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In both economics textbooks and public perceptions central banks are a fact of life. On the wall of my A-level economics classroom there was the Will Rogers quote “there have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking”, summarising how many economists view the institution. There is a widespread belief that there is something different about money which calls for a central authority to manage its operation, a view shared even by staunch free marketeers such as Milton Friedman. This belief is not without justification, since money underpins every transaction in a way that apples do not, but we should always be careful not to take existing institutions for granted and central banking is no exception. In this post I will look at the idea of private or free banking, where banks compete (and cooperate) to issue their own currency.
Whither Central Banks?
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
A Time for Precaution
One method of economic modelling that has become increasingly popular in academia, government and the private sector is Agent Based Models, or ABM. These simulate the actions and interactions of thousands or even millions of people to try to understand the economy – for this reason ABM was once described to me as being “like Sim City without the graphics”. One advantage of ABM is that it is flexible, since you can choose how many agents there are (an agent just means some kind of 'economic decision maker' like a firm, consumer, worker or government); how they behave (do they use complicated or simple rules to make decisions?); as well as the environment they act in, then just run the simulation and see what happens as they interact over time.
Agents, agents everywhere
John K. Galbraith tells the economic history of a couple of economies (mostly UK, US and to a lesser extent Germany) from the end of the first world war until the Bretton Woods conference. He also provides a biography of John M. Keynes and outlines some central ideas of Keynes such as the possibility of an underemployment equilibrium. Galbraith complements the historical remarks by the biographical experiences he made in economic management (and in engaging with Keynes) serving as deputy head of the Office for Price administration during the second world war.
The Age of Uncertainty Episode 7 The Mandarin Revolution
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.
Policies to avert stagnation: The Crisis and the Future(s) of the Euro
Irene van Staveren, professor of pluralist development economics, presents her pluralist teaching method for the introductory level. Based on her textbook “Economics After the Crisis: An Introduction to Economics from a Pluralist and Global Perspective” she suggests to focus on real-world problems and pari passu apply economic theories such as Social economics, Institutional economics, Post-Keynesian economics as well as Neoclassical economics without wasting time to single out the latter. Besides pointing out advantages of such a pluralist method Irene illustrates her approach based on interesting topics such as growth or feminist economics.
Beyond stimulus versus Austerity: Pluralist capacity building in Macroeconomics
In the inspiring interview on Economics of Care, Nancy Foblre takes a closer look to the consequences of the marketization of caring activities on those activities and on the societal organization of care. Folbre elaborates on how to value care and how this shifts the perspectives on living standards. She points to the fact, that caring activities are undervalued both in the market sphere and within the family and thereby questions the division between those spheres. Lastly, Folbre answers the question how to reteach Economics when accounting for caring activities.
The Economics of Care
This video provides a brief introduction to post-keynesian economics and how the school of thought would tackle climate change.
Clips on Climate: Postkeynesian Economics
In this video University of Warwick Economist Robert Akerlof provides an introduction to a new type of behavioral economics He explains how this type is being driven by a desire to understand how people are shaped by social interactions and what the economic consequences of this are He begins the …
Behavioral Economics: The Next Generation
This video animates part of the talk “On Economics” by Ha-Joon Chang in which he states that economics is not a science for experts but for everyone. Chang further argues why it is important to take into account different perspectives on economics – he identifies at least nine school of thoughts which all have their strengths and weaknesses and presents examples on free trade and well-being. Chang further elaborates on the difficulties of changing the economic status quo.
Economics Is For Everyone!
In this radio program, the anthropologist David Graeber, explores the history of debt in (currently) 12 episodes. The program is based on his book Debt: The First 5000 Years. First, Graeber asks the questions of how debt and money are characterized, which meaning and roles they had in different historic episodes and how they were interrelated. In the most recent episodes, Graeber elaborates on how debt shaped society. He argues that debt had a different moral status in different times of history, one session analyses the current financial and economic crisis and the role of credit in this historical context.
Promises, Promises: A history of debt
The Sufficiency Policy Map is an online tool for initiatives, political actors, organisations and individuals. It provides recommendations, strategies and communication tools for realizing projects and policy around the topic sufficiency. Sufficiency projects have the aim to reduce one's own ecological footprint.
Sufficiency Politics Map
Gilles Carbonnier, Professor of Development Economics and Director of Studies at The Graduate Institute Geneva, explains the emerging field of Humanitarian Economics. It analyses how economics can help to better grasp and respond to humanitarian crises, and why capturing market dynamics - including the humanitarian market itself, or in relation to e.g. kidnapping and detention in war - has become critical.
The Birth of Humanitarian Economics
Ce portrait de Ronald Coase brossé par Elodie bertrand chercheuse en histoire de la pensée économique permet de revenir sur son oeuvre avec un certain recul historique Sur la réception de ses travaux leurs sur interprétations et leur influence dans l économie de la deuxième moitié du XXème siècle en …
Ronald Coase, un siècle d’économie
Poster of the different schools of thought made by Sergio A. Berumen. From the Greeks to late 20th and beginning of the 21th century.
