895 results

2021
Level: beginner
The outbreak of COVID-19 has substantially accelerated the digitalization of the economy. Yet, this unprecedented growth of digital technology brought novel challenges to the labour market. Rise in income inequalities and precarious working conditions or polarization of jobs. In this essay, we try to assess what tools to use to counter these trends.
2019
Level: beginner
This syllabus provides an overview of the content of the Philosophy and Economics course at the University of Waterloo.
2022
Level: advanced
This article by Rüdiger Bachmann et.al. discusses the economic effects of a potential cut-off of the German economy from Russian energy imports.
2020
Level: advanced
This book offers the first systematic analysis of economic thought concerning war.
2019
Level: expert
This paper attempts to clarify how the European economic crisis from 2007 onwards can be understood from the perspective of a Marxian monetary theory of value that emphasizes intrinsic, structural flaws regarding capitalist reproduction. Chapter two provides an empirical description of the European economic crisis, which to some extent already reflects the structural theoretical framework presented in chapter three. Regarding the theoretical framework Michael Heinrich's interpretation of 'the' Marxian monetary theory of value will be presented. Heinrich identifies connections between production and realization, between profit and interest rate as well as between industrial and fictitious capital, which represent contradictory tendencies for which capitalism does not have simple balancing processes. In the context of a discussion of 'structural logical aspects' of Marx's Critique of the Political Economy, explanatory deficits of Heinrich's approach are analyzed. In the following, it is argued that Fred Moseley's view of these 'structural logical aspects' allows empirical 'applications' of Marxian monetary theories of value. It is concluded that a Marxian monetary theory of value, with the characteristics of expansive capital accumulation and its limitations, facilitates a structural analysis of the European economic crisis from 2007 onwards. In this line of argument, expansive production patterns are expressed, among other things, in global restructuring processes, while consumption limitations are mitigated by expansive financial markets and shifts in ex-port destinations.
2012
Level: advanced
A systematic comparison of the three major economic theories, showing how they differ and why these differences matter in shaping economic theory and practice.

Contending Economic Theories offers a unique comparative treatment of the three main theories in economics as it is taught today: neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Each is developed and discussed in its own chapter, yet also differentiated from and compared to the other two theories.

1994
Level: advanced
At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter was working on his monumantal History of Economic Analysis. Unprecedented in scope, the book was to provide a complete history of economic theory from Ancient Greece to the end of the Second World War. A major contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics, History of Economic Analysis rapidly gained a reputation as a unique and classic work.
2020
Level: beginner
Overview page for the collection of nobel laureateas on Exploring Economics
2020
Level: advanced
What influence do changes in tax policy or state decisions on expenditure have on economic growth? For decades, this question has been controversially debated.
2017
Level: advanced
One hundred years ago the idea of 'the economy' didn't exist. Now, improving the economy has come to be seen as perhaps the most important task facing modern societies. Politics and policymaking are conducted in the language of economics and economic logic shapes how political issues are thought about and addressed.
2014
Level: advanced
Economic theory must distinguish between publicly owned and privately owned property if it is to account for the effect of institutions on the behavior of individuals. Careful study of the theories of Marxists and the real-world experience in the Soviet economy offer important lessons and insight for economic modeling and the ongoing development of theory. In this course, Marxist/Leninist theory and Soviet reality will be studied with an open mind, and with the goal of taking lessons from the case study. To what extent was the Soviet economy an accurate expression of Marxist theory? If Marxism were tried somewhere else would the results be the same?
2021
Level: advanced
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.
2020
Level: beginner
In this podcast 'How Economic Theory and Policy Reinforce Racism' William Spriggs, the AFL-CIO’s chief economist, discusses the inadequacies of the pandemic economic rescue package and the influence of mainstream economic theory. He further explores how mainstream economic theory continues to fail everyone, especially Black communities, by disregarding history.
2018
Level: beginner
This essay deals with the concepts of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) and Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).
2015
Level: advanced
"Why information grows" by Cesar Hidalgo and the atlas of economic complexity. César visits the RSA to present a new view of the relationship between the individual and collective knowledge, linking information theory, economics and biology...
2021
Level: advanced
This is an important contribution both to advancing theoretical and empirical understandings of African monetary sovereignty and to putting problems and possibilities relating to African monetary sovereignty on the political agenda This is of utmost importance given that these issues have largely not received much attention in contemporary discussions of …
2017
Level: beginner
Due to the economic crisis of 2008/2009, households faced drastic decreases in their incomes, the availability of jobs. Additionally, the structure of the labour market changed, while austerity measures and public spending cuts left households with less support and safeguards provided by the state. How have these developments affected the burden of unpaid labour and what influence did this have on gender relations?
2019
Level: advanced

