Issue 361June 22, 2026webpdfHeterodox Economics Directory
As researchers most of us supposedly like the mean. The mean is seemingly very kind to us: it is a simple number, it (supposedly) summarizes a lot of information and it can serve as (somewhat) solid anchor for further statistical reasoning. Hence, all praise to the mean and its convenience ;-)
While I think the above is largely correct, it is also incomplete: precisely because the mean compresses information into a single number, it can also hide important patterns. This matters whenever distributions are multimodal, when multiplicative dynamics are at work, or when changes in inputs produce qualitative shifts in outputs — for example, in the relation between income and subjective well-being. In such cases, a mean-based view can conceal substantial heterogeneity.
A key example of how the mean can hide significant aspects comes from a feminist perspective on measuring poverty (see here or here). Such a view emphasizes how using household means as a baseline for constructing poverty estimates conceals lack of disposable income for household members with no or marginal employment – often women. This often amounts to rendering women’s poverty invisible and, in addition, imposes a downward bias on standard poverty estimates.
Another example is given by GDP as a key economic figure, or more precisely, its growth rate. GDP growth is typically given by the growth of mean incomes, which gives the impression that the GDP growth rate resembles the „typical“ change in individual outcomes in an economy. However, this is, generally, incorrect: GDP growth measures growth in money terms. Hence, the underlying „mean growth“ does not refer directly to individuals, but weighs them by their income. As a consequence, the growth of richer individuals matters more for GDP growth than does the growth rate enjoyed by the poor.
A truly democratic mean – more apt to represent the typical experience of an individual – would require us to calculate not the growth in average income (which employs a subtle weighting and, hence, can easily be driven by a few if the distribution is unequal), but, rather, the average growth in income (see here). Only in the second calculation – where people instead of money enter the denominator, and hence distributional issues play a role* – the mean is informative about the „typical“ individual experience.
Finally, climate change adds yet another case. Mean temperature changes are very useful, but they can also create the impression of a slow and uniform process. Looking at extremes often tells a different story: across many regions, temperature extremes change faster than the mean, and climate risks are frequently driven by rare events rather than by average conditions. This is especially visible in phenomena such as heatwaves, cold spells, or El Niño events, whose impacts are often disproportionate to what mean temperatures alone would suggest.
Of course, this shift in outliers does not contradict the mean. It just points to the fact that very relevant variables in economics – like changes in urban temperature settings, but also key variables like income, wealth or firm size – intrinsically require considering extreme cases if they are to be properly assessed and understood.
In this spirit: stay cool in the upcoming heatwaves, and all the best,
Jakob
PS: If you are now inspired to think more deeply about what it could mean to do „statistics beyond the mean“ (what a pun!), I can warmly recommend to contact this fantastic and inspiring colleague of mine.
*In general, the democratic growth rate will always be greater than the standard growth rate if the distribution becomes more equal and vice versa.
© public domain
Associate Editors: Hiroshi Nishi (Ritsumeikan University), Yuji Harada (Setsunan University)
Guest Editor: Kazuhiro Okuma (Tokai University)
Publication: The April 2027 Issue
Since the collapse of the asset price bubble in the early 1990s, Japanese capitalism has experienced more than three decades of sluggish growth while repeatedly confronting major domestic and international crises. During this prolonged low-growth period, Japan appears to have undergone profound structural and institutional transformations. These include depopulation and population ageing; the expansion of non-regular employment and persistent wage stagnation; the financialisation of the non-corporate sector and its increasing retention of earnings; accelerating digitalisation and AI adoption amid advancing platformisation; the reorganisation of global and regional value chains alongside sluggish domestic capital investment and a sharp rise in overseas investment; and the growing urgency of environmental and energy transitions.
The recent shift from persistent deflation to inflation further suggests the possible emergence of a new phase in the Japanese economy. At the same time, the weakening of the social security system and the accumulation of substantial government debt remain major concerns. Against this backdrop, Japan’s pre-global financial crisis export-led growth regime has effectively collapsed, while persistent trade deficits combined with income surpluses have become the new normal.
Taken together, these cumulative transformations raise a central question: how have market mechanisms, institutional coordination, and government policies evolved, and can they provide a coherent basis for a new growth regime under the dynamic evolution of global and regional production networks?At the same time, they revive longstanding concerns in evolutionary and institutional political economy: how institutional forms shape economic behaviours and their coordination; how, together with market mechanisms, they stabilise or destabilise capitalist economies; how coherent accumulation and growth regimes are generated; and how crises emerge when such coherence erodes, prompting structural transformation and new modes of régulation (institutional coordination).
