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.

Recovery from the Covid-19 crisis provides a chance to implement economic measures that are also beneficial from environmental and social perspectives. While ‘green’ recovery packages are crucial to support economies tracking a low-carbon transition in the short-term, green measures such as carbon pricing are also key to improving welfare in the long-term. This commentary specifies the need for carbon pricing, outlines its implications for our everyday lives, and explains how it works alongside value-based change in the context of climate action and societal well-being.

During his life, Keynes was credited with, amongst other things, with helping to save capitalism from the Great Depression, funding the war against the Nazis and building post-war decades of growth and rising prosperity. And when the global crisis struck in 2008, it was his ideas that the world's leaders turned to help avoid another depression.

Cette vidéo présente la notion de financiarisation de l'économie et ses effets, définie largement comme la prise d'importance croissante des activités financières dans l'économie. Elle évoque les contradictions du système financier : capable de financer l'économie mais aussi de capter la valeur produite à son profit.

Ce podcast s'intéresse à la convergence de courants qui mettent à mal le concept de rationalité classique qui domine la théorie Néoclassique actuelle. L'économie et la psychologie sont deux disciplines qui regardent le monde à travers le prisme de l’individu,  son comportement, ses interactions mais aussi la société avec laquelle il fait corps.  Cette analyse psychologique de l'humain en tant qu'acteur économique avec des défauts est révélatrice. On y apprend que les suppositions´sur lesquelles se base notre théorie économique dominante actuelle sont en partie imparfaites.

Thomas Boraud, neurobiologiste, directeur de recherche au CNRS et à l’Institut des maladies neurodégénératives, CNRS-Université de Bordeaux nous expose l'antinomie entre l’Homme comme un animal doué de raisonnement rationnel et sa psychologie au quotidien. Il introduit sa présentation par des arguments provenant de la biologie et de la théorie de l'évolution pour expliquer en quel sens le concept d'homo œconomicus est dépassé et doit être revu au jour d'aujourd'hui. Il expose les fondements du processus de prise de décision (biais cognitif, capacité cognitive limitée...) pour décrire la part d’aléatoire qui est présente dans ces processus. On y apprend que notre appréhension du réel est largement modelée par nos comportements, eux-mêmes contraints par les circonstances de notre environnement.

Participants should be able to distinguish the strictly non-cooperative (methodological individualist) foundations of traditional neoclassical economics as being couched in self-interested individuals, as well as having basic knowledge of an alternative set of theories based on the primacy cooperation and social norms and extending the breadth of economic analysis beyond exchange.

After completing the module, participants should be able to have general overview on the theory of commons. They can differentiate between neoclassical, new institutional and social/critical commons theory and can use these theories to assess real life common-pool resource management and commoning pratices.

This course will fundamentally ask whether we can, or even should use the word ‘decolonising’ in our pursuit of a better economics?

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the deep structural rifts in modern capitalist economies. It has exposed and exacerbated the long-lasting systemic inequalities in income, wealth, healthcare, housing, and other aspects of economic success across a variety of dimensions including class, gender, race, regions, and nations. This workshop explores the causes of economic inequality in contemporary capitalist economies and its consequences for the economy and society in the post-pandemic reality, as well as what steps can be taken to alleviate economic inequality in the future. Drawing from a variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary insights, the workshop encourages you to reflect on your personal experiences of inequality and aims to challenge the way in which the issue is typically approached in economics.

Le PIB fait l’objet de critiques régulières. En avril dernier, le Parlement a voté, sur la proposition de la députée Eva Sas (EELV), une loi prévoyant que des indicateurs alternatifs au PIB guident les politiques publiques. Mais le choix de ces indicateurs alternatifs soulève un certain nombre de questions. Par Géraldine Thiry (Université de Louvain, Forum pour d’autres indicateurs de richesse) et Adeline Guéret (étudiante à l’ENSAE, stagiaire à l’Institut Veblen). Le gouvernement français publie cette année, parallèlement au dépôt du projet de loi de finances, un rapport présentant " l’évolution, sur les années passées, de nouveaux indicateurs de richesse, tels que les indicateurs d’inégalités, de qualité de vie et de développement durable." Cette publication fait suite à l’adoption définitive au Parlement, en avril 2015, de la proposition de loi visant à prendre en compte de nouveaux indicateurs de richesse dans la définition de politiques publiques. L’article unique de cette loi prévoit "une évaluation qualitative ou quantitative de l’impact des principales réformes engagées l’année précédente et envisagées pour l’année suivante, notamment dans le cadre des lois de finances, au regard de ces indicateurs et de l’évolution du produit intérieur brut." Cette loi marque constitue donc une première étape dans la remise en cause de la centralité du PIB (produit intérieur brut), comme indicateur central du progrès de notre société. Comme l’explique la vice-présidente de la Commission des Finances de l’Assemblée nationale, la députée de l’Essonne, Eva SAS, à l’origine de cette loi, il est nécessaire de " renouveler la pensée économique " parce que nous sommes entrés " dans une période post-croissance qui nous impose de commencer à réfléchir autrement " (…) " Il faut remettre du long-terme dans les politiques publiques et prendre en compte ce qu’on lègue aux générations futures « . En consacrant son rapport annuel 2015 à la question des nouveaux indicateurs, l’Idies s’inscrit pleinement dans le cadre des missions qu’elle s’est donné depuis son origine : agir pour que soient réunies les conditions nécessaires pour que tous les citoyens puissent accéder à une information économique et sociale de qualité. Le choix des indicateurs rendant compte de l’état de notre économie et de notre société a une dimension technique. Mais il est surtout profondément politique. Il ne peut donc être laissé aux seuls experts et doit au contraire être placée au coeur de la délibération démocratique. C’est toute l’ambition de ce rapport que d’y contribuer.

