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.

An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Dans cet épisode, nous nous posons la question du rôle de la monnaie dans une économie capitaliste. Pour cela, nous comparons le fonctionnement de deux économies en apparence identique, à ceci près que la première fonctionne sans monnaie, comme une économie de troc, et la seconde est monétaire. Nous nous apercevons alors que le caractère monétaire ou non d’une économie modifie radicalement ses propriétés. La détermination des profits sera ainsi très différente dans ces deux économies, les relations de causalité entre dépôts et crédits, épargne et investissement s’inversent, une crise de surproduction est possible dans un cas mais pas dans l’autre, et le chômage peut également avoir des origines très différentes, et même opposées, selon que l’on considère une économie monétaire ou non. Les propriétés de l’économie de troc recouvrent celles de la théorie économique standard (théorie néoclassique) qui s’est historiquement construite sans prendre en considération la monnaie, celle-ci étant considérée comme neutre sur l’économie. Les propriétés de l’économie monétaire rappellent quant à elles celles des modèles postkeynésiens, bien moins connus, et qui trouvent leurs origines dans les travaux et écrits de Keynes, qui affirmait dans son ouvrage le plus célèbre (la théorie générale de l’emploi de l’intérêt et de la monnaie) que « lorsqu’on s’attaque à la recherche des facteurs qui déterminent les volumes globaux de la production et de l’emploi, la Théorie complète d’une Economie Monétaire devient indispensable » (1936, p. 297). Pour approfondir le fonctionnement d’une économie monétaire, vous pouvez lire le livre de Laurent Cordonnier, maître de conférences à l’Université de Lille, « L’économie des Toambapiks » qui présente à partir d’une « fable » la loi des profits de Kalecki dont nous parlons dans la vidéo. Le livre se lit très facilement.

In this short video Peter Reich illustrates seven aspects of the state of the US economy. He provides suggestions on how to to get started to move towards a more fair distribution of wealth.

Quinn Slobodian a historian of modern Germany and international history analysis of current development in the Mont Pèlerin Society and therefore neo-liberalism. He sees neo-liberalist thinkers less as believers in the self-healing power of markets, but more as ordo-liberal Globalists who wanted to protect the markets from post-war politics and especially mass democracy. Their goal of global capitalism is still strong, however sceptics in the Mont Pèlerin Society are rising, which see international migration as a threat to Globalisation. Therefore, turning neo-liberal policies away from international institutions like the EU back towards the national states as new defenders of the markets as well as international trade and investments. (A development which can be seen in the Friedrich A. von Hayek-Gesellschaft and especially in the "liberal" wing of the German rightwing populist party AfD)

A historical glimpse of how economists of the 19th century debated the usefulness of mathematics to economics

In the history of the social sciences, few individuals have exerted as much influence as has Jeremy Bentham. His attempt to become “the Newton of morals” has left a marked impression upon the methodology and form of analysis that social sciences like economics and political science have chosen as modus operandi.

If there’s one method economists have neglected the most, it’s qualitative research. Whereas economists favour mathematical models and statistics, qualitative research seeks to understand the world through intensive investigation of particular circumstances, which usually entails interviewing people directly about their experiences. While this may sound simple to quantitative types the style, purpose, context, and interpretation of an interview can vary widely. Because of this variety, I have written a longer post than usual on this topic rather than doing it a disservice. Having said that, examples of qualitative research in economics are sadly scant enough that it doesn’t warrant multiple posts. In this post I will introduce qualitative research in general with nods to several applications including the study of firm behaviour, race, Austrian economics, and health economics. More than usual I will utilise block quotes, which I feel is in the spirit of the topic.

Overview page for the collection of nobel laureateas on Exploring Economics

Currency hierarchy and policy space: A research agenda for development economics Barbara Fritz

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 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.

The global financial crisis (GFC) led to increasing distrust in economic research and the economics profession, in the process of which the current state of economics and economic education in particular were heavily criticized. Against this background we conducted a study with undergraduate students of economics in order to capture their view of economic education.

