Issue 353 January 05, 2026 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory
The bad news is that your work-life in 2026 starts probably right about now. The good news is that it does so with a fresh and crisp issue of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter ;-)
Among other great things, this issue features a series of highly interesting conferences and workshops, including both long-time classics like the annual conferences of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) and the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) as well as more small-scale events trying to create a space of exchange on specialized topics. The latter group includes the Ergodicity Economics conference, a workshop on informal economic practices in Africa, or a Philosophy & Economics conference on "Paradoxes". As someone who cherishes twisted stuff, I recommend reading the call of the latter conference (check it out here) as it features a truly nice collection of interesting paradoxes across disciplines, including some associated with heterodox economics (like the Lauderdale paradox or the paradox of caring labor).
In addition, this issue is also strong on reading material: out of the plethora of useful books we feature below, I wanted to point you to the extensive and ultimately revised and improved second edition of the "Handbook of Heterodox Economics", edited by Tae-Hee Jo, Lynne Chester and Carlo D’Ippoliti, who managed to assemble a fantastic collection of papers that cover large parts of Heterodox Economics in a comprehensive as well as accessible manner. On top of that, you will spot a series of recent journal issues, including a series of interesting special issues on the legacy of Paul David (for those of you focusing on the history of thought), on the relevance of MMT (to be on point in policy debates ;-) as well as on more fundamental questions of "markets and/vs. democracy".
Finally, we received two book reviews these days, which you will find below. While we have received only a few reviews in the past months/years, we were very happy about these two submissions. However, I will also admit that we were thinking about discontinuing this section as we feel that writing book reviews for a newsletter (even if it is the Heterodox Economics Newsletter ;-)) does not align well with changing career requirements in economics and related fields. If you have any thoughts or comments about that, let us know anytime by email.
When speaking about internal matters, I also wanted to shout a warm welcome to Peter Dohmen, the new head assistant of the newsletter’s editorial team. Peter is a highly ambitious MA-student in Socio-Economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen and will support the production and editing of the newsletter in the upcoming month. Peter's diligence and occasional oversight will be a perfect complement to my more energetic-but-chaotic approach to editing – many thanks, Peter, for your contribution.
All the best, happy new year, and keep up the good work!
Jakob
© public domain
1-3 July, 2026 | Coimbra, Portugal
28th Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE)
The organizers invite submissions of papers and panels for the 28th Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics, taking place on 1-3 July 2025 at the University of Coimbra in Coimbra, Portugal. This is an event organised in collaboration with the Faculty of Economics at the University of Coimbra.
AHE seeks to support scholarship, reflection, and debate on innovative and diverse heterodox and radical understandings of the global political economy. The organizers welcome submissions that challenge conventional economic paradigms, offer alternative frameworks for understanding and navigating these complex crises, and actively work towards radical social change. The plenary sessions this year will cover inequality, financialisation, housing and long-run transformations. Confirmed speakers include Arjun Jayadev, Ozlem Onaran, Ana Santos and Francisco Louçã.
The organizers have a series of streams running this year that you can submit your papers and/or panels to. You can see a full overview of the streams here. Please read the stream descriptions carefully before submitting.
Paper submission
Submit abstracts for individual papers (max 300 words) by 20 February 2026. The organizers particularly encourage applications from underrepresented groups in the economics discipline including, but not limited to women, people of colour, scholars from the Global South. Limited travel support is available for selected early career scholars from the Global North and South. Early career scholars include PhD students as well as those who received their PhD no more than 2 years prior to the date of the conference and are not currently in a full-time, tenured position. When submitting your abstract, please indicate if you would like to be considered for the bursaries.
Submit your paper here.
Please note that the organizers can only consider one submission per presenter, i.e. only your first submission will be considered.
Panel submission
To make a submission for a panel please fill in this form. Please note that a panel typically consists of 3-4 presentations on a similar theme, but we are also open to panel submissions in non-standard formats (e.g. roundtable or workshop).
More info here.
Submission Deadline: 20 February 2026
27-29 May, 2026 | Araraquara, Brazil
Conference Theme: Institutional Economics: Its Place in 21st-Century Political Economy
The organizers are pleased to announce the 2nd AFEE South American Conference, to be held May 27–29, 2026, at São Paulo State University (UNESP), Araraquara (Brazil). Theme: “Institutional Economics: Its Place in 21st-Century Political Economy.”
Invited Speakers:
The event will also include the official launch of EINST — the Brazilian Association for Research in Original Institutional Economics.
The conference is supported by the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE), the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES), São Paulo State University (UNESP), and the Brazilian Keynesian Association (AKB). The organizers are also in contact with the INET Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) to organize and support a pre-conference workshop for young scholars.
Participation is free of charge. Young scholars are eligible for funding (accommodation and travel support).
The organiziers welcome submissions on:
Important Dates:
Please find the submission form here.
Please find the registration page here.
Submission Deadline: 20 January 2026
21-22 May, 2026 | Nancy, France
Conference Theme: Paradoxes and Contradictions
Paradoxes and contradictions are not merely curiosities or intellectual games—they often serve as catalysts for theoretical innovation, critical reflection, and methodological breakthroughs. Whether encountered in mathematical reasoning, empirical modeling, decision theory, or policy analysis, they compel us to confront the limits of coherence, consistency, and the explanatory power of economic knowledge. Some classical paradoxes have puzzled philosophers for centuries, such as the Liar paradox, the Sorites paradox, and Zeno’s paradoxes. Some paradoxes illustrate the difficulty of reconciling our intuitions and perceptions of space and time with scientific knowledge, such as Schrödinger's cat in quantum physics or the twin paradox in relativity theory.
Paradoxes also function rhetorically, drawing attention or prompting the search for explanation. As when John Locke observed that the “king of a large and fruitful territory [in the Americas] feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England.” Combining direct observation with reported facts, 18th- and 19th-century political economists imagined a puzzle world. From Bernard Mandeville’s Private Vices, Publick Benefits, to the paradox of thrift conceptualized by John Neville Keynes and later Paul Samuelson, the tension between individual behavior and aggregate outcomes has proved to be a particularly fruitful line of inquiry for economists.
For Hegel, the history of thought produces contradictions that are overcome through a dialectic process whereby a new form arises that contains the contradiction within it. Marx turned Hegel’s logic on its head, claiming instead that contradictions were located in the material world, in the capitalist production system. However, most economic paradoxes reveal tensions within the world of theory. From the simple Giffen paradox to the Edgeworth paradox, and the more complex paradoxes of capital theory, they expose hidden assumptions, challenge established theories, and invite adjustments, corrections, or displacements. Some paradoxes strike at the heart of the theory of value, such as the diamond–water paradox, the paradoxes of Malestroit, the Lauderdale paradox, and the paradox of caring labor.
As individual choice became the dominant methodological lens in the second half of the twentieth century, economists became interested in deviations from the canon of rationality (e.g., the St. Petersburg paradox, Allais paradox, Ellsberg paradox, and the chain store paradox). Theoretical puzzles received increasing attention as they were brought into the laboratory.
Broader normative characterizations of human nature have also long confronted paradoxes from Immanuel Kant’s “unsocial sociability” to John Stuart Mill’s paradox of hedonism. Economists and philosophers are also interested in political tensions such as the value conflicts identified by Amartya Sen in his liberal paradox, the tension between tradition and institutional change in James Buchanan’s paradoxical reference to “relatively absolute absolutes”, or the limitations of utilitarianism identified by Derek Parfit’s mere addition paradox. The problem of aggregating individual choices is foundational for social choice theory, as crystallized in a series of formal contradictions: Condorcet’s paradox, Kenneth Arrow’s impossibility theorem, Antony Downs’ paradox of voting, the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem, the doctrinal paradox, etc.
Not all paradoxes reside in the theoretician’s mind. Painstaking data collection and statistical analysis have revealed surprising puzzles that challenge our understanding of economic change, such as the Jevons paradox, the Leontief paradox, Dutch disease, the productivity paradox, and the Easterlin paradox.
Finally, policy recommendations based on economic constraints on political action are forcefully captured by Robert Bork’s Antitrust Paradox, Baumol’s cost disease, the Triffin dilemma, the Mundell–Fleming trilemma, or Dani Rodrik’s political trilemma.
The organizers welcome contributions that explore paradoxes and contradictions from any perspective—formal, conceptual, historical, or normative. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly encouraged, as are critical perspectives that interrogate the role of contradiction in the construction of economic knowledge. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
While the conference theme is Paradoxes and Contradictions, the organizers also welcome submissions on any topic at the intersection of philosophy and economics. The conference aims to provide a rich and inclusive forum for dialogue across a wide intellectual spectrum.
The organizers invite abstracts in English or French of 200 to 600 words, clearly outlining the paper’s thesis, argument, and relevance to the conference theme or broader interdisciplinary conversations. The organizers particularly welcome early-career researchers. Please submit your abstract via the conference website.
The organizers also invite submissions of full sessions or panels on any topic connecting economics and philosophy in innovative ways. Proposals for full sessions should include a title, a short (around 300 words) description of the session, and the list of proposed papers, indicating authors’ names, affiliations, and titles of the contributions. Session proposals should be submitted via email at philoeco2026@sciencesconf.org. Each paper should also be submitted on the conference website and will be evaluated by the scientific committee.
Extended Submission Deadline: 16 January 2026
24-28 July, 2028 | Montevideo, Uruguay
Congress Theme: World Powers and Conflicts
The 21st World Economic History Congress will convene from 24 to 28 July 2028 in Montevideo, Uruguay. The IEHA has a particular interest in strengthening the scientific approach to the historical and social sciences and in promoting exchange, cooperation, and understanding among all people.
The theme of the Congress is World Powers and Conflicts, which highlights central issues facing humanity today and connects to a broad and diverse range of historical problems, particularly those concerned with resources, inequality, and sustainability, central topics of the last two congresses (Paris and Lund).
Sessions may be proposed by any member of the international economic history community, whatever their institutional affiliation or status, as well as by scholars in related disciplines. The organizers strongly encourage proposals from early-career researchers. Sessions can also be proposed by non-national IEHA member organizations.
