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

1030 results

Along with addressing core conceptual issues in defining heterodox economics, we will cover in some detail five heterodox traditions in economics: Marxian Economics, Institutional Economics, Post-Keynesian Economics, Feminist Economics, and Ecologi-cal Economics. In the first class meeting, we discuss the structure and goals of the course, as well as the expectations and requirements from the students. In addition, we will discuss the concept of heterodoxy in economics, along with discussing the concepts and key issues in mainstream and neoclassical economics.
2020
Level: advanced
Heterodox Economics
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
This text summarizes the content of the 2018 Nobel Prize winner W. Nordhaus. It is extended by some critical perspectives on this topic. The short dossier gives an overview of the most important texts we have read in the climate economics reading group.
2018
Level: beginner
Climate Economics and the DICE Model
Within the heterodox field one of the most active topics is related to the theory of economic growth and distribution This is a textbook for advance undergraduate and graduate students Throughout its 18 chapters Classical Neoclassical and post Keynesian models are developed Each chapter contains study problems and suggested readings …
2019
Level: expert
Growth and Distribution
Firms are the primary places where economic activity takes place in modern capitalist economies: they are where most stuff is produced; where many of us spend 40 hours a week; and where big decisions are made about how to allocate resources. Establishing how they work is hugely important because it helps us to understand patterns of production and consumption, including how firms will react to changes in economic conditions and policy. And a well-established literature – led by post-Keynesians and institutionalists – holds that the best way to determine how firms work is to…wait for it...ask firms how they work. This a clearly sensible proposition that is contested in economics for some reason, but we’ll ignore the controversy here and just explore the theory that springs from this approach.
2020
Level: beginner
The ‘How Firms Work’ Approach to How Firms Work
Thirty-years of economic transformation has turned China into one of the major players in the global capitalist economy. However, its economic growth has generated rising problems in inequality, alienation, and sustainability with the agrarian crises of the 1990s giving rise to real social outcry to the extent that they became the object of central government policy reformulations.
2015
Level: advanced
Social Economy in China and the World
Debunking Economics - Revised and Expanded Edition exposes what many non-economists may have suspected and a minority of economists have long known: that economic theory is not only unpalatable, but also plain wrong. When the original Debunking Economics was published back in 2001, the market economy seemed invincible, and conventional "neoclassical" economic theory basked in the limelight.
2011
Level: beginner
Debunking Economics - Revised and Expanded Edition
Economic development is a process of continuous technological innovation and structural transformation. Development thinking is inherently tied to the quest for sustainable growth strategies. This book provides a neoclassical approach for studying the determinants of economic structure and its transformation and draws new insights for development policy.
2012
Level: advanced
New Structural Economics
Economics: A New Introduction provides a fresh introduction to real economics. Highlighting the complex and changing nature of economic activity, this wide-ranging text employs a pragmatic mix of old and new methods to examine the role of values and theoretical beliefs in economic life and in economists’ understanding of it.
1999
Level: beginner
Economics
An essay of the writing workshop on contemporary issues in the field of Nigerian economics: In Nigeria, it appears that there is nothing in the constitution, which excludes the participation of women in politics. Yet, when it comes to actual practice, there is extensive discrimination. The under-representation of women in political participation gained root due to the patriarchal practice inherent in our society, much of which were obvious from pre-colonial era till date.
Level: beginner
Women Participation – Women Contribution to Economics and Politics
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
After completing the module, participants should be able to have general overview on the theory of commons. They can differentiate between neoclassical, new institutional and social/critical commons theory and can use these theories to assess real life common-pool resource management and commoning pratices.
2021
Level: beginner
Future of Commons
The world is still feeling reverberations from the financial crisis of 2008 foreseen by neither politicians nor economists The history of capitalism has been punctuated by major crises exposing the fragility of our entire economic system How has capitalism despite these ruptures managed to each time resurface more resilient and …
Level: beginner
The Global Financial Crisis
Photo by Kaitlyn Ashley on Unsplash The world is still feeling reverberations from the financial crisis of 2008 foreseen by neither politicians nor economists The history of capitalism has been punctuated by major crises exposing the fragility of our entire economic system How has capitalism despite these ruptures managed to …
