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In this lecture, Prof. Israel Kirzner presents a historical overview of the development of the Austrian school. The talk covers a timespan from the beginnings of the Austrian School in the early 1870's till just before the more recent 'revival' of the School in the mid-1970's.
2011
Level: beginner
The History of Austrian Economics
Mainstream economic theory has been increasingly questioned following the recent global financial crisis. Marc Lavoie shows how post-Keynesian theory can function as a coherent substitute by focusing on realistic assumptions and integrating the financial and real sides of the economy.
2015
Level: advanced
Post-Keynesian Economics
Economist and 2020 Balzan Prize winner for Environmental Challenges: Responses from the Social Sciences and Humanities, Joan Martínez Alier, speaks on the importance of ecological economics and its timeliness around the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. He speaks on the importance of building the field of ecological economics “from the ground up” through praxis.
2012
Level: beginner
Ecological Economics
In this lecture Ben Fine aims at stimulating interest for and explaining the relevance of Marxist Political Economy. Ben Fine dedicates the first half of his comprehensible lecture to the question on how mainstream economics became the way it is by explaining its key concepts and how those evolved during the past 150 years. While critically reflecting those concept he also emphasizes that mainstream economics does not consider historical processes. This is the point of departure on his presentation of the core terms and crucial categories of Marxist Political Economy: e.g. the production process and class relations (Part 1). Part 2 examines the consequences of the capitalist mode of production and its propensity to crises. Ben Fine illustrates this Marxist analysis with the example of the current crisis and explains current conditions for the accumulation of capital.
2014
Level: beginner
Introduction to Marxist Economics (Part 2)
In this lecture Ben Fine aims at stimulating interest for and explaining the relevance of Marxist Political Economy. Ben Fine dedicates the first half of his comprehensible lecture to the question on how mainstream economics became the way it is by explaining its key concepts and how those evolved during the past 150 years. While critically reflecting those concept he also emphasizes that mainstream economics does not consider historical processes. This is the point of departure on his presentation of the core terms and crucial categories of Marxist Political Economy: e.g. the production process and class relations (Part 1). Part 2 examines the consequences of the capitalist mode of production and its propensity to crises. Ben Fine illustrates this Marxist analysis with the example of the current crisis and explains current conditions for the accumulation of capital.
2014
Level: beginner
Introduction to Marxist Economics (Part 1)
The article is a formal response to the debate between the economists Diane Coyle and Howard Reed, whose articles were published online by Prospect magazine in 2018. Then, it was taken by Rethinking Economics as representative for the vision of the global network which advocates for changing economics curricula. In fact, it clearly solves some issues within the debate around pluralism by explaining its common misunderstandings among academics and its true - often mislead - meaning.
2018
Level: advanced
Deliberate Misunderstandings in Economics: What Pluralism Really Means
The authors discuss how identity affects economic outcomes by bringing together psychological and sociological perspectives and economics. For economic outcomes of a single individual, it might be interesting which kind of social groups this individual belongs to. This may influence individual daily decisions and hence economic outcomes. It can, however, not only affect individual economic outcomes but also economic outcomes of organizations, institutions and other groups. This paper describes these influences with respect to gender in the workplace, to the economics of poverty and social exclusion, and to the household division of labour.
Level: advanced
Economics and Identity
This article applies insights from behavioral economics to consider how the general public may make decisions around whether or not to receive a future COVID-19 vaccine in a context of frequent side effects and preexisting mistrust. Three common cognitive biases shown to influence human decision-making under a behavioral economics framework are considered confirmation bias, negativity bias, and optimism bias.
2021
Level: advanced
A behavioral economics perspective on the COVID-19 vaccine amid public mistrust.
Designed for both undergraduates and MBA students taking their first course in business economics, this text focuses on introducing students to economics as a framework for understanding business. It is structured around problems that decision-makers face, such as rejuvenating the firm in the face of declining demand.
2004
Level: advanced
Business Economics
In this essay the author elaborates on the EU's perspective on the fast growing sector of the platform economy.
2019
Level: beginner
Sharing is Caring? On the EU- Narrative on Platform Economy
To what extent does gender affect people's patterns of labor force participation, educational preparation for work, occupations, hours of work (paid and unpaid) and earnings?
2014
Level: beginner
Sex-Segregated Labor Markets
Contributors attempt to reconcile two major strands of thinking in economic methodology: the rhetoric of economics as advocated by Deirdre McCloskey, and the sociological approach.
1997
Level: advanced
Pluralism in Economics
Turning the ideas of #DoughnutEconomics into action.
Level: beginner
Doughnut Economics Action Lab
In the pluralist showcase series by Rethinking Economics, Cahal Moran explores non-mainstream ideas in economics and how they are useful for explaining, understanding and predicting things in economics.
2020
Level: beginner
Pluralist Showcase
More Heat Than Light is a history of how physics has drawn some inspiration from economics and also how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of value. It traces the development of the energy concept in Western physics and its subsequent effect upon the invention and promulgation of neoclassical economics.
1991
Level: advanced
More Heat Than Light
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.
2025
Level: beginner
The Political Economy of Extractivism
An examination of women's changing economic roles. Includes an analysis of labour force participation, wage inequality, gender differences in education, intra-household distribution of resources, economics of reproduction, and how technological change affects women.
2015
Level: beginner
Women and the Economy
What is economics? What can - and can't - it explain about the world? Why does it matter?
2015
Level: beginner
Economics: The User's Guide
Despite the important methodological critiques of the mainstream offered by heterodox economics, the dominant research method taught in heterodox programmes remains econometrics.
2016
Level: advanced
Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics
This book explores frontier work at the intersection of experimental and environmental economics, with cutting edge research provided by premier scholars in the field.The book begins by focusing on improving benefit-cost analysis, which remains the hallmark of public policy decision-making around the globe.
2006
Level: advanced
Using Experimental Methods in Environmental and Resource Economics
In the book 'Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction' Dutt, Alves, Kesar, and Kvangraven uncover the deeply Eurocentric foundations that shape how economists study the world today.
2025
Level: beginner
Decolonizing Economics
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
2020
Level: beginner
A Time for Precaution
This lecture is based on the “Introducing the Economy” chapter from the Economy Studies book, which introduces the first building block in their framework for transforming the economics education. The aim is to give students a feel and understanding of the economy as part of a bigger whole. Thus, it is aimed to introduce to students before getting into the economics curriculum with theory and models.
2022
Level: beginner
Introducing the Economy
A systematic comparison of the three major economic theories, showing how they differ and why these differences matter in shaping economic theory and practice.

