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321 results

2012
Level: advanced
Why are some nations more prosperous than others? Why Nations Fail sets out to answer this question, with a compelling and elegantly argued new theory: that it is not down to climate, geography or culture, but because of institutions.
2015
Level: advanced
Finance. Climate. Food. Work. How are the crises of the twenty-first century connected?In "Capitalism in the Web of Life", Jason W. Moore argues that the sources of today's global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature, including human nature.
2019
Level: beginner
This course provides future change makers in public and private sectors with a comprehensive overview on the structures and actors that shape markets.
2021
Level: beginner
Introduction Economics is by necessity a multi paradigmatic science Several theoretical structures exist side by side and each theory can never be more than a partial theory Rothschild 1999 Likening scientific work to the self coordinating invisible hand of the market Michael Polanyi cautioned strongly against centralized attempts to steer …
2010
Level: advanced
As the world's energy system faces a period of unprecedented change, a global struggle over who controls the sector--and for what purposes--is intensifying. The question of "green capitalism" is now unavoidable, for capitalist planners and anti-capitalist struggles alike.
2023
Level: beginner
The Philosophy of Economics Foundational Text provides a systematic and well-structured overview over the field of philosophy of economics.
2017
Level: beginner
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?
 
Institutional economics focuses on the role of social institutions in terms of laws or contracts, but also those of social norms and patterns of human behaviour that are connected to the social organisation of production, distribution and consumption in the economy.
2013
Level: advanced
Some economic events are so major and unsettling that they “change everything.” Such is the case with the financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007 and is still a drag on the world economy. Yet enough time has now elapsed for economists to consider questions that run deeper than the usual focus on the immediate causes and consequences of the crisis.
2011
Level: beginner
Capitalism cannot fulfil the promises of the French revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Why? Richard Wollf elaborates on Marx's analysis of the distribution and organisation of surplus in society and his conclusion that there is something inherently wrong in capitalist class structure that still causes economic crisis in our modern times. Change requires changing the organisation of the production. This goes far beyond a discussion of 'more-state' vs. 'less-state'.
2015
Level: beginner
Mark Blyth criticises the political inability to solve the persistent economic crisis in Europe against the background of a deflationary environment. Ideological blockades and impotent institutions are the mutually reinforcing causes of European stagnation. The deeper roots lie in the structural change of the economic system since the 1980s, when neoliberalism emerged as hegemonic ideology. This ideology prepared the ground for austerity and resulting deflationary pressures and a strategy of all seeking to export their way out of trouble. Worryingly this is breeding populist and nationalist resentments in Europe.
2020
Level: advanced
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.
Level: beginner
The current Great Recession, the worst crisis that capitalism has faced since the Great Depression, has failed, at least so far, to generate a change in the teaching and practice of Macroeconomics. This seems bizarre as if nothing has happened and the economists are just going about doing business as usual. In light of this, the current paper attempts to address how Macroeconomics ought to be taught to students at the advanced intermediate level, which gives them an overall perspective on the subject.
2021
Level: advanced
This essay analyses how the role of central banks changed since the global financial crisis, and how this directional change was accelerated by the outbreak of Covid-19.
2022
Level: beginner
The article discusses whether the turning point in EU's Russia policy with sanctions aimed directly at Putin's war chest of foreign reserves will change the landscape of countries' foreign assets.
2015
Level: beginner
An examination of women's changing economic roles. Includes an analysis of labour force participation, wage inequality, gender differences in education, intra-household distribution of resources, economics of reproduction, and how technological change affects women.
2022
Level: advanced
"Yuliya Yurchenko is a senior lecturer and researcher in political economy at University of Greenwich. She is currently in Ukraine on an extraordinary leave. And while she writes that she is, for the moment, in relative safety, that could change any moment. Being a Ukrainian, an activist and an academic, Yuliya traveled to Ukraine on Feb 19, 2022 as part of a fact-finding and solidarity mission with a number of MPs, trade unionists and journalists. The goal, she says, of this mission is to connect with civil society organizations, trade unions, activists and politicians, and “to express direct, cross-border solidarity from the UK working class to the Ukrainian working class.”
2017
Level: advanced
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.
2022
Level: beginner
In order to address discrimination, we must understand and address its fundamental basis of systemic oppression. Stratification economics goes beyond myopic mainstream conceptualisations of discrimination and recognises the historical, institutional, and structural factors that create and maintain socioeconomic disparities and hierarchies. To critically approach the economics of discrimination, this workshop will focus on stratification economics, a systematic and empirically grounded approach to addressing intergroup inequality (Darity, 2005). Focusing on racial discrimination, we will discuss the core elements of stratification economics, critically evaluate its relevance, and apply these understandings to construct case studies and solutions for change. In our discussions, we will consider an array of topics, including intersecting oppressions, reparative justice, and the role of knowledge production in overcoming injustice and creating a better world.
