Economic Democracy: The Cooperative Alternative

This is an introductory course into economics that navigates the intellectual history of political economy in a self-contained and non-technical manner. The course centres on the classical concept of political economy by emphasizing the moral and ethical problems that markets solve or may not solve.

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 …

This course teaches basic concepts relevant in political economy. Topics include the contractual nature of the state, public versus private goods, property rights and economic externalities, the logic of collective action and social choice theory. It also refers to the fundamentals of political philosophy, bringing two ideas of liberty into the picture. The relevance and limitations of the economic approach to the study of law and politics are then discussed.