Heterodox Economics Newsletter

Issue 364September 14, 2026 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory

There is an old Daoist saying: “Those who speak, do not know. Those who know, do not speak.”

While I cherish this saying a lot, two minor adaptations seem in order to capture the role of economics in society. The first concerns the wording: if you replace the active “speak” with the passive “are heard”, you arrive at a rather accurate description of the public and political impact of economics – indeed, for much too long the wrong kind of economics has been “heard” and, thereby, has gained political and discursive impact.

The second modification concerns the interpretation. In my reading, the original saying reminds us to keep calm – and there surely is some wisdom in that. However, given the current turmoils here, there and everywhere, staying calm is probably not a totally apt strategy. Hence, I suggest a second reading that challenges the original intention – as a call for action to speak out and say the right thing (or, at least, something that comes close to it). Against this backdrop, we should welcome and support those economists who act on this call and contribute by speaking out on the relevant issues of our time.

One clear example of such an economist is Isabella Weber, who urges us to take the cost of living seriously as the key category by which ordinary citizens judge their political and economic environment. Weber has been relentlessly vocal in pointing out that the recent inflationary episode was largely driven by price spikes in essentials – energy, food, housing – that are further amplified by profit-seeking in concentrated industries. Her point is not merely diagnostic: since wages are the result rather than the origin of inflation, and since price spikes in essentials can destabilize economies and societies, policymakers should be prepared to act swiftly in the interest of social cohesion. Isabella has taken this argument to the European Parliament, to the op-ed pages and, after the last US election, into the broader debate, which culminated in her upcoming and already widely praised book. While one might disagree with this or that proposal, the direction is clear: take seriously what people actually experience.

Another example comes from the economic mainstream, where the Paris School of Economics advances the systematic measurement and public communication of global inequality. The World Inequality Report 2026, as a key example, compiles the work of more than 200 researchers and shows in plain numbers that the top 10% of the world’s population captures more than half of global income while owning three-quarters of global wealth; the poorest half of humanity owns a mere 2%. Again, the report also brings concrete proposals into public debate – from a minimum wealth tax on the ultra-rich to an independent intergovernmental panel on inequality. And in June, at the World Inequality Conference hosted at PSE, the Lab went one step further and released a Global Justice Report exploring what a just global distribution of resources within planetary boundaries could look like. Here we see how the more sensible branch of mainstream economics deploys an agenda aiming to change what gets “heard”.

A final example for speaking out loudly about what matters comes from Latin America. A student recently pointed me towards the Tricontinental Political Economy research program – and I am glad he did. It is not yet particularly visible in English-language academic journals, but it has built an impressive analytical apparatus for studying dependency, sovereignty and the organisation of the world economy. Three things stand out to me. First, it is genuinely pluralist: rather than treating dependency theory as a single tradition frozen in the 1960s, the project combines different strands of structuralist, institutionalist and Marxist political economy into a coherent framework for thinking about sovereignty and development. Second, it is empirically ambitious: its Structural Dependency Index measures dependency across six dimensions for 31 countries over 28 years, built on 856 country-year observations, which provides a convincing data-driven foundation for an emancipatory heterodox political economy. Third, it is remarkably attuned to the political economy of the present: it asks where the surplus goes, who owns the decisive parts of global value chains, how dependency is reproduced through finance, trade and technology – and, crucially, how the ties that strangle peripheral countries might be loosened. For an introduction, I suggest starting with this introductory piece on substack, which is the leading piece in a series of five articles that introduce the different facets of this inspiring approach (see here, here, here and here for the remainder of the series).

In this spirit: let us make sure that those who know are also heard ;-)

All the best,

Jakob

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