The economics of legalising cannabis

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.

“Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses1.” This is how Lionel Robbins came to define economics in the early 1930s and there is a good chance that many of you heard a variant of this definition in your first Economics 101 lecture.

Die Planwirtschaft hat in den letzten Jahren ein unerwartetes Revival gefeiert. Die These: Im Zeitalter von Big Data, künstlicher Intelligenz und neuen Kommunikationstechnologien sei der Markt eine veraltete Technologie der Vergangenheit. Angesichts des Scheiterns effizienter politischer und wirtschaftlicher Koordination in der Pandemie und der Klimakrise kommt diese Debatte gerade rechtzeitig. …

In this short video behavioural economist, Dan Aerily talks about how our cognitive illusions will trick us into believing something that is otherwise deemed irrational by the homo economicus. It raises and probes into some very interesting questions that defy the neoclassical rational behaviour.

Was ist Utopie? Ist der Markt eine Utopie? Wofür dient der Markt und als was wird er wahrgenommen? Und ist die Wirtschaftswissenschaft eine Glaubenslehre? In diesem Interview wirft der Literaturwissenschaftler Joseph Vogl, Autor des Buches „Das Gespenst des Kapitals“, neue Sichtweisen und Überlegungen auf den Markt abseits von Gleichgewichten und Austauschprozessen auf.