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71 results

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
2017
Level: beginner
Socialist alternatives to capitalism I: Marx to Hayek
Exploring Economics, an open-access e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
2017
Level: advanced
Socialist alternatives to capitalism II: Vienna to Santa Fe
Environmental cost-benefit analysis was developed by economists in the belief that monetary valuation of the environmental repercussions of economic activity is essential if the "environment " stands any chance of being included in government and business decisions.
2006
Level: advanced
Alternatives for Environmental Valuation
Sabel and Zeitlin present the persistence of small firms in Europe against the rise of mass production and modern enterprises Their article starts by analysing how mass production can be considered a historical necessity for the classical view as it is a highly specialized structure where man and machine can …
1985
Level: advanced
Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization
What does GDP measure? How was it constructed and how did it become so important? What are alternatives? A historical introduction into the critique of GDP as measure of economic welfare.
2015
Level: beginner
Dirk Philipsen on GDP
Markets are the focus in modern economics: when they work, when they don’t and what we can or can’t do about it. There are many ways to study markets and how we do so will inevitably affect our conclusions about them, including policy recommendations which can influence governments and other major organisations. Pluralism can be a vital corrective to enacting real policies based on only one perspective and a plethora of approaches provide alternatives to the canonical view. Although they have differing implications, these approaches share the idea that we should take a historical approach, analysing markets on a case-by-case basis; and they share a faith in the power of both individuals and collectives to overcome the problems encountered when organising economic activity.
2020
Level: beginner
Markets, How Do They Work?
In this paper the main developments in post-Keynesian macroeconomics since the mid- 1990s will be reviewed. For this purpose the main differences between heterodox economics in general, including post-Keynesian economics, and orthodox economics will be reiterated and an overview over the strands of post-Keynesian economics, their commonalities and developments since the 1930s will be outlined. This will provide the grounds for touching upon three important areas of development and progress of post-Keynesian macroeconomics since the mid-1990s: first, the integration of distribution issues and distributional conflict into short- and long-run macroeconomics, both in theoretical and in empirical/applied works; second, the integrated analysis of money, finance and macroeconomics and its application to changing institutional and historical circumstances, like the process of financialisation; and third, the development of full-blown macroeconomic models, providing alternatives to the mainstream 'New Consensus Model' (NCM), and allowing to derive a full macroeconomic policy mix as a more convincing alternative to the one implied and proposed by the mainstream NCM, which has desperately failed in the face of the recent crises.
2012
Level: advanced
Post-Keynesian macroeconomics since the mid-1990s: Main developments
Pluralism includes mainstream economics. Our campaign for pluralism, including this series, have generally focused on ideas outside the mainstream on the basis that it gets plenty of attention already so we want to spend our time exposing people to alternatives. Nevertheless, mainstream ideas deserve some attention. On top of this, a curious feature of modern economics education is that some of the best ideas from mainstream economics are not even taught to undergraduates! During this series I will explore such ideas, starting today with the market construction technique known as ‘matching’.
2020
Level: beginner
It's a match!
Beyond Growth is a collection of educational materials offering a reflection on growth. It was created as a joint project of the associations Fairbindung e. V. and Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, both based in Germany. The page provides learning materials and methods  to stimulate thinking about the conditions of our current economy as well as possible alternatives.
2016
Level: beginner
Beyond Growth - Educational Materials for a Socio-ecological Transformation
This film looks at the role economic growth has had in bringing about this crisis, and explores alternatives to it, offering a vision of hope for the future and a better life for all within planetary boundaries.
2020
Level: beginner
Fairytales of Growth
In Scene on Radio Season 7, Capitalism, host and producer John Biewen and co-host Ellen McGirt outline the history of capitalism, from its emergence in Europe 500 years ago up to the present. And they explore alternatives, from reforms of capitalism as we know it to more radical transformations.
2024
Level: beginner
Scene on Radio - Capitalism
This brief but comprehensive account of the Post Keynesian approach to economic theory and policy is ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in economics, public policy and other social sciences. Clear, non-technical and with a strong policy focus, it will also appeal to all of those who are dissatisfied with mainstream economics and wish to explore the alternatives.
2015
Level: advanced
Advanced Introduction to Post Keynesian Economics
Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary contains over one hundred essays on transformative initiatives and alternatives to the currently dominant processes of globalized development, including its structural roots in modernity, capitalism, state domination, and masculinist values.
2019
Level: beginner
Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary
Usually, Critical Theory and Economics are, for better or worse, no longer seen to be in a continuum. This article by Lukas Meisner serves as an introduction to Critical Theory for all (heterodox) economists, who want to understand and explain what they can, otherwise, just state and describe.
2024
Level: beginner
Critical Theory for Heterodox Economists: Questioning the Premises of Supply and Demand
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
In this essay, the author takes a critical perspective on the pursuit of growth as the solution for providing for environmental sustainability and economic stability in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing from the framework of dependency theory and presenting brief insights into European core-periphery relations the author then argues for the implementation of an alternative strategy to development that is built around the concept of self-reliance.
2018
Level: advanced
Dependency in Central and Eastern Europe - Self-reliance and the need to move beyond economic growth
Deforestation is estimated to be responsible for about 12-29% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This essay will explore ecological economics as an alternative lens through which to approach forest conservation and the acceleration of climate change.
2018
Level: beginner
Ecological Economics: A Solution to Deforestation?
Marxian Political Economy focuses on the exploitation of labour by capital. The economy is not conceived as consisting of neutral transactions for exchange and cooperation, but instead as having developed historically out of asymmetric distributions of power, ideology and social conflicts.
Marxian Political Economy
Fabian Georgi analyses how migration and borders are connected to capitalism.
2024
Level: advanced
Recruiting skilled labour, while closing borders? The connection between migration, border regimes and capitalism
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
Diane Perrons and Sigrid Stagl combine feminist and critical environmental economics perspectives to develop a critique of the free market growth model and offer new ideas for a more sustainable gender equitable model of development in the interests of all.
2019
Level: advanced
A Feminist Political Economy for an Inclusive and Sustainable Society
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 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
The objective of the course is to explore the main strengths and weaknesses of orthodox and heterodox paradigms within development economics.
2019
Level: beginner
Issues in Development Economics
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
Evolutionary economics focuses on economic change. Hence processes of change such as growth, innovation, structural and technological change, as well as economic development in general are analysed. Evolutionary economics often gives emphasis to populations and (sub-)systems.
Evolutionary Economics
In parallel to rising inflation numbers, the concept of profit inflation has clearly risen to prominence in recent years. But what is it exactly? This dossier aims not only to collect the most important publications on profit inflation but also intends to map out the development of the discourse and the different positions within the debate.
2024
Level: advanced
Profit Inflation: Mapping the debate
'Impressive... provides a very good compendium of what are usually classified as "heterodox" development economics... an excellent volume.' Journal of International Development This important new collection tackles the failure of neoliberal reform to generate longterm growth and reduce poverty in many developing and transition economies.
2003
Level: advanced
Rethinking Development Economics
This syllabus provides an overview of the content of the Philosophy and Economics course at the University of Waterloo.
2019
Level: beginner
Philosophy and Economics
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2019
Level: advanced
Pluriverse
Today it feels like everybody is talking about the problems and crises of our times: the climate and resource crisis, Greece's permanent socio-political crisis or the degrading exploitative practices of the textile industry.
2019
Level: beginner
At the expense of others?

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