2013
Level: advanced
Transition from central planning to a market economy, involving large-scale institutional change and reforms at all levels, is often described as the greatest social science experiment in modern times.
2014
Level: beginner
Why do we think that sovereign debt must be repaid--even after a major regime change--in order to maintain country creditworthiness? In a fascinating and highly original book, Odette Lienau argues that this conventional wisdom is overly simplistic and in some respects entirely wrong.
2013
Level: advanced
Three dominant forces worldwide are driving change today in our financial markets: competition, technology and regulation. But their collective impact in reshaping the markets, though they may be viewed individually as desirable or well-intentioned, is producing challenging results that are difficult to predict, hard to control and not easy to understand.
2015
Level: advanced
The book is a collection of 51 texts by different scholars and activists, who each adds a dimension/perspective to the topics of degrowth and societal transformation. A societal transformation towards a degrowth society is dependent on a lot of ideas coming together and creating change from various starting points within a society. Therefore, the authors are quite diverse and their contributions vary from being philosophical, natural science based, economic, sociological and so forth. Some are specfiically focused on a concept and others are a more broad critique of e.g., capitalism or growth.
2021
Level: advanced
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.
2021
Level: beginner
The piece describes some of the effects that Nixon's decision to delink the dollar from gold in the 1970s had for the relationship between the IMF and its member states. A focus is on the negative effects of this change on societies in the Global South.
2023
Level: beginner
Although money plays a key role in our lives, the workings of our monetary system are a mystery to most of us. ‘The Waterworks of Money’ by cartographer Carlijn Kingma is an attempt to demystify the world of big finance. It visualizes the flow of money through our society, its hidden power made manifest. If you see money as water, our monetary system is the irrigation system that waters the economy. The better the flow, the more prosperous society will be. Just as water makes crops thrive, so money sets the economy in motion. Or at least that’s the idea. In reality, inequality is growing in many countries and people are dealing with a ‘cost of living crisis’. Meanwhile, the progress with making our economies sustainable is stalling, and financial instability remains an ongoing threat. These problems cannot be seen in isolation from the architecture of our money system. If we truly want to tackle them, we will have to address the design flaws of our current money system. For more info check: https://www.waterworksofmoney.com or https://www.carlijnkingma.com For the Dutch version of the animation check: https://www.ftm.nl/waterwerk Current exhibitions: 'The Future of Money' at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, 14 April, 2023 - 8 September 2023. 'Plumbing The System' at the Dutch Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, 20 May 2023 - 26 November 2023 The second animation video of this series will be released in September 2023. The Waterworks of Money is a collaboration of cartographer Carlijn Kingma, investigative financial journalist Thomas Bollen, and professor New Finance Martijn van der Linden. Kingma spent 2300 drawing hours, based on in-depth research and interviews with more than 100 experts –ranging from central bank governors and board members of pension funds and banks to politicians and monetary activists. The structure of our monetary system is not a natural phenomenon. We can choose to change its architecture. Designing the money system– and the laws and institutions that govern it–is ultimately a democratic task, and not a commercial or technocratic one. In practice, however, there is a major obstacle impeding the democratic process: financial illiteracy. By making finance and money needlessly complex, economists, bankers and tax specialists have turned most of us into ‘financial illiterates’. Everyone who doesn’t speak their financial jargon is excluded from the democratic debate on how our monetary system should work. The Waterworks of Money bypasses the financial jargon. It is an attempt to boost systemic financial literacy. Only if ordinary citizens develop their own vocabulary to participate in the debate about their financial future, can they tell their politicians which kind of ‘financial irrigation system’ they want. Authors: Carlijn Kingma, Thomas Bollen, Martijn Jeroen van der Linden Animation: Tiepes, Christian Schinkel, Cathleen van den Akker Narrator: Loveday Smith Translation: Erica Moore Voice recording: Huub Krom Music and sound: Rob Peters Photography: Studio OPPA Partners: Follow the Money, De Haagse Hogeschool, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Brave New Works, Rabobank, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Rijksmuseum Twenthe
2018
Level: advanced
How can we establish new institutions and practices in order to use fare-free public transport as a beacon for sustainable mobility and a low-carbon lifestyle? The author of this essay elaborates on how practice theory and institutional economics can help to answer this question.
2019
Level: beginner
The objective of the course is to explore the main strengths and weaknesses of orthodox and heterodox paradigms within development economics.
2019
Level: expert
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 …
2018
Level: advanced
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.
2023
Level: beginner
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.
2019
Level: beginner
In this essay the authors argue for a wider concept of care work that includes community building, civic engagement and environmental activism. On the basis of the case of Cargonomia, a grassroot initiative in Budapest, they show that such a wider concept of care work could allow for different narratives that promote sustainable lifestyles with a milder environmental and social impact on the planet and its communities.

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