Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been an unprecedented move towards ‘rethinking economics’. This book contributes to this worldwide discussion by providing readers at all levels with thoughtful contributions on a range of economic topics. The book includes chapters on rethinking fiscal and monetary policies, international trade, the role of the state, money, growth, the environment, development policies, energy, healthcare and more. Written by top experts in their respective fields, this book will be useful to students and faculty who want to not only rethink economics, but also to offer an alternative and coherent economic analysis to the orthodoxy.
The Economy Studies project emerged from the worldwide movement to modernise economics education, spurred on by the global financial crisis of 2008, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It envisions a wide variety of economics graduates and specialists, equipped with a broad toolkit, enabling them to collectively understand and help tackle the issues the world faces today. This is a practical guide for (re-)designing economics courses and programs. Based on a clear conceptual framework and ten flexible building blocks, this handbook offers refreshing ideas and practical suggestions to stimulate student engagement and critical thinking across a wide range of courses.
Why are house prices in many advanced economies rising faster than incomes? Why isn’t land and location taught or seen as important in modern economics? What is the relationship between the financial system and land? In this accessible but provocative guide to the economics of land and housing, the authors reveal how many of the key challenges facing modern economies - including housing crises, financial instability and growing inequalities - are intimately tied to the land economy. Looking at the ways in which discussions of land have been routinely excluded from both housing policy and economic theory, the authors show that in order to tackle these increasingly pressing issues a major rethink by both politicians and economists is required.
Rudolf Steiner gave this complex sequence of dense, subtle, multileveled lectures and seminars to students of economics in Dornach, Switzerland, during the summer of 1922. The course reflects a lifetime of thinking on the subject and marks the conclusion of his intense five-year period of activism in the service of social, political, and economic issues. During this time, which began as World War I was ending in 1917, he worked tirelessly to promote the cause of what he called “threefolding” (Dreigliederung), by which he meant rethinking the social order on the basis of clear separation and independence of the three fundamental spheres of activity that make up a society. He proposed three independent systems: (1) an autonomous rights sphere (limited to judicial and political matters), (2) an autonomous economic sphere (cooperative or associative by nature), and (3) an autonomous spiritual-cultural sphere. The autonomy of these three spheres, he believed, would make possible a free, healthy, productive society and open the possibility of a lasting peace. Rethinking Economics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the true nature of an economy and how it works. Steiner presents the basic elements of what it would take to create a just, socially responsible, and ecologically aware economy today.
Economic inequalities have become increasingly prominent in public debate in the last decade as sluggish economic growth, declining or stagnant incomes, high unemployment, and state policy regimes orientated towards austerity dominate many core capitalist regions, often with extreme turbulence in the political arena. Debate over these issues unfolds in both the public sphere and within the academy, with the conversation developing from two disciplinary areas in particular: economics and political economy, and journalism and communication studies. Economic Inequality and News Media brings these fields together. In this interdisciplinary volume, Andrea Grisold and Paschal Preston build on a unique multi-country research project exploring how news media cover and frame issues of economic inequality. Taking media coverage of Thomas Piketty's best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century as a case study, this book addresses important blind-spots in the relationship between mainstream media and economics. It interrogates both the failure of economists' to engage with the evolving role of the media as well as journalists' tendency to overlook key aspects of economic processes and power that are politically relevant and of public interest. Grisold and Preston tackle this disconnect and argue for a multi-disciplinary approach in which they acknowledge the crucial role the mass media plays in creating and disseminating economic information. The book explores important questions such as: How do new forms of economic inequality, power, and privilege relate to prevailing theories and conceptualizations of the media? What roles do new trends and forms of economic inequality play in the typical narratives of mediated communication? How do we construct the story of inequality? This eye-opening and transdisciplinary book sheds new light not only on the relation between news media and economic inequality, but also on economic issues more broadly. In an evolving world experiencing the rise of ultra-nationalism, populism, and rampant economic uncertainty, Economic Inequality and News Media is a crucial investigation of the nuances of economic news media.
From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and brings to light a more ecological model. Meme Wars aims to accelerate the shift into this new paradigm that takes into account psychonomics, bionomics, and other aspects of our physical and mental environment that are often left out in discussions of economics. Like Adbusters, the book will be image heavy and full-color throughout. Lasn calls it "a textbook for the future" that provides the building blocks, in texts and visuals, for a new way of looking at and changing our world. Through an examination of alternative economies, Lasn hopes to spur students to become "barefoot economists" and to see that a humanization of economics is possible. Meme Wars will include contributions from Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Samuelson, George Akerlof, Lourdes Benería, Julie Matthaei, Manfred Max-Neef, David Orrell, Paul Gilding, Mathis Wackernagel and the father of ecological economics Herman Daly, among others. Based on ideas that were presented in a special issue of Adbusters entitled "Thought Control in Economics: Beyond the Growth Paradigm / An Activist Toolkit," Meme Wars will help move forward the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Rethinking Finance in the Face of New Challenges provides an overview of the new research perspectives devoted to financial activity, reconsidering the opposition between orthodox and heterodox schools of finance.
Until recently, historians tended to dismiss home economics as little more than a conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen. This landmark volume initiates collaboration among home economists, family and consumer science professionals, and women's historians. What knits the essays together is a willingness to revisit the subject of home economics with neither indictment nor apology. The volume includes significant new work that places home economics in the twentieth century within the context of the development of women's professions. Rethinking Home Economics documents the evolution of a profession from the home economics movement launched by Ellen Richards in the early twentieth century to the modern field renamed Family and Consumer Sciences in 1994. The essays in this volume show the range of activities pursued under the rubric of home economics, from dietetics and parenting, teaching and cooperative extension work, to test kitchen and product development. Exploration of the ways in which gender, race, and class influenced women's options in colleges and universities, hospitals, business, and industry, as well as government has provided a greater understanding of the obstacles women encountered and the strategies they used to gain legitimacy as the field developed.
This book proposes a new approach to economics, starting from the commons and based on the Economy of Francesco (EoF), a worldwide movement of young people who aim to change the current economic models and working towards a fair, sustainable, and inclusive economic system. EoF was convened by Pope Francis and is inspired by the example of St. Francis of Assisi, featuring Franciscan economic roots and institutions, as well as theories of the social sciences. The authors raise and answer several important questions throughout the volume, such as: What if the economic courses taught in the universities across the globe focused their attention on the topics of the commons rather than on private goods? What if social businesses, rather than being considered as a hybrid form of businesses, became the normal approach, and ethical and green finance ruled over the standard financial sector? Is it possible to move away from the primacy of the consumers to the preeminence of ethical consumers who express their preferences for an inclusive, sustainable, and workers-friendly economic system with their daily choices? Using a unique approach, the book includes the contributions of prominent scholars which are integrated and discussed by young international scholars, providing a fresh analysis with a glance of hope for the future. The book is a must-read for students, scholars, and researchers of economics and related disciplines interested in alternatives to the current economic mainstream in general, and the Economy of Francesco in particular.