Submissions are welcome on the economic and social histories of all places and periods, and the organizers especially encourage proposals from the global South. Given the diversity of our membership, the organizers will consider any submission that advances the study, teaching, and public presentation of economic history. The organizers welcome panel proposals that highlight emerging scholarship from different fields of economic history, as well as contributions on innovative methodological and theoretical approaches.
The 5-day Montevideo Congress will feature approximately 180 sessions, with each day divided into 90-minute blocks (two before and two after lunch). It will be possible to combine two sessions into larger, coherent units. The proposals must make clear whether they apply to one or two blocks.
Please find more info here.
Submission Deadline: 14 September 2026
Guest Editors:
The topic of the special issue is political capitalism, a special variant of capitalism that has been highlighted first by Max Weber (1905, 1922). It refers to capitalism in distribution sphere before the advent of market capitalism in production sphere in the nineteenth century. Political capitalism describes monetary profit-making or rent seeking through non-market channels. It existed before the advent of market capitalism, but it also developed after the rise of modern capitalism. Different non-market channels include not only the state, political parties and groups, or political figures but also religious and military organizations. The influencers comprise a wide range of power centres that can exercise organized and coercive supra economic force.
The special issue aims to understand the diversity of political capitalisms in contradistinction with market capitalisms. The aim of the special issue is to offer a state-of-art introduction of the research on political capitalism in Central and Eastern-Europe (CEE).
Indicative Research Questions:
Submission Guidelines:
Abstracts (maximum 250 words) should include a title and a short biographical note. Invited manuscripts (typed double-spaced) should be submitted as e-mail attachments to the two guest editors (please specify “For special section on political capitalism in CEE” in the subject line). The author’s full contact details should be provided in the e-mail message.
Each submission must include an abstract and a list of key words.
The required length is 7,000 – 10,000 words (including endnotes). Authors should follow the Submission Guidelines provided on the journal’s website.
Submission Deadline: 31 January 2026
26-27 March, 2026 | Online
Conference Theme: Society and finance
Economics is not only an academic discipline but also an influential force in how we organize human societies, often via financialization and quantification. The answers classical economics gives to questions of social organization often differ starkly from those given by ergodicity economics, and the 2026 conference will explore these new answers under the theme “Society and finance.”
As ever, the theme is not meant to be too restrictive, and the organizers are especially excited to hear from you if they haven’t met you yet. To submit an abstract, please fill in this form no later than 28 January 2026.
26 March 2026 is dedicated to a tutorial day based on the textbook `An Introduction to Ergodicity Economics,’ which was published in June 2025.
27 March 2026 will follow the established format from previous years: Pre-recorded presentations will be streamed and then discussed live with the speakers. Recordings are made available one week before the conference.
Fees for the online event are €40 (€20 for students) at the current early-bird rate (rising to €80/€40 on 25 February 2026).
Please contact for any questions EE2026@lml.org.uk
Submission Deadline: 28 January 2026
9-12 September, 2026 | Lisbon, Portugal
Conference Theme: Capitalism Moving Beyond Neoliberalism: Crises, Changes, and What Comes Next
The name “neoliberalism” indicates the roots of the dominant ideology and policy practice in classical economic liberalism and Austrian political economy, whose basic pillars included property rights in the means of production, “free markets”, and limited direct economic activity by the government. Not only are two of these now regularly disregarded in economic policy formulation, but a central aspect of the ideology of liberalism was that bourgeois democracy was the best form of government for capital. The wholesale abandonment of this in what is still the center of the world capitalist system, the United States, the greatly sharpened the political struggles in Europe, with echoes in the Global South. These transformations pose the question of the appropriateness of the name “neoliberalism” and, at least, the consideration of some modifying adjective(s) to highlight the difference in the nature of the world capitalist system today from what it was in the 1980s and 1990s.
Submissions
The format of IIPPE is inclusive and decentralized through its Working Groups, and aims to promote and foster political economists at all stages of their career. The role of the central organizing committee is limited to interfacing with the host institution and the local organizing committee, organizing the plenaries, and facilitating the conference overall.
While proposals for academic or activist presentations are made to a centralized conference platform, the decision to accept the proposals and the formation of the conference panels and their topics is made by the different Working Groups that constitute the core of IIPPE.
Please find more info here.
Submissions can be made
To submit a proposal click the link to go to the IIPPE Front Page, and then use the link there to go to the instructions for submitting a proposal. Please read and follow these carefully to avoid spoiling your proposal. Then use the link that is embedded at the bottom of the instructions to go to the WHOVA proposal submission platform.
Submission Deadline: 15 February 2026
Please find some of the subcalls by the working groups below.
Marxist Political Economy Working Group
Works that primarily or at least deeply are concerned with issues in the nature of the Marxist methodology for political economy should be submitted to this group. These include, to name just a very few to indicate what is meant:
Similarly, studies of any topic in political economy where an important part of the study is a consideration of the Marxist methodology used should be proposed to this Working Group – the rate of profit, studies of crypto currencies that give a lot attention to their use of Marxist concepts of money, studies of the digital economy or knowledge-intense commodities that that give a lot of attention to their use of Marxist concepts of value, studies of any aspect of political economy where a central part of the study is the effect of classes or imperialism on that aspect, and so on.
IMPORTANT: In the submission process be sure to select the offered “Marxist Political Economy Working Group”.
Feel free to contact Al Campbell with any questions.
Varieties of Socialism Working Group
The working group explores the ways in which political economies have been organized in societies that self-identified as “socialist”, and analyses their historically specific mechanisms of production, exchange, and distribution. They try to use analytical frameworks that allow systematic comparisons between contexts as different as those of Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, and East-Central Europe. They are also interested in socialist projects that succeeded for a while at regional level within countries, especially in the tensions between national and local politics.
Please find more info about the working group here.
The Varieties of Socialism Working Group invites you to submit proposals for individual papers or themed panels, discussing any topic related to the political economy of actually existing socialist regimes. They welcome papers from all disciplinary corners that critically engage with a wide range of topics like planning mechanisms, (Longue-durée) backwardness and ‘catching-up’ efforts, industrial development, agrarian change, labour, class relations, and entanglements with the capitalist world. This list is far from exhaustive, and they are open to papers on any other topic, as long as they have a clear political-economy orientation.
For specific information about the working-group, please contact Alina-Sandra Cucu.
The Political Economy of China’s Development Working Group
The working group welcomes contributions on the following themes:
The organizers welcome panel proposals and single paper proposals. If you are proposing a panel, all papers need to be submitted individually via the link below and sent also by email to the working group coordinator with the titles of all papers.
Please find more info here.
If you have any questions, please contact the China working group coordinator Sam-Kee Cheng.
IMPORTANT: Please select the offered option of “Joint PE & World Economy WGs” in your submission process.
World Economy Working Group
The working group welcomes contributions on the following themes:
The organizers welcome panel proposals and single paper proposals. If you are proposing a panel, all papers need to be submitted individually via the link below and sent also by email to the working group coordinator with the titles of all papers.
If you have any questions, please contact the World Economy working group coordinators: abmf@azc.uam.mx, rrsawaya@gmail.com, tomas.marques@giga-hamburg.de.
IMPORTANT: In your submission please indicate clearly that you are submitting to this call by selecting the offered World Economy Working Group option.
Agrarian Change Working Group
The Agrarian Change Working Group invites submission of proposals for individual papers, and thematic panels. Submissions are open to all aspects of Agrarian Change, but we especially encourage contributions on the following themes:
For questions and additional information contact any of the coordinators of the Agrarian Change Working Group
IMPORTANT: On the submission form select the radio button for the “Agrarian Change” working group to submit a proposal for our sessions.
Moving Beyond Capitalism Working Group
The Moving Beyond Capitalism Working Group invites you to submit proposals for individual papers or themed panels, discussing anything related to moving beyond capitalism. Possible topics include (just as examples):
Please find more info here.
Feel free to contact Al Campbell with any questions.
IMPORTANT: In the submission process be sure to select the offered “Moving Beyond Capitalism” Working Group.
Economic History Working Group
The IIPPE Economic History Working Group aims to promote critical political-economic and materialist approaches to the study of historical phenomena. Over the past two and a half decades, new methodologies and approaches have gained prominence, moving beyond regional or national frameworks to emphasize global comparative and connective histories. These approaches highlight the transnational flows of trade, labour, and resources, as well as the broader institutional structures that have shaped markets, production, and consumption. Simultaneously, the discipline is now increasingly subjected to mainstream economic analysis, underscoring an urgent need to reclaim and further develop the critical traditions that have long been the mainstay of economic history.
To this end, the Economic History working group invites paper and panel proposals focusing on the periods of high imperialism, the inter-war years, and post-war socio-economic developments. Studies employing institutionalist and materialist approaches to colonial economies and their implications for post-colonial developmental trajectories are especially welcome.
Themes of interest include:
For further inquiries, contact the WG coordinators Ricardo Noronha and Aditi Dixit.
IMPORTANT: In the submission process be sure to select the offered “Economic History” Working Group.
History of Economic Thought, Economic Methodology and Critique of the Mainstream Working Group
The HETMECoM Working Group invites proposals for research papers, panels and other presentations at IIPPE’s 16th Annual Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “Capitalism Moving Beyond Neoliberalism: Crisis, Changes, and What Comes Next", and provides a timely framework to investigate the limitations of mainstream economic thinking and explore the linkages between the crisis of neoliberalism and economic crises. In light of poly-crisis and the transition to a defence economy, it marks a significant step towards an era of profound changes. In this vein, a substantial task is to assess the new heterodoxies critically, to determine how genuinely they differ from neoclassical economics, and to assess how much they engage with, rather than contain or even dismiss, more radical alternatives across methodology, interdisciplinarity, theory and conceptualisation. Another task is promoting a more deep-rooted political economy in teaching and research in the wake of the crisis and the mainstream responses.
Proposed themes for Papers or Panels:
Papers or Panels related to any of the other themes of the Working Group (history of economic thought, economic methodology, economic history and philosophy of economics) are also welcome.
For further inquiries, please contact Dimitris Milonakis and Manolis Manioudis.
IMPORTANT: In the submission process, be sure to select the offered “HETMECoM) Working Group”.
