as alter, gendered social norms.
2017
Level: beginner
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.

Donate

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.

 

Donate