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721 results
Could working less make people and the planet better off? Find out in this dossier by exploring the landscape of working time reduction policies and their potential for reimagining, restructuring, and redistributing time as a political resource in the 21st century economy.
Could Working Time Reduction Policies Save People and the Planet?
Podcast series with six 12-minute parts introducing the the values and ideas behind our neoliberal economic system: where it came from, how it spread, and how we could do things differently.
Beginner’s Guide to Neoliberalism
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.
Agent-based models: understanding the economy from the bottom up
Since the 1980s, the financial sector and its role have increased significantly. This development is often referred to as financialization. Authors working in the heterodox tradition have raised the question whether the changing role of finance manifests a new era in the history of capitalism. The present article first provides some general discussion on the term financialization and presents some stylized facts which highlight the rise of finance. Then, it proceeds by briefly reviewing the main arguments in the Marxian framework that proposedly lead to crisis. Next, two schools of thought in the Marxian tradition are reviewed which consider financialization as the latest stage of capitalism. They highlight the contradictions imposed by financialization that disrupt the growth process and also stress the fragilities imposed by the new growth regime. The two approaches introduced here are the Social Structure of Accumulation Theory and Monthly Review School. The subsequent part proceeds with the Post-Keynesian theory, first introducing potential destabilizing factors before discussing financialization and the finance-led growth regime. The last section provides a comparative summary. While the basic narrative in all approaches considered here is quite similar, major differences stem from the relationship between neoliberalism and financialization and, moreover, from the question of whether financialization can be considered cause or effect.
Financialization and the crises of capitalism
Modern authors have identified a variety of striking economic patterns, most importantly those involving the distribution of incomes and profit rates. In recent times, the econophysics literature has demonstrated that bottom incomes follow an exponential distribution, top incomes follow a Pareto, profit rates display a tent-shaped distribution. This paper is concerned with the theory underlying various explanations of these phenomena. Traditional econophysics relies on energy-conserving “particle collision” models in which simulation is often used to derive a stationary distribution. Those in the Jaynesian tradition rely on entropy maximization, subject to certain constraints, to infer the final distribution. This paper argues that economic phenomena should be derived as results of explicit economic processes. For instance, the entry and exit process motivated by supply decisions of firms underlies the drift-diffusion form of wage, interest and profit rates arbitrage. These processes give rise to stationary distributions that turn out to be also entropy maximizing. In arbitrage approach, entropy maximization is a result. In the Jaynesian approaches, entropy maximization is the means.
The Econ in Econophysics
This paper surveys the development of the concept of socialism from the French Revolution to the socialist calculation debate. Karl Marx’s politics of revolutionary socialism led by an empowered proletariat nurtured by capital accumulation envisions socialism as a “top-down” system resting on political institutions, despite Marx’s keen appreciation of the long-period analysis of the organization of social production in the classical political economists. Collectivist thinking in the work of Enrico Barone and Wilfredo Pareto paved the way for the discussion of socialism purely in terms of the allocation of resources. The Soviet experiment abandoned the mixed economy model of the New Economic Policy for a political-bureaucratic administration of production only loosely connected to theoretical concepts of socialism. The socialist calculation debate reductively recast the problem of socialism as a problem of allocation of resources, leading to general equilibrium theory. Friedrich Hayek responded to the socialist calculation debate by shifting the ground of discussion from class relations to information revelation
Socialist alternatives to capitalism I: Marx to Hayek
South Africa’s taxi industry was established by black people in the 1930s and has faced numerous challenges, including those posed by decades of apartheid laws. Covid-19 has highlighted contemporary challenges facing the industry and has also raised questions about how it can keep ‘driving forward’. This podcast explores questions such as what changes need to be made, and who can be the ‘drivers’ of such change.
Driving Forward Social and Solidarity Economy: The Case of South Africa's Taxi Industry
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 …
Understanding Crises - What to take from here for better policy advice in the future?
Public lectures on some Traditional Economic Solutions to poverty in Nigeria, specifically the Igbo Apprentice System, Yoruba Ajo Thrift Savings, and Hausa Integral Communalism.
Traditional Wealth Creation Schemes in Nigeria
Aim of this intensive workshop is 1.) to introduce the participants to the macroeconomic workings of the climate crisis as the background of sustainable finance; 2.) to introduce financial assets with ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria attached to them and their markets and important institutional players; 3.) to provide a critical perspective on the current setup of sustainable finance; 4.) and to work on in-depth case studies illustrating the workings on ESG-finance markets, its emitters and traders as well as their macroeconomic implications.
Sustainable Finance – Hoax or necessity. A global perspective
In a span of around 12 weeks, the course covers a wide range of topics including agent-based modeling, networks, dynamic, chaos, information, fractals, cooperation models and scaling in biology and society. The course acts as a perfect beginner level introduction spanning a wide range of topics in the field of complexity.
Introduction to Complexity
The leading edges of economic thinking in the early 21st century are marked by a nascent pluralism - a positive valuing of difference and complexity - regarding the nature and evolution of human behaviour and economic organization. Economic Pluralism brings these pluralist sensibilities to the fore.
Economic Pluralism
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.