Neoliberalism and Contemporary Capitalism Working Group
The IIPPE Neoliberalism and Contemporary Capitalism Working Group brings together researchers interested in the material basis of neoliberalism, its national varieties, and alternatives to it. As the contemporary form of global capitalism, neoliberalism is based on the systematic use of state power to impose a hegemonic project of recomposition of the rule of capital in each area of economic and social life, under the ideological veil of ‘non-intervention’. This is guided by the current imperatives of the international reproduction of capital, with the financial markets and the interests of the US capital to the fore. Politically, by insulating markets and transnational investors from popular demands, and through the imperative of labour control to secure international competitiveness, neoliberalism also severely curtails democratic possibilities. Neoliberalism has also created an income-concentrating dynamics of accumulation that has proven resistant to efforts by Keynesian and reformist interventions.
Coincidentally, the theme of the next IIPPE conference questions whether contemporary capitalism is still underpinned by neoliberalism. Accordingly, the Neoliberalism and Contemporary Capitalism Working Group invites paper and panel proposals that call attention to numerous different areas of research related to the very existence of neoliberalism.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following probes:
For questions, please email one of the coordinators of the WorkingGroup:
IMPORTANT: Please select the Neoliberalism Working Group when submitting your proposal.
Submission Deadline: 15 February 2026
MARXISM21 Special Issue on ‘Teaching Marxism in Colleges and Universities’.
MARXISM 21, founded in 2004, is a bi-lingual (Korean and English), quarterly academic journal specialized in Marxist studies. As an editor of MARXISM21, I am currently planning the special issue for the Autumn 2026 (to be published on August 20, 2026).
The tentative title is ‘Teaching Marxism in Colleges and Universities’. We aim to share experiences regarding the difficulties, challenges, and future directions of teaching Marxism (including Marxist economics, philosophy, political science, sociology, cultural studies, and various other fields) across different countries, and to explore theoretical alternatives. I am confident that in an era where teaching and learning Marxism within universities and the academic world is becoming increasingly difficult, much can be gained through the sharing of international experiences and solidarity. Those interested in contributing to this special issue are kindly requested to send a tentative title and a short abstract to Dong-Min Rieu at rieudm@cnu.ac.kr by February 28, 2026. The deadline for submitting final manuscripts (max. 12,000 words length) is May 31, 2026. Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to email me at any time.
Important dates are February 28, 2026 for a short abstract and May, 31, 2026 for paper submission.
Dong-Min Rieu, Editor, MARXISM21
22-24 July, 2026 | Rome, Italy
Conference Theme: Private & Public Institutions for Good Governance
Governance refers to those rules that clearly bind, define, and enable an organization’s scope of action, authority, and objectives. Much recent institutional research has focused on the governance of private organizations, most notably the business firm. By contrast, the governance of public organizations, such as the state, has received comparatively less attention. Moreover, work in these areas has often remained siloed, treating the two domains separately.
Today, however, we see growing public involvement in private institutions alongside an increased private presence in public institutions. The boundaries between the two are merging in ways that until relatively recently were almost unimaginable. This development raises important questions about how such blurred boundaries challenge the pursuit of good governance and its implications for human flourishing.
Addressing these questions requires interdisciplinary perspectives that explicitly recognise the influence, power, and role of both public and private actors, and consider the ways that they shape governance within and across national boundaries.
This Eleventh WINIR Conference is organized in collaboration with the Department of Social and Economic Sciences (DiSSE) at Sapienza University of Rome. The city of Rome’s long history of governance, from ancient times to the present, makes it a fitting venue for our inquiry into private and public institutions.
The conference will open in the afternoon of Wednesday 22 July and end with a dinner on Friday 24 July, during which the 2026 Elinor Ostrom Prize and the JOIE Reviewer of the Year Award will be announced. There will be an optional tour on Saturday 25 July. The conference will be preceded by a WINIR Young Scholars Workshop on Tuesday 21 July.
The organizers invite submissions of individual papers and 3- or 4-paper sessions proposals related to the conference theme or any aspect of institutional research, in line with WINIR’s aims and research priorities. All submissions are evaluated by the WINIR Scientific Quality Committee.
Please find more info here.
Submission Deadline: 19 February 2026
14-15 April, 2026 | Casablanca, Morocco
Workshop Theme: Reimagining Informal Economies and Practices across Africa. How “informality” works, and what it teaches us about African societies and beyond.
This workshop aims to move beyond dichotomies of formal/informal, legal/illegal, and modern/traditional. The organizers invite young researchers working in African contexts to explore how informalities work, what they reveal about economic, social, and political orders, and what conceptual tools might better capture their complexity. Inspired by African epistemologies, critical studies, and relational approaches to governance, the goal is to create an interactive space for thinking with - and not merely about - informality. By doing so, the organizers hope to contribute to new analytical vocabularies and more grounded understandings of African economic, social, and political lives.
The workshop’s approach: This workshop will be an interactive space, not a traditional conference. Participants will work in thematic groups guided by a key discussant who will help shape collective reflection and facilitate discussion. When submitting an abstract, please indicate the stream you wish to join. Streams will be finalised once proposals are selected.
Theme 1: Deconstructing binaries, embracing complexity
Theme 2: Wealth, power, and inequality within informality
Theme 3: The social and political life of informality
Theme 4: Methodological challenges and fieldwork experiences
Submissions should include a 300-400-word abstract and a short (2-3 sentences) biographical statement in a single Word file. The organizers accept applications in English and French, and are keen to encourage applications from French, Portuguese, and Arabic-speaking regions of Africa. Presentations and discussions will be mostly in English, but the organizers will do their best to provide informal, non-professional translation to support participation.
Send a single Word / PDF file to Marta Massera, and put Abel Polese in CC. Abstract should be sent by January 9, 2026. The organizers expect to send acceptance notices by January 19. The organizers will try to complete the selection process as promptly as possible to allow participants sufficient time to arrange their travel.
Please find more info here.
Submission Deadline: 9 January 2026
7-12 June, 2026 | Como, Italy
4th Lake Como INEM Summer School in Philosophy of Economics
The organizers are pleased to announce that the 4th Lake Como INEM Summer School in Philosophy of Economics will be held at Villa del Grumello, Como, Italy, from June 7 (welcome drinks) to June 12, 2026, and that the application phase is now open.
The school is organized by the Lake Como School of Advanced Studies, the International Network for Economic Method (INEM), the University of Insubria, and the University of Milan.
Participation is reserved to PhD students, young scholars (PhD degree obtained after January 2022), and advanced master students who intend to pursue a PhD.
Applicants should send a CV, the contact details of an academic reference, and a paper in English to Caterina Marchionni. The paper should either be an extended abstract (750–1,000 words), or a full draft of up to 7,500 words.
Please find more info here.
Application Deadline: 31 January 2026
February, 2026 | School of Political Economy, Online
Course Theme: An Introduction to Political Economy and Economics
This nine-week course (which runs in quarters 1 and 3 each year) offers a pluralist introduction to political economy and economics. The organizers will examine nine competing schools of thought, each of which offer an original and distinctive illumination of economic reality. The course is tertiary (i.e. university level) in nature and teaching staff are both highly qualified and experienced. However, you do not need to be connected to a university or to have previously studied political economy or economics to enrol. The approach is friendly and informal, rather than stuffy or pretentious.
Each week you view (or listen as a podcast) to a pre-recorded online lecture (at anytime that suits you), then undertake some suggested reading, and then participate in a weekly 90-minute class either via zoom or in-person where we discuss set questions and field any of your queries or comments.
Please find more info here.
You can also preview most of the first week’s learning material for this subject via this link.
4 February, 2026 | Rouen, France
Workshop Theme: Evolution and Heterogeneity of Inflation and Cost of Living – Measurement Standards Across the World
Programme:
10:30 − 10:45
Introduction
10:45 − 11:30
Tracking the Cost of Living, for Whom and at What Price? A political economy of price indicators in Madagascar
Isabelle Guérin, IRD-Cessma (UPC/Inalco/IRD)
11:30 − 12:15
Inflation Double Standard, or: How we learned to stop worrying and love house price inflation (US, UK, France, EU)
Maxence Dutilleul, CEE, Science Po
12:15 − 13:30
Déjeuner / Lunch
13:30 − 14:15
Quantifying Biases in the Measurement of Inflation and Purchasing Power in France
François Geerolf, OFCE, CEPR
14:15 − 15:00
Accounting for Quality Change in the Swedish Consumer Price Index during the 20th Century
Daniel Berg & Rasmus Fleischer, Department of Economic History and International Relations, Stockholm University
15:00 − 15:15 Pause-café / Coffee Break
15:15 − 16:00
Reflections on the Argentine Price Index
Cecilia Lanata-Briones, Department of Economics, University of Warwick
16:00 − 16:45
The Compromises and Controversies of the Harmonized Consumer Price Index (HICP)
Florence Jany-Catrice & Aykiz Dogan, Chaire EQAM, LASTA Université de Rouen-Normandie
16:45 − 17:30 Discussion générale / General discussion
The workshop will take place at the University of Rouen-Normandie, pôle DESP (Droit, Economie, Gestion, Science Politique) 3 rue Pasteur, 76000 Rouen, Salle des commissions, 3e étage.
To register please contact Aykiz Dogan.
Job title: Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
Applications are invited for a three-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Centre for History and Economics in Paris (CHEP), Sciences Po, starting on 1 September 2026. CHEP encourages historical research on all aspects of economic life. It was established in 2022, the result of a collaboration between Sciences Po and the Cambridge-Harvard Joint Centre for History and Economics, and is hosted by the Sciences Po Centre for History. Sciences Po is one of France's leading institutions for research and teaching in the social sciences, law and history.
Please find more info on CHEP here.
The Postdoctoral Research Fellowship is in connection with the research programme on economic and environmental history, which is supported by the Cambridge, Harvard and Paris Centres for History and Economics. The annual gross salary will be 45 000 €. Employment in France guarantees full access to healthcare and other social security benefits. The fellow will have an annual research allowance of 2000 €. In addition, an allowance will be available towards relocation costs, and Sciences Po will assist with the obtention of a visa if required.
The fellowship is intended for an outstanding researcher early in their career. To be eligible, a candidate must have defended - or be due to defend - their PhD between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2026. The PhD may be in another subject than history. Sciences Po's working languages are English and French, and only the ability to work in English is required for this position.
