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This chapter by the Centre for Economy Studies explores how courses on the history of economic thought and methods could look if they were pluralist and interdisciplinary.
Rethinking the History of Economic Thought & Methods
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.
Finance and Crisis: Marxian, Institutionalist and Circuitist approaches
Could working less make people and the planet better off? Find out in this dossier by exploring the landscape of working time reduction policies and their potential for reimagining, restructuring, and redistributing time as a political resource in the 21st century economy.
Could Working Time Reduction Policies Save People and the Planet?
Die Welt verändern, ohne die Macht zu übernehmen – dieser Buchtitel aus dem Jahr 2002 steht emblematisch für ein Verhältnis zur Macht, das in Teilen der Linken lange Zeit vorherrschend war. Der Autor des Buches, John Holloway, war selbst Teil der Weltsozialforen-Bewegung und stellte sich entschieden gegen herkömmliche Vorstellungen linker Gegenmacht, etwa im Sinne des Aufbaus einer linken Massenpartei. Aus derselben Zeit stammt auch das Konzept der «Multitude» aus der Feder von Michael Hardt und Antonio Negri. Es richtete sich gegen den identitären Begriff eines «Volkes», und ebenso gegen eine politische Bezugnahme auf die «Arbeiter*innenklasse». Diesen politischen Subjekten wurde eine Vielfalt widerständiger, global verteilter Praktiken und Gruppierungen entgegengestellt, die sich jedoch nicht vereinheitlichen ließen. Das Verhältnis dieser Multitude zur Erringung von Macht wurde offengelassen.
Die Macht übernehmen und die Welt verändern?
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.
Rethinking Economic Planning
This course is an introduction to the economic theories of financial crises It focuses on amplification mechanisms that exacerbate crises such as leverage fire sales bank runs interconnections and complexity It also analyzes the different perspectives on the origins of crises such as mistaken beliefs and moral hazard and discusses …
Financial Crises
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.
Hyman Minsky : un économiste visionnaire
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.
Modern Monetary Theory and the public purpose
This lecture of the anthropologist David Graeber gives a brief introduction to the thoughts of his 2011 published book Debt: The First 5000 Years.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Steve Keen ProfSteveKeen University of Western Sydney
Behavioural Finance Lectures
Learn the basics of microeconomics including supply and demand of commodities and how equilibrium in the market affects price Joon Koo Lee edX Seoul National University
Introduction to Economics - Part 1: Microeconomics
Gerald Friedman UMassEconomics University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Great Recession Lectures
Ever wondered why some countries are rich and others poor Or why some people believe hard work results in upward mobility and others don t To answer these questions you need to see the world sociologically In this introductory sociology course we will explore the concerns of an interconnected global …
Global Sociology
When you notice inequality in your everyday life do you ever wonder where it comes from and what keeps it going This sociology course introduces you to core concepts of class gender and racial inequality and an approach to studying complex forms of inequality called intersectionality Featuring interviews with top …
Global Inequality
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.
The European economic crisis from 2007 onwards in the context of a global crisis of over-production of capital - a Marxian monetary theory of value interpretation
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.
Global Value Chains in economic development
Use economic models to learn how prices and markets benefit society in the face of scarcity and then apply those models to analyze policy Jonathan Gruber edX Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Microeconomics
This article examines the spread of financialization in Germany before the financial crisis. It provides an up-to date overview on the literature on financialization and reviews which of the phenomena typically associated with financialization have emerged in Germany. In particular, the article aims to clarify how the prevailing institutional structure and its changes had contributed to or had countervailed the spread of financialization and how it had shaped the specific German variant of financialization. For this end, it combines the rich literature on Germany's institutional structure with the more macroeconomic oriented literature on financializaton. With the combination of those different perspectives the article sheds light on the reasons for the spread of financialization and the specific forms it has taken in Germany.
Financialization made in Germany: A review
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.
Still the queens of social sciences? (Post-)Crisis power balances of “public economists” in Germany
Source image UMassEconomics Youtbe channel Stephen Resnick UMassEconomics University of Massachusetts Amherst
Marxian Economics Lectures
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.
Post-Keynesian macroeconomics since the mid-1990s: Main developments
The article compares market fundamentalism and right-wing populism on the basis of its core patterns of thinking and reasoning. Based on an analysis of important texts in both fields we find many similarities of these two concepts in their "inner images". Thus, we develop a scheme of the similar dual social worlds of right-wing-populism and market fundamentalism and offer some recent examples of market fundamentalism and right-wing populism mutually reinforcing each other or serving as a gateway for each other. We then apply our scheme for the analysis of the recent political developments and its ideological roots in the US under Donald Trump.
Right-wing populism and market-fundamentalism: Two mutually reinforcing threats to democracy in the 21st century
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
Development of heterodox economics at public German universities since the 1970s
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
Reclaiming the university: Transforming economics as a discipline
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 Econ in Econophysics
Exploring Economics, an open-access e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
Marx's approach to economics: a claim for subjective praxis
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.
Plurality in Teaching Macroeconomics
This brief note explores the possibility of working towards an enlarged self-definition of economics through economists’ study and appreciation of economic sociology. Common ground between economic sociology and heterodox economics is explored, and some of Richard Sennett’s ideas are used as prompts to raise some pertinent and hopefully interesting questions about economics. In particular, the note revisits the question of whether there is a possibility of changing our understanding of what kind of social scientific work falls within the domain of economics proper once we start critically engaging with work conventionally considered to be outside of that domain. In part, the note is intended to offer undergraduate students in economics – and possibly even those further down the road in their education – food for thought about what constitutes economics.
On the Possibility of an Enlarged Self-Definition of Economics
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
Socialist alternatives to capitalism I: Marx to Hayek
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Socialist alternatives to capitalism II: Vienna to Santa Fe
S inscrivant dans la longue lignée des contributions aux alternatives aux PIB les deux auteurs nous proposent ici une réflexion en 2 moments Dans un premier temps Blanchet et Fleurbaey rappellent à très juste titre ce qu est le PIB mais surtout ce qu il n est pas ne tombant …
De quoi le PIB est la mesure et comment le dépasser
Institution largement méconnue du grand public la Banque des Règlements Internationaux BRI n en est pas moins un organe central de la réflexion économique Dans cet essai Henri Lepage confronte la thèse de la Stagnation Séculaire chère à Larry Summers et aux économistes néo keynésiens plus largement aux travaux de …
BRI versus Summers
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