In this short lecture the marxist economic geographer David Harvey explains how his theory of The accumulation of dispossession came about and its central principles The theory builds on Marx law of the centralisation of capital arguing how the accumulation no longer stems from producing rather through trading asset values …

Fighting Neoliberalism with Keynes & Minsky? Riccardo Bellofiore proposes to revise the insights of Minsky's financial instability hypothesis, combining it with the Keynesian theory of the monetary circuit to answer many questions in modern economy.

The objective of the course is to explore the main strengths and weaknesses of orthodox and heterodox paradigms within development economics.

Exploring Economics, an open-access e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.

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 is designed to provide students with an understanding of work-related gender issues and to enable students to analyze the issues using the tools of economics.

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

‘We cannot afford their peace & We cannot bear their wars’: ​​​​​​​Value, Exploitation, Profitability Crises & ‘Rectification’

This syllabus provides an overview of the contents of the course "Understanding Economic Models" at the University of Helsinki.

Understanding international trade is central to economics and is currently a hot political issue. It’s an area where popular perceptions of mainstream economics are low, since they have historically missed some important downsides of trade agreements, especially the hollowing out of former manufacturing hubs in the Western world. et economists have for long time had a theory of trade with an impressive amount of scientific clout behind it: the gravity trade model.

Along with addressing core conceptual issues in defining heterodox economics, we will cover in some detail five heterodox traditions in economics: Marxian Economics, Institutional Economics, Post-Keynesian Economics, Feminist Economics, and Ecologi-cal Economics. In the first class meeting, we discuss the structure and goals of the course, as well as the expectations and requirements from the students. In addition, we will discuss the concept of heterodoxy in economics, along with discussing the concepts and key issues in mainstream and neoclassical economics.

This text summarizes the content of the 2018 Nobel Prize winner W. Nordhaus. It is extended by some critical perspectives on this topic. The short dossier gives an overview of the most important texts we have read in the climate economics reading group.

The course will teach students to analyze the goals, implementation, and outcomes of economic policy.

The last 15 years have seen extensive research into ecosystem service valuation (ESV), spurred by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 (Baveye, Baveye & Gowdy, 2016). Ecosystem services are defined as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems” (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, p.V). For example, ecosystems provide the service of sequestering carbon which helps regulate the climate. Valuation means giving ecosystems or their services a monetary price, for example researchers have estimated that the carbon sequestration services of the Mediterranean Sea is between 100 and 1500 million euros per year. The idea of ESV was a response to the overuse of natural resources and degradation of ecosystems, allegedly due to their undervaluation and exclusion from the monetary economy. ESV can be used (1) for policy decision-making, for example allocating funding to a reforestation project (2) for setting payments to people who increase ecosystem services, for example a farmer increasing the organic carbon content of their soil, and (3) for determining fees for people who degrade ecosystem services, for example a company that causes deforestation.

Pluralism includes mainstream economics. Our campaign for pluralism, including this series, have generally focused on ideas outside the mainstream on the basis that it gets plenty of attention already so we want to spend our time exposing people to alternatives. Nevertheless, mainstream ideas deserve some attention. On top of this, a curious feature of modern economics education is that some of the best ideas from mainstream economics are not even taught to undergraduates! During this series I will explore such ideas, starting today with the market construction technique known as ‘matching’.

“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.

The course will teach students to analyze the goals, implementation, and outcomes of economic policy.

The module is designed to first present some of the main schools of thought from a historical and methodological perspective. Each week we explore and critically assess the main tenants of each school of thought. In the second part of the module we link history of economic thought and methodology to a specific and contemporary economic question. The second part allows you to engage with current economic issues with an awareness of methodology and methodological differences and with some knowledge of the history of economics.

This course provides future change makers in public and private sectors with a comprehensive overview on the structures and actors that shape markets.