Capitalism is dissolving boundaries - not only in the sense of ever-expanding global trade flows, but also in the concrete everyday working lives of individuals. What implications does this have for our understanding of freedom, work and borders?

Cette bibliographie est proposée par le collectif des Economistes Atterés afin de lister divers ouvrages critiques sur différents thèmes de l économie tels que celui de l industrie de la dette publique de la microéconomie ou encore des ressources naturelles Cette bibliographie liste donc des ouvrages de référence accessibles à …

Der Klimawandel dürfte die globalen Migrationsbewegungen in den kommenden Jahren deutlich verstärken – was die Politik gleich an mehreren Fronten unter Handlungsdruck setzt.

Hudson analyse ici l'oeuvre du grand économiste Veblen, fondateur de l'économie institutionnaliste. Les deux économistes ont eu une influence importante sur l'oeuvre de Graeber qui s'est inspiré de Michael Hudson dans son histoire de la dette et de Veblen dans son analyse de la féodalité managériale, notamment dans son ouvrage "bureaucratie" et dans son ouvrage "bullshit jobs".

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.

L’économiste américain d’origine russe Hyman Minsky accordait une place centrale à la finance dans le fonctionnement des économies capitalistes. Cent ans après sa naissance, la crise de 2008-2009 remet en avant ses analyses de l’instabilité financière et ses pistes de réflexion sur les mécanismes qui pourraient la contenir.

The term "de-risking" can be seen as one element of a strategy aimed at discursively reframing the trade policy confrontation with China. This confrontation has mainly been driven by the US in recent years and received initially cautious, but later growing support from the EU.

In this text, Fred Heussner takes up the debate on anti-fascist economics, places it in the context of existing developments and identifies potential for further development.

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.

The article addresses the current debate on democratic economic planning and the question of how and by which instruments a post-capitalist planning system, embedded in a broader agenda of macroeconomic transformation, can be developed.

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.

The principle of effective demand, and the claim of its validity for a monetary production economy in the short and in the long run, is the core of heterodox macroeconomics, as currently found in all the different strands of post-Keynesian economics (Fundamentalists, Kaleckians, Sraffians, Kaldorians, Institutionalists) and also in some strands of neo-Marxian economics, particularly in the monopoly capitalism and underconsumptionist school In this contribution, we will therefore outline the foundations of the principle of effective demand and its relationship with the respective notion of a capitalist or a monetary production economy in the works of Marx, Kalecki and Keynes. Then we will deal with heterodox short-run macroeconomics and it will provide a simple short-run model which is built on the principle of effective demand, as well as on distribution conflict between different social groups (or classes): rentiers, managers and workers. Finally, we will move to the long run and we will review the integration of the principle of effective demand into heterodox/post-Keynesian approaches towards distribution and growth.

An article in the New York Times from early 2025 suggests that the political influence of mainstream economics is declining. While economists have been highly influential in supporting and shaping free-market policies in recent decades, their expertise has become less relevant during intensified economic crises that necessitate state interventions.

The global economic and political order is undergoing rapid and profound transformation. We are witnessing a far-reaching "organic" crisis of the global economic world order, which may have started with the financial crisis of 2007/2008 but now enters a new, much more dynamic phase.

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.

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.

What constitutes the dominance of the US dollar, what it provides for the US and the rest of the world, why it is constantly questioned, and what the future might hold for the dollar

The article examines how, in the context of multiple contemporary crises—financial, ecological, and social—interest in alternative economic models such as democratic economic planning has resurged. It outlines historical debates on the feasibility of planning versus markets, discusses contemporary approaches to democratic, digitally supported, and ecologically oriented planning, and identifies research gaps, including social reproduction and Global South perspectives.

In spite of the manifold critique about the state of economics in the aftermath of the financial crisis, an even increasing presence of economists and economic experts can be observed in the public sphere during the last years. On the one hand this reflects the still dominant position of economics in the social sciences as well as the sometimes ignorant attitude of economists towards findings of other social sciences. On the other hand this paper shows that the public debate on politico-economic issues among economists is dominated by a specific subgroup of economists, tightly connected to an institutional network of “German neoliberalism”. This group of “public economists” (i) is dominant in public debates even after the financial crisis, (ii) reproduces the formative German economic imaginary of the Social Market Economy in a German neoliberal interpretation and (iii) has a good access to German economic policymaking, rooted in a long history of economic policy advice.

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 foundational economy is a concept which describes the infrastructure of everyday life, encompassing all essential services like utilities or healthcare that people require for wellbeing. This contribution provides an overview of foundational thinking.