The fellow appointed will be expected to undertake research in the general fields of economic and environmental history, broadly defined. Applications are welcomed from scholars working on any part of the world or any period. The fellow will participate in the seminars and conferences arranged in connection with the programme and will have the opportunity to organize meetings and workshops on subjects related to their own research. The fellow will be invited to the Cambridge Centre for History and Economics in the course of the fellowships and will have the possibility of visiting the Joint Center for History and Economics at Harvard University.
Applicants are asked to nominate two referees through the online referee nomination portal.They are advised to nominate the referees well before they complete their own application. This is to ensure referees are given sufficient notice to submit the letters of recommendation by the closing date of the competition.
Applicants should also complete an online application form and submit through the application portal a curriculum vitae and a statement of research interests (up to 1500 words). The curriculum vitae and the statement of research interests should be in English. The statement of research interests should highlight the significance of past and planned future research.
Please find more info on the fellowship here.
Application Deadline: 19 February 2026
The 2026 winner of the Veblen-Commons Scholar Award is Wolfram Elsner.
Wolfram Elsner is a Professor of Economics (retired), University of Bremen, Germany. He graduated at the Universities of Cologne (MA, 1974) and Bielefeld (PhD, 1977), Germany. After receiving his “Habilitation” at U Bielefeld in 1985, he worked for ten years outside academia in regional development at city and state levels.
Further milestones:
Paul Lewis and others: Ontological theorising and the history of economic thought: an introduction
Toru Yamamori: Empathy as a constituent of social reality: an ontological reading of Adam Smith
Sheila Dow and David Waite: Adam Smith, realism and the urban economy
Michael Lazarus: From the invisible hand to the rabble: Smith, Hegel and social ontology
Tony Lawson: Social relations, social positioning theory and Marx
Richard Arena: Economic analysis, history of economic thought and ontology: the case of Léon Walras
Anthony M Endres and David A Harper: Was Carl Menger a process theorist? An assessment of his theory of wants and goods
Nuno Ornelas Martins: Marshall and the notions of welfare and value in the Cambridge tradition
Mário Graça Moura and Francisco Nunes-Pereira: Economics and ideology, historically and ontologically considered
Gregory M Collins: The influence of Burke in the thought of Keynes and Hayek
Carlo Zappia: On Ellsberg’s commitment to dealing with the uncertainty of the real world
Beliza Borba de Almeida and William Waller: The ontology of Original Institutional Economics and Social Positioning Theory
Paul Lewis and Jochen Runde: Bloomington and Cambridge compared: varieties of ontological thinking, social positioning, and the self-governance of common-pool resources
Amaranta Herrero and Fern Wickson: Reducing food waste by killing wolves? A continuing failure to integrate climate and biodiversity agendas in food policies
Antonio Di Cintio and others: Heterogeneity of artisanal fishers’ perception of marine protected areas. The case of the Tuscan Archipelago (Mediterranean Sea)
Sara Karimzadeh: Waste delinking: A pathway to degrowth?
Julien Picard and Sanchayan Banerjee: Unpacking the side effects of social norm nudges
Vít Ješina and Markéta Arltová: The double dividend: Fact or fiction? Evidence from the European Union
Rebecca L.C. Taylor and others: Plastic waste imports & coastal litter: Evidence from citizen science data
Nicolas Alou and others: Plant diversity to cope with increased drought risk in grasslands
Qiang Li and Lin Zhang: How does local policy attention reshape environmental justice?
Elisa Chioatto and others: “Local Heroes”: Construction firms pioneering circular innovation
Cheng Keat Tang and others: Rising temperatures and physical pain: Evidence from over 2 million U.S. residents
Guilherme Magacho and others: Low carbon transition's macroeconomic impacts in Latin America
Lei Zhang and others: When government does too well? Perceived environmental governance performance and citizens' green consumption
Sophie Harzer and Martin F. Quaas: Differentiated vs. homogeneous payments for biodiversity conservation — Microeconomic theory and systematic literature review
Camille Antinori and others: Normal for whom? Exploring socioeconomic variation in a travel cost analysis of urban shoreline fishing
Manuela Coromaldi and others: The hidden social costs of climate change: Evidence on weather shocks, children’s mobility and rural economic welfare in Uganda
Camille Salesse: Who suffers the heat? Partial adaptation and persistent inequalities in France
Gustavo Pereira Serra and Ettore Gallo: Climate change mitigation and green energy investment: A stock-flow consistent model
Jubril Animashaun and others: Harmful temperatures and consumption expenditure: Evidence from Nigerian households
Radhika Lahiri and others: Regional aspects of climate change beliefs in the U.S
Maja Schling and others: The economic impact of Sargassum: Evidence from the Mexican coast
Antonia Schwarz and others: Tailored information and the public support for carbon pricing in Germany
Toker Doganoglu and others: Determinants of willingness to bear the costs for environmental protection: Insights from cross-country survey data
Anna Pagani and others: Identifying leverage points in the social housing system: Housing associations on the path towards degrowth?
Alexander Mihailov: Greening prosperity stripes across the globe
Evert Thomas and others: Decommodifying cacao: matchmaking between producers and buyers of fine flavour cacao from Peru
Roldan Muradian and Peter May: Innovations and Dilemmas in Global Forest Governance - The Tortuous Pathway toward a Deforestation-free World: Introduction to the Special Issue
Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn and Matthias Kranke: (Post-)growth infrastructures
Eric Cezne and Kei Otsuki: The Amazon’s road to growth? Infrastructural imaginaries of Brazil’s BR-319 Highway
Aslı Yürük and Ozan Karaman: Cruising towards growth: Redefining public benefit through privatized transport infrastructure
Daniel Durrant: Megaprojects and the transition to post-growth infrastructure
Senka Neuman Stanivuković: Rhythms of growth: Unpacking infrastructure and geopolitics in the Balkans
Kathryn Furlong: Debt/growth infrastructures: Financialization and state capitalism in Medellín
Sylvain Maechler and Valérie Boisvert: Fixing the ecological crisis: The promises and pitfalls of green accounting infrastructures
Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn and Matthias Kranke: Post-growth tokens or token post-growth? Bitcoin, alt-coins and infrastructural evolution in digital finance
Clemens Hoffmann: Decarbonization rush? The problem of speed in the energy transition
Reynold F. Nesiba: Do Institutionalists and post-Keynesians share a common approach to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)?
Simon Theurl and Dennis Tamesberger: Does a job guarantee pay off? The fiscal costs of fighting long-term unemployment in Austria
Marc Lavoie: Editorial to the Symposium: Modern Monetary Theory and its critics
Éric Tymoigne: Modern money theory on fiscal and monetary policies: empirics, theory, and praxis
William F. Mitchell: The modern monetary theory literature seems to have escaped Drumetz/Pfister
Joëlle Leclaire: Modern money theory: some basics in response to Drumetz/Pfister
Martin Watts and James Juniper: The contribution of MMT to modern macroeconomics
Emilio Carnevali and Giuseppe Fontana: What modern monetary theory is, and what it is not
Malcolm Sawyer: Some Kaleckian remarks on modern monetary theory in light of a paper by Drumetz/Pfister
Françoise Drumetz and Christian Pfister: It takes two to tango: a reply to our MMT critics
Emilio Carnevali and Matteo Deleidi: The trade-off between inflation and unemployment in an ‘MMT world’: an open-economy perspective
Sebastian Dullien and Silke Tober: A monetary Keynesian view of modern monetary theory
Joëlle Leclaire: Fiscal and monetary policy for difficult times: MMT solutions
Philippe Fontaine and Joel Isaac: The History of Economics: Decline or Renewal?
Erik Baker: The History of Economics as Science Critique: Demystification and Its Limits
Aaron Benanav: When an Accountant Becomes a Taxi Driver: Unemployment, Labor Market Institutions, and Economic Theory
Stephen Macekura: The Growth Concept, Decolonization, and the Global Cold War: A Study of Economic Ideas and Twentieth-Century International History
Eli Cook: Money Talks: The Rise of Willingness to Pay Without Apology
William Deringer: The “Social Rate of Discount” and the Political Economy of the Future in Postwar America
Simon Torracinta: The Postindustrial Politics of Productivity: Structures and Statistics of the Service Transition in the Long 1970s
Jonny Bunning: Straight Outta Princeton: Toward a Theory of Gary Becker
Paul A David: A contribution to the theory of diffusion
Benjamin Coriat and others: Open Science, Paul David, and the commons
Ashish Arora and others: The reorganization of the American innovation ecosystem and the challenge of translating science
Robin Cowan and others: Strategies of search and patenting under different IPR regimes
Timothy F Bresnahan: Information technology use and economic growth
Cristiano Antonelli and others: The paradox of the productivity slowdown in the knowledge economy
Arnaldo Camuffo and others: Internal initial conditions and path dependence: an experimental and AI-synthetic study of theories and awareness of unknown events
Dominique Foray and Luc Soete: Innovation assessment: probing the future
Daniel Souza and others: How small is big enough? Open labeled datasets and the development of deep learning
W Edward Steinmueller: The transformation of US business data processing during and beyond the 20 century
Joaquim Vergés-Jaime: Multi-factor productivity indicators at the country level: not the meaning it is assumed they have
Anupam Das and others: A political economy analysis of the income inequality-CO2 emissions nexus in Canada
Pandikasala Jijin: Remittances and labour force heterogeneity: can the disincentive effect vary?
