Heterodox Economics Newsletter

Issue 355 February 16, 2026 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory

Among the many cool things that can be found in this issue of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter, the "Symposium on Honor of Geoff Harcourt", which is part of the most recent issue of the Review of Political Economy, shines out a little. This is so, not only because Geoff was an immensely versatile, perceptive and inspiring economist with an impressiveoeuvre and a sizeable portion of humor, but also because he was deeply committed to contributing to the heterodox community. For many years right up to his untimely passing he regularly sent emails to the Newsletter's editorial office with important hints for books and events, insightful commentaries or an occasional "thanks" coupled with the friendly reminder "to keep up the good work".

While he is best known for his work on capital theory and the Cambridge controversies (see here or here), Geoff has actually a much broader oeuvre in topical terms – a feature also highlighted by the contributions collected in said Symposium. A good and early example for the breadth of his work is his short article on 'The Payment of Prisoners', which shows a keen understanding of the intricacies of social policy. It highlights how individual economic prospects are a precondition for social inclusion by applying the intuition of cumulative causation to individual life-courses. Somewhat regrettably, the political suggestions coming from this 65 year old paper are still of high contemporary relevance – especially for countries like the US, who use prisons, in part, as a substitute for social policy.

Moreover, you will also find two other interesting Special Issues below – one on "Gender in Economic History" and another one on "Frantz Fanon at 100: Class Struggle and the Future of African Liberation". Both have been published a little off the beaten heterodox paths, namely in Economic History Research and the Review of African Political Economy. The, admittedly somewhat irregular, inclusion of such contributions is representative of our effort to broadly reflect developments in fields close to heterodox economics, like political economy, economic sociology, development studies or economic history. The two Special Issues thereby not only address this general interest to facilitate exchange with related fields, but, due to their specific thematic orientation, are also pertinent to an exhaustive understanding of persistent economic stratification, which manifests itself across several structural dimensions (with race, class and gender as the most prominent ones).

Finally, other interesting reads are surely found in Mohsen Havdani’s and Ha-Joon Chang’s report on “Manufacturing ‘Economists’ Minds: Ideology, Authority and Economics Education”, which experimentally investigates the pervasiveness of groupthink in mainstream economics (education), and in the Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Growth. The latter has become a close to indispensable resource for teaching heterodox macroeconomics on various level and is now available in a second, fundamentally revised edition.

All the best,

Jakob

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