General Guide To Schools Of Economic Thought
This paper starts with an evaluation of three common arguments against pluralism in economics: (1) the claim that economics is already pluralist, (2) the argument that if there was the need for greater plurality, it would emerge on its own, and (3) the assertion that pluralism means ‘anything goes’ and is thus unscientific. Pluralist responses to all three arguments are summarized. The third argument is identified to relate to a greater challenge for pluralism: an epistemological trade-off between diversity and consensus that suggests moving from a discussion about ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ towards a discussion about the adequate degree of plurality. We instantiate the trade-off by showing how it originates from two main challenges: the need to derive adequate quality criteria for a pluralist economics, and the necessity to propose strategies that ensure the communication across different research programs. The paper concludes with some strategies to meet these challenges.
Pluralism in economics: its critiques and their lessons
Dans une vidéo dense mais pédagogique Heu reka nous emmène dans les arcanes de la modélisation économique et environnementale En partant d une controverse entre les auteurs du célèbre rapport Meadows sur les limites de la croissance et des économistes d obédience néoclassique on découvre deux approches différentes pour un …
Modéliser l'avenir de l'humanité
A multimedia dossier outlining the various dimensions of credit and indebtedness for various actors such as individuals and governments. Special emphasis is put on the reflections of normative and power laden discourse sorrounding the issue of borrowing and on false analogies placed between household and government debt.
Borrowing – I-PEEL.org
At the 2013 Climate, Mind, & Behavior Symposium, Rebecca Adamson of First Peoples Worldwide illustrates alternative economic systems modeled after indigenous worldviews and the power they have in pushing us towards a more sustainable existence.
Rebecca Adamson: Enoughness - Restoring Balance to the Economy
An Introduction to the Political Theory of John Maynard Keynes. John Maynard Keynes was arguably the greatest economist of the 20th century. He discovered the idea that governments should stimulate demand during economic downturns.
An Introduction to the Political Theory of John Maynard Keynes
Peter Boettke, Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University, talks about the history and the main methodological and epistemological tenets of the Austrian school. He argues that good economics is the mainline tradition of "squaring rational choice with the invisible hand theorem through institutional analysis".
The Austrian Tradition in Economics
In this article, Rob Hoveman breaks down concepts like historical materialism and materialist analysis that are pivotal to understand Marx. He argues that abstractions are necessary for a concrete analysis of society that in turn should inform political practice.
Marx and historical materialism
Ricardo Hausmann says the new industrial policy is an information revelation process about the state of possibilities, the nature of the obstacles and figuring out whether you can sort out the obstacles so that these new activities can take over.
Industrial Policy: Love it or Hate it?
By conducting a discourse analysis (SKAD) in the field of academic economics textbooks, this paper aims at reconstructing frames and identity options offered to undergraduate students relating to the questions ‘Why study economics?’ and ‘Who do I become by studying economics?’. The analysis showed three major frames and respective identity offerings, all of which are contextualized theoretically, with prominent reference to the Foucauldian reflection of the science of Political Economy. Surprisingly, none of them encourages the student to think critically, as could have been expected in a pedagogical context. Taken together, economics textbooks appear as a “total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible action” (Foucault), therefore, as a genuine example of Foucauldian power structures.
The power of economic textbooks: A discourse analysis
The article pursues the two related questions of how economists pretend to know and why they want to know at all. It is argued that both the economic form of knowledge and the motivation of knowing have undergone a fundamental change during the course of the 20th century. The knowledge of important contemporary economic textbooks has little in common with an objective, decidedly scientifically motivated knowledge. Rather, their contents and forms follow a productive end, aiming at the subjectivity of their readers.
An essay on the putative knowledge of textbook economics
Trickle Down Economics - an old topic, but still present in our lives. The idea consists of deregulation of the economy and of lower tax for the top in order to increase the "size of the pie" so everybody would have a bigger piece, even with a smaller share.
A critique to Trickle-down economics
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.
Masters Of Money | John Maynard Keynes
Prof. Robert Wade (London School of Economics, UK) discusses industrial policy, the challenges of economic development for emerging countries like Brazil and...
Prof. Robert Wade discusses industrial policy - Rethinking the State
Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to follow through on new year’s resolutions, such as to exercise more or to start saving more money towards retirement? The agent that most traditional economic models are based on would not struggle to keep up these resolutions. These agents are referred to as homo economicus.
Homo Economicus: Why are new year’s resolutions so difficult to maintain and economic models so bad at predicting our behaviour?
As tax day approached, St. Francis College Economics Professors launched their first Economics Week with three days of guest speakers and student research. Randall Wray explains some basic principles of Modern Monetary Theory.
Modern Money Theory for Beginners
This lecture takes a look at the consequences of COVID 19 from a feminist economics perspective Professor Kabeer analyses a range of different impacts associated with COVID 19 and explores the kinds of policies that such a feminist economics lens would suggest for a more resilient and equitable future Naila …
Gender and COVID-19: a feminist economics lens
This module examines current socio-political issues through the lens of pluralism, that is pluralism of theory, pluralism of method and interdisciplinary pluralism
Pluralist Economic Analysis
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