Swayamsiddha Sarangi: Labor share decline across US manufacturing sectors: 1979–2019
Aida Isabel Tavares and others: Housing cost overburden and population health: cross-country evidence from Europe before the pandemic
Swapnanil SenGupta and Aakansha Atal: Climate change and India’s inflation, fiscal space and growth
Alexandros Gymnopoulos and Persefoni Tsaliki: The impact of the wage share on real GDP: a classical political economics perspective
Ramos E. Mabugu and others: Evaluating impacts of agriculture-led investments on sub-Saharan African countries’ growth and poverty
Ivan Moscati: Psychological narratives in decision theory: what they are and what they are good for
Alfonso Palacio-Vera: Learning from economic models: the case of DSGE models
Lilia Qian: Weak-necessity causal reasoning for evaluating counterfactual arguments in law and economics
Breno Valente Fontes Araújo and others: The relationship between the pillars of national innovation systems and economic complexity: An international empirical analysis
Anna D’Ambrosio and Matteo Migheli: Regional resilience through the lenses of the capability approach
R. Donangelo and H. Fort: The Fisher/Price theorem applied to companies across various industries: Natural selection and environment change
Radeef Chundakkadan and others: Automation, firm performance, and employment: Evidence from developing countries
Samuele Bibi and others: Mexico: A Minskyian case of financial fragility shaken by Covid-19
Heikki Patomäki: From crisis to global reform? Delphi insights on the feasibility of an international clearing union
Vinícius Martinez and André Biancarelli: Asymmetric internationalization and subordination: global productive fluctuations affecting industrial investment in Brazil (2000–2019)
Cinthia de Souza: Financialization of the peripheral state and the role of sovereign debt hierarchies: the Brazilian case
Zengping He: “Yigongdaizhen” and job guarantee: a case in Shanghai in the early 1950s
Míriam Oliveira Silva Português: Post-Keynesian perspectives on Brazilian banking strategies: a cluster analysis (2000–2022)
John T. Harvey: Post Keynesian theories of exchange rate determination: a critical survey
Florencia M. Fares and others: Real dollarization, currency substitution, and inflation control
Bianca Orsi and others: Currency hierarchy and the nature of peripheral currencies’ internationalization
Note: All articles are written in Spanish
Teresa Aguirre: One hundred years of the Bank of Mexico: Evolution and Challenges
Monika Meireles and César Duarte: The Bank of Mexico (Banxico) and financial inclusion: regional asymmetries and intersectional inequalities
Omar Velasco: Reflections on the founding of the Bank of Mexico as a historical process
Enrique Mendoza and Roberto Soto: Independent central banking and financial megaconglomerates in Mexico, 1994-2023
Nitzia Vázquez and others: Bank of Mexico: Historical Evolution, Monetary Policy Transformations, and Digital Challenges
Tsuyoshi Yasuhara: Bank of Mexico During Stabilizing Development: An Application of Prebisch's Theory
Nuria Pérez and Luis Alberto Quezada: Transition of the Interbank Equilibrium Interest Rate (TIIE) of 28 Days to Funding TIIE: A Critical Analysis of the Adjustment Differential and its Implications for the Mexican Money Market
Theodore P. Lianos: ECONOMICS 100: Overpopulation is a wicked problem
Constantine E. Passaris: The transformational role of artificial intelligence in the pursuit of good economic governance
Carlos Guerrero de Lizardi: Elements for a radical inflation targeting
Constantinos Alexiou: Beyond homo economicus: An interdisciplinary critique of rationality in economic decision-making
Bernard C. Beaudreau: The Solow residual or What happens when moral philosophers try their hand at natural philosophy
Junaid B. Jahangir: Teaching Economics of Populism
Leon Podkaminer: Strength and weakness of Germany’s economy
Daniel Petrov: Gendered exposure to artificial intelligence in labor markets: A comparative political economy analysis of Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, and India
Chinedu Chukwudinma and others: Frantz Fanon at 100: class struggle and the future of African liberation
Sarah Jilani and Chinedu Chukwudinma: A radical supplement: Fanon, Gaza and the anxieties of empire
Nigel C. Gibson: Fanon's continuing presence and revolutionary Sudan
Ken Olende: Frantz Fanon, Kenya's anti-colonial rebellion and the role of the working class
Omni Ahvonen: 'I am not a prisoner of history': Frantz Fanon, temporal defiance, and the critique of colonial time
Christopher L. Hill: Revolution or redress? The history of Fanon in Japan
Chinedu Chukwudinma and Baindu Kallon: The shifting influence of Frantz Fanon on Walter Rodney's anti-imperialismm (1968-1978)
Peter Hudis: The political economy of Frantz Fanon's concept of sociogeny
Mebratu Kelecha: Africa's deferred liberation
Muriam Haleh Davis: 'A bird yearning for freedom': Algerian critiques of Fanon after 1962
Sarah Jilani: Fanon's psycho-politics of decolonisation
Symposium Papers:
Owen Haywood: Posner v. Tullock: Diverging Paths in the Economic Analysis of the Law
Angelo Vieira: Goodwin’s Early Macrodynamic Models: A Singular Post-WWII Analysis of Shocks, Irregularities and Innovations
Isadora Pelegrini: Albert Hirschman, Celso Furtado and Brazilian Regional Planning
Louise Villeneuve: Consumption and Waste in Early Nineteenth-Century Political Economy
Etienne Martinier: Oli Hawrylyshyn’s Contribution to the Economic Valuation of Unpaid Domestic Work
Research Articles:
Marianne Johnson: Fiscal Policy and Public Finance Before Keynes
Luca Fiorito and Fabio Fiduccia: The Making (and Unmaking) of a Militant Economist: Leo Wolman’s Reminiscences from the Columbia Oral History Collection, Part I: From Johns Hopkins to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union of America
Themed Section: Critical Engagements with Alberto Toscano’s Late Fascism
Justin Paulson: Making class unusable for fascism
Robyn Marasco: Fascism Before Fascism
Alyosha Goldstein: Late fascism, colonialism, and the long counter-revolution of property
Jeanelle K. Hope: Beyond the 92 percent: Black women and the Black antifascist tradition
Vanessa E. Thompson and Raul Zelik: The long-ignored contribution of Black radical thinkers to a theory of fascism
Vijay Prashad: The far Right of a special type
Other articles:
Karen Douglas: Organizing for Decent Work? “All we do all day is bargain and deal with disputes”
Susan Collis: From Reconciliation to Economic Reconciliation: The Rise of a State Project and Its Limits
Warren Bernauer and others: Redefining the General Interest: Critical Minerals and the New Ideologies of Extractivism in Canada
Arthur Blouin and Julian Dyer: Reconstructing History: Using Language to Estimate Religious Spread
Julia Cagé and Edgard Dewitte: It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 160 Years of British Campaign Spending
Michela Carlana and Marco Tabellini: Happily Ever After: Immigration, Natives’ Marriage, and Fertility
Erik Loualiche and others: Firm Networks in the Great Depression
Christian Robles-Baez and others: The Political Economy of Commodity Cartel Formation: The Case of Coffee, 1930–1940
Evan Wigton-Jones: Droughts, Conflicts, and the Importance of Democratic Legitimacy: Evidence from Pre-Industrial Europe
Vinzent Ostermeyer: Winners and Losers: The Asymmetric Impact of Tariff Protection on Late-Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing Firms
Marvin Suesse and Theocharis Grigoriadis: Financing Late Industrialization: Evidence from the State Bank of the Russian Empire
Jeanne Lazarus: Note from the editor: Is globalization over? What tariffs tell us
Jonathan Levy:Opium talk: American capitalism in transition
Jeanne Lazarus and Quinn Slobodian: An interview with Quinn Slobodian
Yingyao Wang: China’s own derisking? Contextualizing the US tariffs and Chinese investment in Southeast Asia
Timur Ergen: The politicization of sectors: Industrial change and categories of development
Alexandre Chirat and others: Introduction to the Special Issue “Markets and Democracy: Complementarities and Conflicts”
Marine Raffray: Preserving American Democracy by Saving Agricultural Markets: Another Understanding of the New Deal
Lukas Starchl: Ludwig Mises and Ideas of Supranational Governance in Early 20th Century Vienna
Tiago Mendonça dos Santos: Legitimation Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism: An Evaluation of Habermas' and Streeck's Alternatives
by Andrew Ross Sorkin | 2025, Viking
In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin.
With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again.
This is not just a story about money. 1929 is a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion that “this time is different.” It’s about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming—only to be dismissed until it was too late.
Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail reimagined how financial crises are told. Now, with 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time—with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Malcolm Torry | 2023, Edward Elgar Publishing
Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary.
Highlighting the diversity and complexity of the global Basic Income debate, Malcolm Torry assesses the history, current state, and future of research in this important field.
Cognisant of the increasing extent and intensity of the current Basic Income debate, Torry begins by defining relevant key terms. Each chapter offers a concise history of a particular subfield of Basic Income research, describes the current state of research in that area, and makes proposals for the research required if the increasingly widespread global debate on Basic Income is to be constructive. Subsequent chapters tackle research on financial and political feasibility; employment market effects; other economic and social effects; ethical justifications for paying everyone an unconditional income; and questions of implementation.
This state-of-the-art Research Agenda will be of great value to students and scholars interested in social and economic history, the economics of social policy, and a Universal Basic Income. Its proposed strategies for carrying out future research on Basic Income will also benefit journalists, think tank staff, and policymakers.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Frank Fischer | 2024, Edward Elgar Publishing
Presenting a critical approach to the study of public policy and policy analysis, this book offers a postpositivist foundation that challenges empiricist and technocratic approaches to policy studies. Critical Policy Inquiry draws on Jürgen Habermas’s work on communicative action and deliberation, Michel Foucault’s writings on discourse, and the epistemics of social constructivism.
Frank Fischer advances deliberative policy argumentation and the logic of practical reason, exploring how this can be used as a framework for interpreting the interaction of normative and empirical arguments in policy politics. He applies this approach to a diverse range of topics, including technocracy, policy expertise, deliberative democratic politics, interpretive policy analysis, post-truth, climate and Covid denialism, participatory governance, local and tacit knowledge, and the role of emotion in policy controversies. The book concludes with a look to transformative policy learning and the future of the field.
Connecting social and political theory with empirical research, this book is essential for students and scholars of public policy, politics, governance, public administration, and regulatory policy. Its practical, real-world applications will also be of value to policymakers worldwide.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Mehrdad Vahabi | 2025, Palgrave Macmillan
This book introduces a new theoretical framework that examines Iran in relation to the theological concept of Anfal, a confiscatory regime seen in Iran since 1979 where public assets belong to the leader of Iran. Through analysing the economic impacts of Anfal, the effects of political capitalism and destructive coordination and how they lead to the economics of hoarding and the flight of capital and labour are highlighted. The economics of predation, ecological disaster, and cooperative coordination are also discussed.
