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The lectures were given by Steve Keen at the Exploring Economics Summer Academy 2017 in the workshop on Post Keynesian Economics The first lectures start with the role of money in a monetary economy and explain the macroeconomic significance of admitting the reality that banks create money The lectures continue …
2017
Level: expert
Exploring Economics 2017 Lectures
Participants should be able to distinguish the strictly non-cooperative (methodological individualist) foundations of traditional neoclassical economics as being couched in self-interested individuals, as well as having basic knowledge of an alternative set of theories based on the primacy cooperation and social norms and extending the breadth of economic analysis beyond exchange.
2021
Level: beginner
Cooperative Economics
Health Economics traditionally involves two distinct strands. One focuses on the application of core  neoclassical economic theories of the firm, the consumer and the market to health-seeking behaviour  and other health issues. It suggests a role for government intervention only in the case of specific  market failures (for example externalities, asymmetric information, moral hazard, and public goods)  that distort market outcomes. The second strand is evaluation techniques, used to assess the cost effectiveness of competing health interventions.
2022
Level: beginner
Health Economics
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
The background for the present elaboration is twofold firstly the ongoing debate about whether the Marxian theory of value has been damaged or even destroyed by the alleged impossibility of solving the transformation problem and secondly the fact that almost all of the later economic manuscripts of Marx are now …
2020
Level: advanced
A value-theoretic approach to economic dynamics and evolution—synthesizing different Marxian modules in a simulation model
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
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?
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?
2020
Level: beginner
Economic crisis only because of the Corona pandemic?
This introductory text explores the political economy of water by defining the subject and examining its key issues.
2025
Level: beginner
The political economy of water
One hundred years ago the idea of 'the economy' didn't exist. Now, improving the economy has come to be seen as perhaps the most important task facing modern societies. Politics and policymaking are conducted in the language of economics and economic logic shapes how political issues are thought about and addressed.
2017
Level: advanced
The Econocracy
Central banking is anything but clear-cut. As this webinar with Benjamin Braun demonstrates, the standard view of central banks as independent public entities that govern financial markets and "print" money is at least partially misleading.
2020
Level: beginner
Central banking, Finance and Power
There was a time when the world still seemed a good and above all simple place for monetary authorities Every few weeks they had to decide whether in view of the latest price developments it would be better to raise the key interest rates by a quarter point or not …
2021
Level: beginner
On climate, jobs and financial stability: Towards a new mandate for central banks?
Florian Kern replies to Zoltan Pozsar's analysis about the effects of the war in Ukraine on the global financial order and refutes the latter's prognosis of the demise of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency
2022
Level: advanced
Why the war in Ukraine does not jeopardise the dollar's reserve currency status
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
This self-paced free course by Perry Merhling guides you to his "Money View" approach that integrates the fields of economics and finance. The course can easily be understood by people interested people without technical economic knowledge or training as it is primarily a tool for analysis.
Level: beginner
Economics of Money and Banking
In both economics textbooks and public perceptions central banks are a fact of life. On the wall of my A-level economics classroom there was the Will Rogers quote “there have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking”, summarising how many economists view the institution. There is a widespread belief that there is something different about money which calls for a central authority to manage its operation, a view shared even by staunch free marketeers such as Milton Friedman. This belief is not without justification, since money underpins every transaction in a way that apples do not, but we should always be careful not to take existing institutions for granted and central banking is no exception. In this post I will look at the idea of private or free banking, where banks compete (and cooperate) to issue their own currency.
2020
Level: beginner
Whither Central Banks?
Why is money more valuable than the paper on which it is printed Monetarists link the value of money to its supply and demand believing the latter depends on the total value of the commodities it circulates According to Prabhat Patnaik this logic is flawed In his view in any …
2009
Level: advanced
The Value of Money
Examine what would happen if we were to deploy blockchain technology at the sovereign level and use it to create a decentralized cashless economy. This book explains how finance and economics work today, and how the convergence of various technologies related to the financial sector can help us find solutions to problems, such as excessive debt creation, banks getting too big to fail, and shadow banking.
2017
Level: advanced
The Blockchain Alternative
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
The most successful multialternative theories of decision making assume that people consider individual aspects of a choice and proceed via a process of elimination. Amos Tversky was one of the pioneers of this field, but modern decision theorists – most notably Neil Stewart – have moved things forward. At the current stage the theories are able to explain a number of strictly ‘irrational’ but reasonable quirks of human decision making, including various heuristics and biases. Not only this, but eye movements of participants strongly imply that the decision-making process depicted in the theories is an accurate one.
2020
Level: beginner
The Quirks of Human Decisions, Explained
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
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.
2025
Level: beginner
The Strange Non-Death of Mainstream Economics
This course will survey contemporary heterodox approaches to economic research, both from a microeconomic and a macroeconomic perspective. Topics will be treated from a general, critical, and mathematical standpoint.
2021
Level: advanced
Heterodox Approaches to Economics
To what extent does gender affect people's patterns of labor force participation, educational preparation for work, occupations, hours of work (paid and unpaid) and earnings?
2014
Level: beginner
Sex-Segregated Labor Markets
Designed to give second-year undergraduates an intuitive understanding of basic mathematical techniques, and when and why they are applicable. Building on the traditional framework of calculus, the notion of a concave function is used to link the new algebraic methods with the more familiar graphical approachoand to introduce the modern use of duality in economic analysis.
1984
Level: advanced
Mathematics for Modern Economics
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.
2018
Level: beginner
Enough! The Sufficiency Approach and the Limits of Economic Growth
What made the false assumption that saving the economy at all cost during a pandemic so popular? This paper discusses different pathways through the COVID-19 pandemic at national and international level, and their consequences on the health of citizens and their economies.
2021
Level: beginner
How not to save the economy? The interplay of economics and health during the COVID-19 pandemic
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.
2021
Level: beginner
Carbon Pricing: The Key to Open the Way Toward a Sustainable Recovery and Long-Term Wellbeing
The article examines how, in the context of multiple contemporary crises—financial, ecological, and social—interest in alternative economic models such as democratic economic planning has resurged. It outlines historical debates on the feasibility of planning versus markets, discusses contemporary approaches to democratic, digitally supported, and ecologically oriented planning, and identifies research gaps, including social reproduction and Global South perspectives.
Level: beginner
Rethinking Economic Planning
Prof. Robert Guttmann looks at the current transformation of the international world order through the lenses of global money and finance.
2019
Level: advanced
Multipolar Capitalism
Are there any limits to government spending? In times of war, particularly? And what about the aftermath of such special times when treasuries seemingly feel unshackled from any rules? And are those times really any special? That is what this paper is about.
2019
Level: advanced
Modern Money and the War Treasury

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