The 2007-2008 financial crisis exposed the shortcomings of mainstream economic theory with economists unprepared to deal with it. In the face of this, a major rethinking of economics seems necessary and in presenting alternative approaches to economic theory, this book contributes to the rebuilding of the discipline.

2020
Level: beginner
A central question in development economics literature is, “Why do countries stay poor?” The key disagreements are whether the lack of economic growth stems from institutions or from geography (Nunn 2009). From an institutional perspective, hostile tariff regimes and commodity price dependencies form a barrier to a sectoral shift that would otherwise lead to economic development in developing countries (Blink and Dorton 2011) (Stiglitz 2006).[i]
2020
Level: advanced
The background for the present elaboration is twofold firstly the ongoing debate about whether the Marxian theory of value has been damaged or even destroyed by the alleged impossibility of solving the transformation problem and secondly the fact that almost all of the later economic manuscripts of Marx are now …
2001
Level: advanced
In economics the dominant framework for exploring the structure of market economies is provided by the neoclassical school of thought. This text aims to show how neoclassical theory is used to model market mechanisms, both in particular markets and in the market economy as a whole.
2020
Level: beginner
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.
2017
Level: advanced
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
2020
Level: beginner
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.
2018
Level: advanced
Since the Middle Ages, literature has portrayed the economic world in poetry, drama, stories and novels. The complexity of human realities highlights crucial aspects of the economy. The nexus linking characters to their economic environment is central in a new genre, the "economic novel", that puts forth economic choices and events to narrate social behavior, individual desires, and even non-economic decisions.
2019
Level: beginner
In this talk, Eric Beinhocker outlines his ideas of how to ensure a just and sustainable future for Humanity: This includes his interesting Russian Doll approach to unpacking 20th-century economics and proposals of new theories to underpin a new economic system.
2013
Level: beginner
The Atlas of Economic Complexity is an award-winning data visualization tool that allows people to explore global trade flows across markets, track these dynamics over time and discover new growth opportunities for every country.
2014
Level: advanced
This innovative book offers targeted strategies for effectively and efficiently teaching economics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It provides professors and other teachers of economics various techniques to engage and retain the interest of students, and challenges them to apply both knowledge and methodological tools to a range of economic problems.
2023
Level: beginner
The gender pay gap is a pressing issue that affects individuals and society as a whole, so it is important for economics students to understand it. Despite recent progress, women still earn less than men for the same jobs, leading to economic inequalities and reduced efficiency (see, for example, the recent report released by Moody’s). Understanding the causes and consequences of the gender pay gap is critical in developing policies that promote fairness and equality.
Level: beginner
This course provides a simple introduction to problems that social scientists are working on (e.g. racial disparities, inequality and climate change) in a manner that does not require any prior background in Economics or Statistics.
2013
Level: beginner
The author identifies three principal economic phenomena, which are explained: long run productivity growth as the central driver of increasing economic activity, short-term and long-term debt cycles. The latter two are explained to some detailed with reference to money creation, central banking and long term crisis tendencies. With regards to the long run debt cycle, which leads into deleveraging and recession, some policy measures which can smoothen the crisis are discussed.
2005
Level: advanced
New Tools of Economic Dynamics gives an introduction and overview of recently developed methods and tools, most of them developed outside economics, to deal with the qualitative analysis of economic dynamics. It reports the results of a three-year research project by a European and Latin American network on the intersection of economics with mathematical, statistical, and computational methods and techniques.

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