This book aims to highlight the economic consequences of Anfal and its role in sustaining destructive condition and shaping the Islamic political capitalism. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the political economy, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Stephen Chen | 2025, Edward Elgar Publishing
In this timely book, case studies from global researchers showcase how digital technologies are impacting creative industries worldwide. Providing up-to-date examples from across Africa, Asia, and Europe, authors explore how digital globalization has boomed in recent years, especially in fast-developing countries.
Spanning music, television, film, fashion, opera, and gaming, chapters provide an in-depth study of the innovation and industry transformation caused by new technologies. Contributors analyze digital expansion in areas including the Caribbean, Indonesia, and Nigeria, highlighting groundbreaking tools such as AI, augmented and virtual reality, and streaming platforms, and their connection to the surge in creative industries.
Presenting crucial insights for scholars and students of international business, innovation management, economics, and finance, this book is also a beneficial resource for researchers in creative industries and media studies.
Please find a link to the book here.
Edited by: Amitava Krishna Dutt, Juan Carlos Moreno Brid and José Antonio Ocampo | 2025, Edward Elgar Publishing
Adopting a structuralist approach, this informative book discusses the international obstacles to economic growth and the role of individual sectors including manufacturing and services in political economies. It also examines key issues, such as the determinants of economic growth through capital accumulation and technological change.
Leading experts shed light on the importance of aggregate demand in relation to trade and capital flows, addressing socio-economic inequality and regional divergence. Focussing on Latin American countries, they showcase regional disparities and demonstrate the historical regimes that have perpetuated income inequalities. Covering key case studies, such as the social polarization in Colombia and the challenges for inclusive growth in Argentina, they reveal the institutions, policies and economic agents involved in the development of Mexico''s political economy. The book further demonstrates that there is much more to economic development than neoliberal reforms, identifying the roles of inflation and fiscal expansion, alongside contemporary obstacles to economic growth.
A vital resource for students and academics in economics, public policy, and human and development geography, this book will also greatly benefit researchers and policymakers in economic development and politics.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Christopher Kennedy | 2025, Edward Elgar Publishing
In this Advanced Introduction, Christopher Kennedy demonstrates how industrial ecology provides a crucial analytical response to the triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate change and the destruction of biodiversity. He presents the fundamental concepts of industrial ecology, including essential phenomena, relationships and systems terminology. The climate crisis is addressed through six high-level strategies for deep decarbonization integrated into a biophysical economic framework, underlining their necessity for creating a low carbon future.
Key Features:
Please find a link to the book here.
by Jane Parker and others | 2024, Edward Elgar Publishing
The field of employment and industrial relations explores a myriad of complex topics, themes and phenomena, and this book provides a guide for researching this fascinating area. Investigating micro-, meso-, macro- and cross-national forms of analysis, it is a crucial toolkit for researchers to consult in their studies.
The Field Guide to Researching Employment and Industrial Relations is a vital examination of emerging and established methodological approaches, from qualitative research to transdisciplinary methods. Vignettes throughout the chapters showcase research methods in action, paired with experience-based reflections from expert researchers. The book is an accessible compendium of methodologies - perfect for any stage of the research process.
Early career researchers focusing on employment and industrial relations, human resources and labour economics will find this book to be an important resource. An indispensable repository of established and emerging research methods, it is also beneficial to experienced researchers and academics.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Kath Woodward and Sophie Woodward | 2025, Edward Elgar Publishing
This book explores the interrelationship between gender and multidisciplinarity, and the different ways in which gender informs the work of diverse subject areas. Using facet methodology, chapters examine disciplines in conversation with each other to produce new ideas and ways of thinking about contemporary theories and politics of gender.
The book moves through five core aspects of gender: routine everyday practices, critiquing power and politics, gendered histories and herstories, bodies and embodiment, and laws which operate at meta and micro levels. Chapters draw on a wide range of examples from the climate crisis and medical science to social sciences and culture, engaging with the varied meanings of gender and questioning dominant assumptions. The authors argue that focusing on multidisciplinarity allows us to consider how disciplines have become gendered in terms of who participates in the discipline and analyse implicitly gendered assumptions about what counts as knowledge or even as data.
Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book is an invigorating read for gender studies scholars from undergraduate to post-graduate level, particularly those focusing on interdisciplinarity in the field. With an exploration of gender across a vast array of disciplines, it is also of interest to scholars across sociology, anthropology, philosophy, politics, media studies, psychology and economics.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Andrew Herod | 2025, Edward Elgar Publishing
This illuminating Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the exciting field of labour geography, examining how spatial circumstances shape workers’ lives and behaviour as well as how workers shape landscapes. It explores the history of labour geography, how the field has developed globally and how labour geographers have conceptualised worker agency.
Leading and emerging scholars illustrate how geographical contexts influence worker activity, including exploring how mass labour movements are adapting to emerging economic landscapes, how industrial and service sector workers are responding to new spatial realities they face, how workers are adapting to and challenging labour market precarity, as well as how workers interact with the environment. Detailed international case studies include examining autoworkers’ strikes in South China, Polish migrant workers’ experiences in Northern Ireland, Australian mineworkers’ struggles and issues of space and gender in home-based work in India. The Handbook also introspectively reflects upon how the transformation of universities due to market pressures is reshaping labour geographers’ research and the spaces in which they work.
Students and scholars of labour economics, employment studies and political and economic geography will greatly benefit from this incisive Handbook. Interdisciplinary in scope, it is also an essential resource for academics in political science, international relations, migration studies and environmental studies.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Phillip Anthony O'Hara | 2025, Springer Nature
This book investigates eras of major geopolitical and socioeconomic power, development, relative demise and potential renewal, for four major political economies. It concentrates on the Dutch Golden Age of the late 1500s and 1600s, British hegemony of the 1800s, Pax Americana of the 1900s, and Chinese potential hegemony of the 2000s, as well as long wave patterns of change over successive centuries to the present (and to some degree into the future).
Dutch, British, US and Chinese economies are situated within patterns of long-term successive rise and fall (and fall and rise) of economic growth, hegemony and climate change in the world political economy, including linkages between core, periphery and semi-periphery. Patterns of multiple crises tend to appear in-between hegemonic periods, and climate change often undergoes complex dynamics through time, while currently climate anomalies are emerging during mostly long wave downswings and polycrises in the world economy.
Contemporary themes of the book include the ongoing competition for world domination between the US and China, the conflict over Ukraine-Taiwan that some think may generate world-war 3, the climate change crisis that continues to plague the world, and whether the world and its major economies are likely to undergo a Golden Age into the future. Chapter 7 of this book on US hegemony and long waves includes extracts of material that won the Myrdal Prize for Book of the Year Prize from EAEPE as well as Journal Article of the Year from Curtin Business School. Ideas from parts of Chapter 9 emanate from a volume that won Book of the Year Award from CBS. A climate change paper that won Journal Article of the Year Awards from EAEPE and CBS informed ideas that are used in several parts of this book.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Engin Yılmaz | 2025, Independently published
This book offers a clear and comprehensive explanation of how money is actually created and circulated in today’s monetary system. Many people find the subject confusing, often because mainstream economic textbooks provide incomplete or outdated descriptions of how modern money works. As a result, the key mechanisms behind money creation remain widely misunderstood.
The book brings together three essential perspectives — historical, theoretical, and practical — to provide a complete and accessible framework. It challenges conventional textbook narratives and guides readers toward a more accurate understanding of modern monetary operations.
Written for students, researchers, policymakers, and curious readers, this book aims to demystify the monetary systemand make the topic engaging rather than intimidating.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Phillip Anthony O’Hara | 2022, Springer Nature
This is the very first book to explicitly both detail the core general principles of institutional and evolutionary political economy and also apply the principles to current world problems such as the coronavirus crisis, climate change, corruption, AI-Robotics, policy-governance, money and financial instability, terrorism, AIDS-HIV and the nurturance gap. No other book has ever detailed explicitly such core principles and concepts nor ever applied them explicitly to numerous current major problems. The core general principles and concepts in this book, which are outlined and detailed include historical specificity & evolution; hegemony & uneven development; circular & cumulative causation; heterogeneous groups & agents; contradiction & creative destruction; uncertainty; innovation; and policy & governance.
This book details the nature of how these principles and concepts can be used to explain current critical issues and problems throughout the world. This book includes updated chapters that have won two journal research Article of the Year Awards on climate change (one from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy, EAEPE); as well as a Presidential address to the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) on corruption.
The structure of the book starts with two chapters on the principles of institutional and evolutionary political economy: firstly their history, and secondly a chapter on the contemporary nature of the principles and concepts. This is followed by nine chapters applying some of the core principles to current world problems such as the coronacrisis, climate change, corruption, AI-robotics, policy, money & financial instability, terrorism, HIV-AIDS and the nurturance gap. The book finishes with a conclusion, a glossary of major terms and an index. The author’s principles are well established in the literature and this book provides a detailed exposition of them and their application.
This book has been awarded the 2025 Joan Robinson Prize for Book of the Year by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE).
Please find a link to the book here.
by Brian Castellani and Lasse Gerrits | 2024, Edward Elgar Publishing
Embark on a riveting journey through the study of social complexity with The Atlas of Social Complexity. Over three decades of scientific exploration unfold, unravelling the enigmatic threads that compose the fabric of society. From the dance of bacteria, to human-machine interactions, to the ever-shifting dynamics of power in social networks, this Atlas maps the evolution of our understanding of social complexity.
Brian Castellani’s and Lasse Gerrits’ Atlas is not merely retrospective. It is a compass pointing to uncharted territories: new directions for research and intellectual debate. With wit and insight, they invite the reader to ponder unanswered questions, taking them on a quest for alternative ways to understand the intricate complexities of societies.
The Atlas of Social Complexity is a thrilling expedition into the heart of what makes us human: from cognition, emotion, consciousness, the dynamics of human psychology, to social networks, collective behaviour, politics and governance, technology and planning, and the practice of social interventions. The Atlas also visits cross-cutting themes such as intersectionality, configurational complexity, and research methods.