2012
Level: beginner
The Future of Capitalism
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?
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
This course will expose students to some of the key debates that link digital transformations to economic, social, and political inequalities. Students will be familiarised with a variety of theoretical movements in development studies and internet studies: exploring thinking that frames the internet as a leveller that can bridge divides vs. exploring the internet as an infrastructure that amplifies existing inequalities.
2022
Level: expert
Digital Capitalism and its Inequalities
How countries achieve long-term GDP growth is up there with the most important topics in economics. As Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas put it “the consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.” Ricardo Hausmann et al take a refreshing approach to this question in their Atlas of Economic Complexity. They argue a country’s growth depends on the complexity of its economy: it must have a diverse economy which produces a wide variety of products, including ones that cannot be produced much elsewhere. The Atlas goes into detail on exactly what complexity means, how it fits the data, and what this implies for development. Below I will offer a summary of their arguments, including some cool data visualisations.
2020
Level: beginner
GDP Growth: It’s Complicated
In this book the author develops a new approach to uncertainty in economics, which calls for a fundamental change in the methodology of economics. It provides a comprehensive overview and critical appraisal of the economic theory of uncertainty and shows that uncertainty was originally conceptualized both as an epistemic and an ontological problem.
2017
Level: advanced
Uncertainty in Economics
This book sets out to encourage a debate about the role that economic theory and philosophy of economics can play. A good part of economics consists of theoretical developments which describe completely imaginary worlds and have no connections to actual market economies
2016
Level: advanced
A Philosophical Framework for Rethinking Theoretical Economics and Philosophy of Economics
One of the most authoritative authors on the intellectual heritage of John Maynard Keynes, Robert Skidelsky draws a sketch of the great man's economic thinking both accessible and insightful.
2010
Level: beginner
Keynes: A Very Short Introduction
Despite some diversification modern economics still attracts a great deal of criticism. This is largely due to highly unrealistic assumptions underpinning economic theory, explanatory failure, poor policy framing, and a dubious focus on prediction. Many argue that flaws continue to owe much of their shortcomings to neoclassical economics.
2015
Level: beginner
What is Neoclassical Economics?
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.
2019
Level: beginner
Politics as supermarket? Or how current policy design changes the relationship between the state and its citizens
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
2020
Level: advanced
The Role of Women in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The term "de-risking" can be seen as one element of a strategy aimed at discursively reframing the trade policy confrontation with China. This confrontation has mainly been driven by the US in recent years and received initially cautious, but later growing support from the EU.
2023
Level: beginner
De-risking, de-coupling, de-globalization?
The first day of the workshop is intended to initiate students to the foundational concepts of ecological economics. Ecological economics is an ecological critique of economics, applying the energetics of life to the study of the economy. It also investigates the social distribution of environmental costs and benefits. It does so by deconstructing concepts that are taken for granted like “nature” or “the economy”, excavating their ideological origins.
2022
Level: beginner
Political ecology, degrowth, and the Green New Deal
Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy.
2019
Level: beginner
The Knowledge Economy
After completing the workshop in Post Keynesian Economics participants should be able to describe the main differences and similarities between PKE and other schools of thought.
2021
Level: beginner
Post Keynesian Economics
This article explores if power dynamics in the household can be changed, and if so, how. In this context the focus is laid on government childcare policy and its various channels of possible influence.
Level: beginner
How can childcare policy affect intra-household power dynamics?
Getting to the policy discussion table is one of the objectives pursued by feminist scholars and advocates. However, some participants in this process have remarked that “you cannot get to the policy discussion table until you have proven that you can crunch the numbers.”
2006
Level: beginner
Statistics for Feminists
The productive work of widely distributed academic research has contributed substantially, over the postwar period, to important advances in our understanding. It has also offered a clearer recognition of many unresolved problems. Never theless, the progress achieved over the last decades, ex hibited by the systematic application of "theory" to actual issues and observable problems, could not overcome a per vasive sense of dissatisfaction.
2012
Level: advanced
Economics Social Institutions
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?

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