From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities
This invaluable volume brings together seminal articles with a significant behavioural content on various areas in macroeconomics.
Behavioural Macroeconomics
With a focus on Chile, Pinochet’s Economic Accomplices: An Unequal Country byForce uses theoretical arguments and empirical studies to argue that focusing onthe behavior of economic actors of the dictatorship is crucial to achieve basic objectivesin terms of justice, memory, reparation, and non-repetition measures.
Pinochet's Economic Accomplices
This edited volume explores how dependency theories can be adapted and applied to understand limits and possibilities for development in Latin America and Europe It explores core periphery relations across different sets of countries specific mechanisms of dependency as well as the role of race and gender in dependency analysis …
Dependent Capitalisms in Contemporary Latin America and Europe
The bestselling classic that examines the history of economic thought from Adam Smith to Karl Marx—“all the economic lore most general readers conceivably could want to know, served up with a flourish” (The New York Times). The Worldly Philosophers not only enables us to see more deeply into our history but helps us better understand our own times. In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
The Worldly Philosophers
Surviving the Future is a story drawn from the fertile ground of the late David Fleming's extraordinary 'Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It'. That hardback consists of four hundred and four interlinked dictionary entries, inviting readers to choose their own path through its radical vision. Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure can be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has selected and edited one of these potential narratives to create Surviving the Future. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyable writing style remain Fleming's, but are presented here at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format
Surviving the Future
By focusing on the human side as well as the intellectual dimensions of how economists work and think, this collection of interviews with top economists of the 20th century becomes a startling and lively introduction to the modern world of macroeconomics.
Inside the Economist's Mind
Representing everyone An Analysis of the Representation of Migrant Women by official Labour Organizations in Germany Author Tess Herrmann Review Deborah Sielert This is an essay of the writing workshop Gender and the Economy Perspektives of Feminist Economics published on 17 May 2017 updated on 16 August 2017 Why we …
Representing everyone – Migrant Women's Representation by Labour Organizations in Germany
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?
The Gender strategy of the IMF: The way to go towards gender equality or a mere instrumentalisation of feminism?
In this essay the author elaborates on the EU's perspective on the fast growing sector of the platform economy.
Sharing is Caring? On the EU- Narrative on Platform Economy
It is perhaps fitting that the seriousness of the coronavirus threat hit most of the Western world around the Ides of March, the traditional day of reckoning of outstanding debts in Ancient Rome. After all, problems and imbalances have accumulated in the Western capitalist system over four decades, ostensibly since it took the neoliberal road out of the 1970s crisis and kept going along it, heedless of the crises and problems it led to.
The Unexpected Reckoning: Coronavirus and Capitalism
Whether a black swan or a scapegoat, Covid-19 is an extraordinary event. Declared by the WHO as a pandemic, Covid-19 has given birth to the concept of the economic “sudden stop.” We need extraordinary measures to contain it.
Triggering a Global Financial Crisis: Covid-19 as the Last Straw
What influence do changes in tax policy or state decisions on expenditure have on economic growth? For decades, this question has been controversially debated.
What is the fiscal multiplier and why is it so controversial?
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Economic Impact and Possible Disruptions
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Role of Women in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Fabian Georgi analyses how migration and borders are connected to capitalism.
Recruiting skilled labour, while closing borders? The connection between migration, border regimes and capitalism
Mariana Mazzucato explains how we lost sight of what value means and why we need to rethink our current financial systems so capitalism can be steered toward a bold, innovative and sustainable future that works for all of us.
What is economic value, and who creates it?
Most mainstream neoclassical economists completely failed to anticipate the crisis which broke in 2007 and 2008. There is however a long tradition of economic analysis which emphasises how growth in a capitalist economy leads to an accumulation of tensions and results in periodic crises. This paper first reviews the work of Karl Marx who was one of the first writers to incorporate an analysis of periodic crisis in his analysis of capitalist accumulation. The paper then considers the approach of various subsequent Marxian writers, most of whom locate periodic cyclical crises within the framework of longer-term phases of capitalist development, the most recent of which is generally seen as having begun in the 1980s. The paper also looks at the analyses of Thorstein Veblen and Wesley Claire Mitchell, two US institutionalist economists who stressed the role of finance and its contribution to generating periodic crises, and the Italian Circuitist writers who stress the problematic challenge of ensuring that bank advances to productive enterprises can successfully be repaid.
Finance and Crisis: Marxian, Institutionalist and Circuitist approaches
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.
Modern Monetary Theory and the public purpose
Global Value Chains (GVCs) started to play an increasing and key role in the global economy from the 1990s on. The market mechanism in GVCs supports industrialisation in the Global South and under certain conditions product and process upgrading. But GVCs do not lead to the catching-up of countries in the sense of them approaching real GDP per capita levels comparable with developed countries. These arguments are supported by a critical interpretation of the traditional trade theory, the New Trade Theory and specific approaches to explain GVCs, especially different governance structures and power relationships. Several case studies support these arguments. For catching-up, countries need comprehensive horizontal and vertical industrial policy and policies for social coherence. The small number of countries which managed to catch up did this in different variations.
Global Value Chains in economic development
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