Organised around six transdisciplinary themes and twenty-four topics the Atlas is an invaluable resource for all social science and complexity science scholars and students interested in new ideas and new ways of working in social complexity. It paves the way for the next generation of research in the study of social complexity.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Ekaterina Domorenok and others | 2025, Bristol Universtiy Press
The devastating effects of climate change are undeniable. Fires rage and waters rise in every corner of the globe. In light of these changes to our planet, the issue of social and environmental wellbeing has gained prominent attention from both academia and policy makers. Scholarly research on the interaction between social and employment policy domains has flourished. Academics now reflect on the different aspects of environmental and social protection, ecological and social risks, and the costs of climate change, sustainable welfare and new social movements prompted by green transitions.
This book provides a vital contribution to the emerging research agenda. It brings together scholars from interconnected disciplines to discuss the eco-social debate, providing a critical overview on extant scholarship and reflecting on future research pathways on the eco-social nexus from a variety of analytical perspectives.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Martin Daunton | 2025, Penguin Books Ltd.
Note: The book review in this issue by Michele Alacevich refers to the 2023 version of Martin Daunton's The Economic Government of the World.
This is the history of the institutions and individuals who have managed the global economy, from the World Monetary and Economic Conference in the wake of the Great Depression to the present, as leading nations tackle the fallout from Covid-19 and the threats of inflation, food security and climate change. Since the Second World War, organisations created at Bretton Woods - the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development - and afterwards - the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - have left an indelible mark on our contemporary world.
Martin Daunton examines the swings of the pendulum over ninety years between the forces of democracy, national determination and globalization. He shows that the structures of economic government have been overwhelmingly shaped by 'first world' powers, often to the dismay of developing countries. He argues that whilst structures cannot be separated from the politics of and between the biggest economies, future global recovery rests on the reduction of inequality and that multilateral institutions are fundamental in fostering inclusive growth.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Tae-Hee Jo, Lynne Chester, and Carlo D’ippoliti | 2026, Routledge
This second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics presents a comprehensive overview of the latest work on economic theory and policy from a pluralistic heterodox perspective. The Handbook aims, firstly, to provide realistic and coherent theoretical frameworks to understand the capitalist economy. Secondly, it delineates future directions, as well as the current state, of heterodox economics, and then provides both ‘heat and light’ on controversial issues, drawing out the commonalities and differences among different heterodox economic approaches. The Handbook also envisions transformative economic and social policies for populations across society and explains why the discipline of economics is, and should be treated as, a social science.
Contributions throughout the Handbook’s two volumes explore several theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to Marxian-radical political economics, Post Keynesian-Sraffian economics, institutionalist-evolutionary economics, feminist economics, social economics, Régulation theory, the Social Structure of Accumulation approach, and ecological economics.
Volume 1: Foundations, Theoretical Cores, and the Anatomy of Capitalism
Volume 2: Dynamics and Alternatives
by John T. Harvey | 2025, Cambridge University Press
What causes cyclical downturns that wreak havoc on our lives? Most economists will say that they result from random external shocks and that, without these, the economy would sail along beautifully. In US Business Cycles 1954-2020, John Harvey argues that overwhelming evidence points to an internal dynamic, one related to the behavior of economic agents that generates what we call a business cycle. He draws on the work of past Post-Keynesian and Institutionalist scholars to create a current theory of business cycles, one that treats them as systemic and not the result of random chance. He addresses not only unemployment and bankruptcies that are the immediate consequence of the business cycle, but critical social challenges like climate change and elderly care. Examining an extensive history of US fluctuations, Harvey fills a long-standing void within the discipline by offering an alternative theory of income, employment, and price determination.
Please find a link to the book here.
Reviewed by Philippe Adair | 2025, ERUDITE
Mehrdad Vahabi (2023). Destructive Coordination, Anfal, and Islamic Political Capitalism: A New Reading of Contemporary Iran
This reference work by an institutionalist economist documents an emblematic case of political economy such as that of Iran since 1979. The book is structured in seven main chapters. Chapter 2 is devoted to the different modes of coordination (by markets or by authority) and their respective nature (cooperative and destructive). In the Iranian case, authoritarian coordination proves destructive and is conceptualised by game theory in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 deals with political capitalism in the sense of Max Weber, and in particular its Islamist variant based on nepotism. Chapter 5 analyses Anfal and the Islamic economy in its Koranic foundations, its role in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its place in public finances and its various supports. The analysis of Anfal continues in Chapter 6 from the perspective of the various stages that mark its expansion. Chapter 7 extends the previous chapter and questions the meaning of privatisation (liberalisation or Islamisation?) and the relationship between Anfal and the modes of coordination presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 8 includes a more general reflection on Islamic political capitalism and the predatory economy, its assets (including oil) and its consequences in terms of hoarding, capital flight, labour migration and ecological disaster. A rich list of references covering more than 50 pages includes essential references (Coase, Max Weber, Tullock, Williamson). Strangely enough, Hobbes (1751), Montesquieu (1721), Veblen (1899), Buchanan (1962), and Krueger (1974) are missing. A detailed index of names and subjects (30 pages) completes the book.
This book takes place within the framework of the political economy of institutions and, in particular, public choice theory.
It raises three questions:
(1) In the first place, is Iran a specific type of theocratic state?
Iran is an Islamic republic (since 1979), whose constitution states that Islam is the official religion of the country. A comparative approach allows us to identify Iran's specific characteristics. In addition to Iran, three other theocracies are Islamic republics: Pakistan (since 1973), Mauritania (since 1991) and Afghanistan (since 2004). Other Islamic theocracies are monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia. Apart from Iran, all Islamic theocracies are Sunni.
(2) Is Iranian economic doctrine specific to Shia Islam?
This doctrine, which is normative in nature, aims to legitimise and promote an economic order in accordance with the Koran and Islamic traditions as interpreted by the epigones. The religious foundations of the economic order are the prohibition of interest and speculation, which regulates Islamic finance, and the redistribution of legal alms to the poor, known as zakat.
The concept of Al-Anfal (booty), taken from the eighth surah of the Koran, is used to legitimise the specificity of a predatory economy (dear to Veblen).
Anfal is not the collective property of Muslims, as it is the case with State property. It belongs to the Supreme Leader and is governed by Shia jurisprudence regarding how Islamic economic assets have been organised in Iran since 1979. It includes four funds that control more than 60% of the Iranian economy.
(3) Last, is the Islamic Republic of Iran governed by a ‘legitimate’ kleptocratic state?
According to public choice theory, rent is a non-commercial advantage or monopoly levy, which is distinct from ‘normal’ income or additional profit resulting from a competitive advantage (search for commercial profit) as defined by Schumpeter.
The pursuit of non-commercial rents combines both the effect on businesses and the causes related to the interaction of special interest groups and authorities, aimed at maintaining or maximising monopoly advantages. Rent-seeking is linked to the quality of economic and political governance, and therefore to the nature of the political regime.
In Persian Letters (1721), Montesquieu presented a political satire of absolutism and the rigidity of religious precepts. Three centuries later, Mehrdad Vahabi's book articulates the key concept of predation symbolised by the Anfal ideal type, with the intrinsically predatory nature of the State, which grab taxes, and its religious legitimisation in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
An edifying read recommended for scholars in economics, politics and social sciences who address the role of institutions in the development process. The issue of the future of authoritarian regimes (Yilmaz 2024), such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, and their replacement by a democratic regime remains open.
References
Buchanan, J. M. & Tullock, G. (1962). The Calculusof Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. University of Michigan Press. Liberty Fund (1999).
Hobbes, T. (1751). Leviathan. The Project Gutenberg E. Book (2009).
Krueger. A. O. (1974). The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society. American Economic Review, 64(3), 291-303.
Montesquieu (de Secondat, C. L., baron of). (1721). Persian letters. English translation by Davidson J. (1892). Harvard University, Internet archive Google (2008).
Veblen T. B. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. London, MacMillan.
Yilmaz M. E. (2024). The Rise of Political Islam . Ethics International Press Ltd, UK.
Please find a link to the book here.
Reviewed by Michele Alacevich | 2025, Economic History Association
Martin Daunton (2023). The Economic Government of the World, 1933-2023
Martin Daunton’s The Economic Government of the World, 1933-2023 is an impressive piece of scholarship. In slightly more than 800 dense pages (plus 100 very dense pages of bibliographic references), Daunton offers a detailed, comprehensive, nuanced, and contextualized analysis of how the government of the world economy has evolved from the Great Depression to the present. The book is organized in four parts, the first on the Great Depression and the interregnum between the final fall of the Gold Standard and the emergence of the Bretton Woods system; the second on the Bretton Woods Era; the third on the fall of the Bretton Woods order and the emergence of neo-liberalism; and the fourth on the crisis of the neo-liberal order, marked by the financial crisis of 2008.
This periodization will not come as a surprise to historians of twentieth-century global economic history, yet Daunton uses it in a fresh and convincing way to discuss how the institutions governing the world economy, as well as the ideas underlying them, underwent two full cycles of disruption, crisis, and reorganization, and how we are now living through the uncertain phase of a third, new cycle.
Indeed, the propulsive force of the book and its narrative is somehow to be found in Daunton’s specific choice to start in medias res, with the crisis that unfolds from the inability to reinstate the economic order that existed before World War I. The year 1929 is mentioned several times as a reference point for statistical considerations, but the Great Crash of that same year is not even directly addressed—it’s implicit, but it is not an element of the story (tellingly, the Index has an entry only for the 1931 Wall Street crash, p. 984). Partly, this is a natural consequence of the book’s topic: before World War I, no formal institutions or rules existed to govern international economic relations, and the book’s analysis starts in earnest with the London Conference of 1933. But this is also partly due to Daunton’s particular interest in the dynamics of the crisis and of the processes of negotiation and construction of a new order. As he writes, “This book explores how the nature of global economic government has changed . . . by considering how the legitimacy of one economic order was lost, leading to a period of uncertainty during which new ideas were formulated and contested” (p. xviii).
Daunton’s ability to reconstruct and clarify, without renouncing nuance and complexity, how “a system in which most of the participants had grown up and accepted as the natural order” fails, as well as how new solutions emerge slowly and tentatively, is a remarkable feature of the volume (p. xix). And one of the many merits of this book is that it takes the space that it needs to unfold these complex historical processes. To take just one example, the discussion of the momentous decade from Lend-Lease and early plans for postwar monetary reform to the Marshall Plan and the European Payments Union, running at over 180 pages, is a book within the book.
