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Steven G. Medema is a Research Professor at Duke University. His research focuses on the History of Economic Thought, having published extensively on the issue of social costs of production (conceptualized as externalities in neoclassical economics). In this recorded seminar, he exposes his working paper on the history of the concept of externalities in economic literature, starting from Pigou’s “The Economics of Welfare” (1920), where Pigou makes the case for governmental intervention in the market where there is a divergence between private and social costs or benefits of a productive activity. T 2017 Level: advanced 'Exceptional and Unimportant'? The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Externalities in Economic Analysis Steven G. Medema Ceteris Never Paribus: The History of Economic Thought Podcast Global Social Theory is a large wiki-like project by Gurminder K Bhambra. Its central aim is decolonising and diversifying universities, production of knowledge, and social thought in general. It represents a large online library divided into three parts: concepts, thinkers, and topics in/of social theory and decolonial thought. Every part comprises of short, introductory articles on an according theme. It may be helpful to give you a general overview (and a list of basic readings) on the most essential areas of social theory: caste, class, and race; civil society; racism; secularism; feminism and many others. It may also allow students whose university curriculum in sociology, economics, or other social sciences lacks diversity to compensate for that. Level: beginner Global Social Theory Multiple academic authors: professors, researchers, and lecturers. globalsocialtheory.org 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 Anna Weber Summer Academy for Pluralist Economics In analyzing the global competition between Chinese and Indian tea, Andrew B. Liu challenges past economic histories premised on the technical “divergence” between the West and the Rest, arguing instead that seemingly traditional technologies and practices were central to modern capital accumulation across Asia. 2020 Level: advanced Tea War Andrew B. Liu Yale University Press The mandate of central banks has seemed clear for decades : keep inflation low. Nevertheless borders between monetary, financial and economic policy have been blurry even before the pandemic.. Faced with the challenges of the climate crisis, slow growth, unemployment and inequality, does the financial and monetary system need a new constitutional purpose. 2020 Level: beginner Beyond Price Stability Das Progressive Zentrum, Daniela Gabor, Christian Odendahl, Philippa Sigl-Glöckner & Adam Tooze www.innocracy.eu Study of the German Council of Economic Experts on the potential economic effects of a comprehensive energy embargo against Russia 2022 Level: advanced A potential sudden stop of energy imports from Russia: Effects on energy security and economic output in Germany and the EU Eva Berger, Sylwia Bialek, Niklas Garnadt, Veronika Grimm, Lars Other, Leonard Salzmann, Monika Schnitzer, Achim Truger, Volker Wieland Sachverständigenrat für Wirtschaft The general idea of a Job Guarantee (JG) is that the government offers employment to everybody ready, willing and able to work for a living wage in the last instance as an Employer of Last Resort. The concept tackles societal needs that are not satisfied by market forces and the systemic characteristic of unemployment in capitalist societies. Being a central part of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), attention for the JG concept rose in recent years. 2020 Level: beginner The Job Guarantee Jannik Landwehr Exploring Economics 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. 2020 Level: beginner To Grow or Not to Grow? Cahal Moran Rethinking Economics This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. It tackles issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, and shows how they are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression. Including contributions by: Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson. 2017 Level: advanced Social Reproduction Theory Tithi Bhattacharya Pluto Press The economic crisis is also a crisis for economic theory. Most analyses of the evolution of the crisis invoke three themes, contagion, networks and trust, yet none of these play a major role in standard macroeconomic models. What is needed is a theory in which these aspects are central. 2011 Level: advanced Complex Economics Alan Kirman Routledge 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 Achim Szepanski Springer Nature John K. Galbraith tells the economic history of a couple of economies (mostly UK, US and to a lesser extent Germany) from the end of the first world war until the Bretton Woods conference. He also provides a biography of John M. Keynes and outlines some central ideas of Keynes such as the possibility of an underemployment equilibrium. Galbraith complements the historical remarks by the biographical experiences he made in economic management (and in engaging with Keynes) serving as deputy head of the Office for Price administration during the second world war. 1977 Level: beginner The Age of Uncertainty Episode 7 The Mandarin Revolution John Kenneth Galbraith BBC, CBC, KCET and OECA Sheila Dow discusses the concept of radical uncertainty and the failure of neoclassical economics to integrate it into its analysis. As to the implications for financial regulation that arise from the presence of radical uncertainty she argues for institutional overhaul, where the banks see themselves as a licensed partner of the central bank and where rules, values, and conventions would be subject to a cultural shift. Also, Sheila Dow advocates for a renewed focus on retail banking. 2015 Level: advanced The Economics of Uncertainty Sheila Dow INET 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 Emilie Tricarico Exploring Economics This fresh and unique textbook provides students and general readers with an introduction to economics from a new and much needed perspective, characterised by its uniquely pluralist, sustainable, progressive and global approach. Unlike traditional textbooks, Introducing a New Economics contains the key concepts of pluralism, sustainability and justice. It provides students with the central questions covered by economics including resources, work, employment, poverty, inequality, power, capital, markets, money, debt and value. 2015 Level: beginner Introducing a New Economics Jack Reardon, Maria Alejandra Caporale Madi, and Molly Scott Cato Pluto Press

Are humans at their core seekers of their own pleasure or cooperative members of society? Paradoxically, they are both. Pleasure-seeking can take place only within the context of what works within a defined community, and central to any community are the evolved codes and principles guiding appropriate behavior, or morality. 2013 Level: advanced From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities Geoffrey M. Hodgson University of Chicago Press Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

Get ready to change the way you think about economics.

Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans--predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth--and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world. 2016 Level: advanced Misbehaving Richard H. Thaler W.W. Norton The world is coping with a global disaster, as the new Coronavirus takes a toll on many lost lives and a severe impact on economic activity. To provide a long-run perspective, this column documents the international response to a variety of disasters since 1790. Based on a new comprehensive database on loans extended by governments and central banks, official (sovereign-to-sovereign) international lending is much larger than generally known. Official lending spikes in times of global turmoil, such as wars, financial crises or natural disasters. Indeed, in these periods, official capital flows have repeatedly surpassed total private capital flows in the past two centuries. Wars, in particular, were accompanied by large surges in the volume of official cross-border lending. 2020 Level: advanced Coping with disasters: Lessons from two centuries of international response Sebastian Horn, Carmen Reinhart, Christoph Trebesch VOX CEPR Policy Portal "Bank Underground" is the staff blog of the Bank of England, founded to publish the views and insights of the people working for one of the world's oldest central banks. The blog covers a wide range of macroeconomic topics, mostly linked to the effects of monetary policy, of course, but not all the time. It provides timely, relevant analysis of contemporary challenges in economic policy and is thus often a perfect primer. Level: advanced Bank Underground Various staff of the 'Old Lady in Threadneedle Street' Bank of England staff blog The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) is rapidly spreading around the world. The real economy is simultaneously hit by a supply shock and a demand shock by the spread of coronavirus. Such a twin shock is a rare phenomenon in recent economic history. 2020 Level: beginner How to Manage the Economic Fallout of the Coronavirus Kavaljit Singh Madhyam Understanding international trade is central to economics and is currently a hot political issue. It’s an area where popular perceptions of mainstream economics are low, since they have historically missed some important downsides of trade agreements, especially the hollowing out of former manufacturing hubs in the Western world. et economists have for long time had a theory of trade with an impressive amount of scientific clout behind it: the gravity trade model. 2020 Level: beginner A Theory of Enormous Gravity Cahal Moran Rethinking Economics Is or has economics ever been the imperial social science? Could or should it ever be so? These are the central concerns of this book. It involves a critical reflection on the process of how economics became the way it is, in terms of a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy, that has, nonetheless, increasingly directed its attention to appropriating the subject matter of other social sciences through the process termed "economics imperialism". 2009 Level: advanced From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics Ben Fine, Dimitris Milonakis Routledge Kareem Megahed, Omar Ghannam and Heba Khalil, from Post-Colonialisms Today, provide insights on the early post-independence industrialization project in Egypt, in which the state played a central coordinating role. 2020 Level: advanced Lessons for Today from Egypt’s Post-Independence Industrialization Kareem Megahed, Omar Ghannam, and Heba Khalil Post-Colonialisms Today: postcolonialisms.regionsrefocus.org Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st century is presented and the central argument that capital returns have historically exceeded growth rates, thus exacerbating inequality is illustrated. 2015 Level: beginner An Introduction to Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century- A Macat Economics Analysis   Macat The economist Thomas Piketty presents a central argument of his book Capital in the Twenty-First century: if the rate of return to capital generally exceeds an economy's growth rate, this leads to a higher concentration of wealth in the long run. He furthermore shows with historical data how wealth and income inequality increased within the past decades. 2014 Level: advanced New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century Thomas Piketty TED Talks By conducting a discourse analysis (SKAD) in the field of academic economics textbooks, this paper aims at reconstructing frames and identity options offered to undergraduate students relating to the questions ‘Why study economics?’ and ‘Who do I become by studying economics?’. The analysis showed three major frames and respective identity offerings, all of which are contextualized theoretically, with prominent reference to the Foucauldian reflection of the science of Political Economy. Surprisingly, none of them encourages the student to think critically, as could have been expected in a pedagogical context. Taken together, economics textbooks appear as a “total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible action” (Foucault), therefore, as a genuine example of Foucauldian power structures. 2019 Level: beginner The power of economic textbooks: A discourse analysis Lukas Bäuerle Institute of Economics and Philosophy Cusanus Hochschule 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     Mainstream inflation theories in economics do little to explain the recent acceleration in price increases. The associated economic policy recommendations further increase the misery of low-income groups. 2023 Level: beginner The inflation conundrum Thomas Sablowski Exploring Economics 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. 2016 Level: beginner Economics Rules Dani Rodrik WW Norton This essay draws on several analyses on the gender impact of the recession and of austerity policies, in which authors acknowledge a threat to women’s labour market integration and a potential backlash to traditional gender labour structures. We contribute to that literature by asking whether recession and austerity convey a gender effect on educational attainment. Our aim in this essay is to portray the likely effects of austerity measures on gender equality with a focus on women’s participation in tertiary education and to hypothesize the implications of these scenarios for labour market effects, to be tested in future empirical research. 2017 Level: beginner The impact of Austerity on Gender in Tertiary Education: A Theoretical Analysis Zeynep M. Nettekoven and Izaskun Zuazu Exploring Economics This article considers the strengths of agent-based modelling and the ways that it can be used to help central banks understand the economy. These models provide a complement to more traditional economic modelling which has been criticised in the wake of the Great Recession. 2016 Level: advanced Agent-based models: understanding the economy from the bottom up Arthur Turrell Bank of England Industrial policy has been a central part of policy prescription by many heterodox schools arguably since mercantilism, but the theories behind it and types of policy advocated for have evolved over time. Recently some neoclassical economists have shown renewed interest in it, but is this mainstream acceptance a step back or a step forward from earlier heterodox ideas? 2021 Level: beginner Industrial policy Jezri Krinsky blobMetropolis

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