Contending Economic Theories offers a unique comparative treatment of the three main theories in economics as it is taught today: neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Each is developed and discussed in its own chapter, yet also differentiated from and compared to the other two theories.

2012
Level: advanced
Contending Economic Theories
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

Get ready to change the way you think about economics.

Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans--predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth--and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

2016
Level: advanced
Misbehaving
How do people make decisions? There is a class of models in psychology which seek to answer this question but have received scant attention in economics despite some clear empirical successes. In a previous post I discussed one of these, Decision by Sampling, and this post will look at another: the so-called Fast and Frugal heuristics pioneered by the German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Here the individual seeks out sufficient information to make a reasonable decision. They are ‘fast’ because they do not require massive computational effort to make a decision so can be done in seconds, and they are ‘frugal’ because they use as little information as possible to make the decision effectively.
2020
Level: beginner
Bounded Rationality: the Case of ‘Fast and Frugal’ Heuristics
How do we transform societal structures and pave the way to economic democracy?
Level: beginner
Solidarity Economics
First published in 1983. A collection of papers directed at those outside the field of Economics, to open up discussions around the scientific worth of Economics.
2020
Level: advanced
Why Economics is not yet a Science
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.
2016
Level: beginner
The Economics of Care
In this short video 'Raghuram Rajan’s Dosa Economics Explained', the famous theory of Dr. Raghuram Rajan, ex-governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Dosa Economics, has been explained using a very simple example of Dosa ( a delicacy of India). Here, Dr. Raghuram Rajan tries to explain that low interest rate and low inflation is much better than high interest rate and high inflation.
2018
Level: beginner
Raghuram Rajan’s Dosa Economics Explained
This Perspective argues that ergodicity — a foundational concept in equilibrium statistical physics — is wrongly assumed in much of the quantitative economics literature. By evaluating the extent to which dynamical problems can be replaced by probabilistic ones, many economics puzzles become resolvable in a natural and empirically testable fashion.
Level: expert
The ergodicity problem in economics
"This eleven-week course offers a pluralist introduction to political economy and economics. We will examine nine (9) competing schools of thought, each of which offer an original and distinctive illumination of economic and social reality. The course offers a level of learning that would at least match that which is offered by a University. However, you do not need to be connected to a university or to have studied political economy or economics previously to enrol in this particular subject."
2022
Level: beginner
An Introduction to Political Economy and Economics

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