In 1933 and 2009, “the nations of the world gathered not only to ask how to avoid a crisis but how to govern the world economy, above all how to balance national interests with international co-operation” (p. xviii). No doubt, international negotiations are a crucial element of the book’s narrative, but the mention of the dichotomous relationship between national interests and international co-operation may understate the complexity and richness of this volume. Daunton discusses the interplay of international institutions and national governments, but also the role of individuals, technical and political bodies, interest groups, as well as the economic, political, and ideological contexts in which they operated. Often, the analysis is conducted at more granular level, showing how national party politics, banking regulations, domestic industrial policies, or conflicting views between different governmental departments, directly influenced international negotiations, or how highly diverging sensibilities about specific policy concerns existed within the same international organization.
A particularly clear example of the complex ways different kinds of actors interacted is offered by Daunton’s discussion of how the IMF shifted from the “light” conditionality of stand-by agreements in the 1950s and 1960s, which left member countries substantial independence on domestic social and political matters, to the rigid and highly intrusive conditionality in the 1980s. Less-developed countries and the IMF disagreed on the short-term vs. long-term, structural nature of balance of payments disequilibria, but agreed on their shared commitment to full employment and incomes policy—until they didn’t. The neo-liberal ideology that increasingly informed the agenda of specific governmental departments, such as Treasury in the US, was given momentum by the emerging sharp separation of IMF member countries into two groups—one of lending, advanced economies, and the other of less developed, borrowing countries—with the consequent weakening of the latter’s voice. In this process, the political power of IMF economists increased manyfold, yet Jacques Polak, the economist who had originally devised the IMF’s principal indicator to address balance of payments deficits and one of its most influential officers, complained about the ideological twist that IMF policies had acquired. And while Michel Camdessus, managing director of the IMF from 1987 to 2000, argued that the Fund’s “prime objective is growth”, the director of the IMF’s legal department retorted that “in neither logic nor law is it defensible to transform [the Fund’s] purpose into jurisdiction over economic growth” (pp. 597, 598). Only a systematic focus on the plurality of actors, interests, and ideas, and their interplay, can do justice to this complex and changing scenario.
This attention to the contested and uncertain dimension of processes of negotiation, besides being important per se, has a positive spillover that deserves mention. Namely, it makes the analysis of the many international conferences and meetings discussed in the volume engaging and convincing— for once, not the usual summary of official positions reproduced from conference proceedings that we find in all too many history books. This is also due to another valuable aspect of the book, that is, its abundant reliance on primary sources, which helps the reader to observe ideas, analyses, and policy platforms not as static, definitive statements, but as objects in formation.
Great attention is also devoted to the ideological dimension of changing world economic orders—with a wise dose of realism. As Daunton writes, “we need to avoid giving too much explanatory power to the independentrole of ideas” (p. 571, emphasis added). All too often, politicians instrumentalized strands of thought to justify policies whose principal raison d’être was simply pragmatic, or electoral calculus. Discussing the emergence of a neo-liberal order, for example, Daunton notes that “many of the changes in policy arose from non-ideological causes, such as the emergence of popular individualism, de-industrialization, the demise of the Bretton Woods regime, or the need to recycle petrodollars after the oil shock” (p. 572). Nevertheless, ideas, narratives, and the gravitational power of specific ideological constellations play an important role in his analysis. Thus, Daunton argues, concepts that refer to the world of ideologies maintain heuristic relevance.
In particular, he notes that “the concept of neo-liberalism is useful. Neo-liberals had internal differences but also common enemies: powerful trade unions and state bureaucracies; planned economies, especially in the Soviet bloc but also at home; and post-colonial demands for redistributive justice in the world economy. Above all, they looked—in different ways—to the liberation of markets” (p. 572). If the driving forces behind the tectonic shift from the Bretton Woods era to the Washington Consensus could be traced to changes in economic structures and conditions, popular attitudes were also important, while the theoretical analyses of economists offered intellectual credibility and authority. “Social and economic changes”, Daunton claims, “were interpreted through a particular set of assumptions that created a narrative to hold together coalitions of support. Economic interests and understandings of social change do not exist apart from their rhetoric by which they are defined, so that ideas were crucial in how the crisis of stagflation and its possible solutions were defined” (p. 572).
As Daunton argues in the final chapters, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 Covid pandemic, with their “legacies of financialization and inequality”, have shown that neo-liberalism has failed (p. 793). Still, it remains unclear what can be put in its place, for a new, different order has not yet emerged. The problems facing the global economy, Daunton argues, “are reasonably clear and arise in large part from two interconnected disequilibria. Inequality within countries threatens domestic political, economic and social stability, and in turn contributes to international economic imbalance” (p. 793). To this, one must add other systemic problems, such as growing confrontation among different economic blocs, economic and military conflicts, and “the ultimate ‘tragedy of the commons’”, namely, the existential threat of climate change (p. 795).
The last chapter offers an agenda for a new version of the “shallow multilateralism” of the Bretton Woods system (the definition is Dani Rodrik’s, quoted on p. 234), founded on domestic democratic institutions; a return to highly progressive fiscal systems; limits on monopolies, speculative behaviors, and rentier strategies; and a green New Deal. As Daunton writes, “Successful global economic government is more likely in the context of distributive justice within as well as between nations”, so what is needed is “a move from hyper-globalization to a better balance between responsible nationalism and internationalism” (pp. 831, 832), possibly steered by thoroughly reformed global organizations such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. Finally, Daunton does not forget the need to reform the university economics curriculum.
As is typical for chapters that offer suggestions for broad institutional reforms and “the way ahead” (the subtitle for this chapter), all these issues are treated only summarily. But the chapter offers a valuable introduction to several important issues, and, more importantly, it grows organically from the whole of the volume. The agenda sketched there, whether one agrees or disagrees with it, is deeply rooted in the historical analysis that precedes it, and it is this historical analysis that gives it credibility. In sum, Daunton’s book is a masterful, highly engaging work of historical scholarship, and it will long remain a fundamental reference for scholars, students, and all those interested in understanding the evolution of global economic institutions, policies, and ideas through the last century.
Please find a link to the 2025 version of this book here.
Economic POlicies for the Global bifurcation (EPOG-JM) is an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in economics, supported by the European Union. It offers a world-class integrated Master's programme on the (digital, socioeconomic, ecological) transition processes with a pluralist approach and interdisciplinary perspectives.
The main objective of the programme is to give birth to a new generation of international experts, able to define and assess economic policies and evolve within different political, social and regional contexts. Towards this objective, the EPOG-JM Master’s programme goes beyond the reach of standard economic theory to include various heterodox/institutionnalist political economy approaches.
The full partners (degree awarding institutions) include a wide set of prestigous institutions:
It also involves more than 30 (academic and non-academic) associated partners in Europe and the world.
More details here.
The Erasmus Mundus scholarship covers:
More details here.
Application Deadline: 29 January 2026
The PhD in Political Economy at San Martín National University (UNSAM) is a rigorous programme distinguished by its pluralist and interdisciplinary perspective. It brings together leading scholars in feminist, evolutionary and Post-Keynesian economics, as well as in the tradition of classical political economy.
This new Doctoral Program in Political Economy (DEP) aims to train critical researchers with a comprehensive and pluralistic perspective. It seeks to move beyond the conception of economics as a mere "toolbox," fostering discussion of the various aspects of economic dynamics, its theoretical and methodological foundations, and rigorous empirical research. Interaction with other social sciences will also be encouraged, thus contributing to a more nuanced understanding of economic processes.
In addition to its distinctive theoretical content, the program offers a working method that intensively engages students from the outset in spaces for debate and research processes in which IDAES is involved. Moving beyond the scholastic approach of other postgraduate programs, this method fosters systematic interaction among doctoral students and with professors and thesis advisors. With small cohort sizes, the DEP offers personalized support and a training process stimulated by the daily practice of research and theoretical, methodological, and political discussion. Most courses may be completed online, but one semester of in-person study in Buenos Aires is required.
The DEP, therefore, aims to become a program that combines research-based training, active participation in academic discussions and exchanges, and the development of a critical perspective, both conceptually and methodologically. The excellent research results obtained from the interaction between the Master's Program in Economic Development (MDE) and the Center for Development Economics Studies (CEED) since its integration into the Interdisciplinary School of Advanced Social Studies (IDAES) underscore the value of this proposal.
Applications are open from 2 February to 6 March 2026, and courses begin in April.
Please find more info here.
Application Deadline: 6 March 2026
The International Marxist-Humanist Organization (IMHO) needs your support!
This year’s election of Mamdani in New York City, Gen-Z protests from Morocco to Indonesia and Nepal, anti-ICE protests in Chicago, No Kings demonstrations in Los Angeles, and massive demonstrations in support of Palestine have collectively shown us signs of a new generation with socialist aspirations entering the world stage.
In the IMHO, the members aim to engage with this new movement by both educating and assisting in the development of a theory of liberation, and in doing so adapting and refining Marxist-Humanism to address the challenges faced by this new generation of activists.
In their efforts to achieve this, the members of the IMHO published over 120 articles in 11 different languages during 2025, with many written by new writers. They held more than 20 public online and hybrid meetings on various topics, ranging from a critique of AI to the socialist humanism of Erich Fromm, to alternatives to capitalism, and a six-part series on decolonial Marxism today. In September, the IMHO hosted an international mini-conference titled “Deepening Revolutionary Theory in a Time of Genocidal War & the Threat of Fascism,” featuring panels on Frantz Fanon, the late Marx, and today’s organizational challenges. IMHO also developed organizational statements on, for example, condemning Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and Iran, as well as Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of people read the articles. IMHO's meetings have been attended by hundreds from all over the globe, and the members have participated in grassroots activism and demonstrations on four continents. This year, they increased the organization with new members in Europe, North America, East Asia and South America. They have also launched a presence on social media platforms to reach even further.
For next year, IMHO wants to hold more public meetings, continue with publishing articles, increase the work in movements for social justice and liberation, and maintain correspondence with readers and activists worldwide.
Please help IMHO move forward by donating. The easiest way to do so is by sending money via PayPal by clicking on this link.
Your donations are tax-deductible in the US. Or you can send a check to IMHO-Organization, PO Box 60801, Chicago, IL 60660, USA.