Building on the intellectual foundations of evolutionary and institutional political economy, the varieties of capitalism, and Régulation theory (Boyer and Yamada, eds. 2000), prior special issues of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review have elucidated institutional coordination, the characteristics of Japan’s growth regime, and its embeddedness within varieties of Asian capitalism until the early 2000s (Uemura and Harada 2016; Boyer et al. 2018). Yet, particularly in the post–global financial crisis era marked by the transformations outlined above, the trajectory of the Japanese economy remains unclear. It is therefore fair to say that Japanese capitalism is evolving through uncertain institutional transformations and fragile growth regimes amid the dynamic restructuring of global production networks.
This special issue “Japanese capitalism evolving with uncertain institutional transformation and growth regime” seeks to elucidate the transformation of Japanese capitalism during the prolonged low-growth era. Specifically, it aims to:
To these ends, the editors invite contributions addressing the following themes related to the Japanese economy:
Submission Guidelines
Please follow the Instructions for Authors when preparing your manuscript. Please select “Yes” for the question “Does this manuscript belong to a special issue?” found at the bottom of the Additional Information tab and then select the special issue “Japanese capitalism evolving with uncertain institutional transformation and growth regimes” during the submission process on https://www.editorialmanager.com/eier/default.aspx. Also please write "Japanese capitalism evolving with uncertain institutional transformation and growth regimes" field during the submission process.
Submission Deadline: 31 December 2026
5–6 January 2027 | Washington, D.C., USA
8 January 2027 | Virtual (Zoom)
The International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics (ICAPE) invites paper and panel submissions for its 2027 Annual Conference, held under the theme Affordability and Provisioning in Contemporary Capitalism. The conference takes place in person at American University on January 5–6, immediately following the ASSA meetings, with an additional virtual session on January 8.
Submissions are welcome from all pluralist perspectives, including evolutionary, ecological, feminist, institutional, Marxian, Post-Keynesian, Modern Monetary Theory, and related approaches. The conference particularly encourages work addressing the polycrisis — declining living standards, inequality, precarity, environmental disruption, and the economic implications of AI — as well as contributions from graduate students and sessions on pluralistic teaching. All presented papers are eligible for inclusion in the ICAPE proceedings issue of the American Review of Political Economy.
Registration fees are $250 (regular) and $125 (low income) for in-person attendance; $120/$60 for online participation. Scholarships covering registration are available for graduate students, academics from the Global South, and others with limited institutional support. Recipients must be members of a founding ICAPE association.
Further information, submission forms, and contact details are available here.
Submission Deadline: 4 September 2026
2-3 November 2026 | Lund, Sweden
Money structures economic life and global markets. Rather than functioning merely as a tool for exchange and trade, money has become a master that is shaping priorities and guiding decision-making in ever more realms. Although money is ostensibly a human artefact, it has come to play quasi‑agentive roles by preconfiguring markets and consumption patterns in ways that generate negative consequences for the climate and ecological systems. As the creation of money through credit pushes economies to continue growing, and as the conventional money form itself obscures the socioecological relations that underpin it, money, monetary institutions and valuation practices are based on and influence patterns of extraction, carbon emissions, and environmental degradation. At the same time, emerging ideas and experiments in alternative forms of money and monetary design raise new questions about how economic coordination might better align with planetary limits and climate stabilization goals.
The organizers invite submissions for a two-day academic conference exploring the relationships between money, monetary systems and ecological processes. The conference aims to bring together scholars from environmental studies, sociology, political science, geography, anthropology, STS and related fields to critically examine how money shapes ecological processes and outcomes, as well as how alternative monetary arrangements might support more sustainable socioeconomic futures. The organizers welcome theoretical, empirical, and interdisciplinary contributions addressing topics such as:
The organizers particularly encourage contributions that bridge disciplinary boundaries or connect conceptual insights with empirical research.
Submission Guidelines
Key Dates
Practical Information
The conference will take place at The Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies, Lund University, Lund Sweden, and will be held in in-person.
Contact
For submissions and inquiries, please contact: alexander.paulsson@fek.lu.se
Submission deadline: 15 July 2026
Ola Financiera (Vol. 20, No. 56) invites submissions for a special issue commemorating the ninetieth anniversary of the publication of Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and the eightieth anniversary of its author's death.
The issue seeks not celebration but discussion — not to settle outstanding questions with the text, but to open new ones. Contributions are invited from heterodox perspectives engaging with the General Theory in relation to current economic issues. The journal welcomes original, unpublished articles; submissions may be in English, with translation into Spanish handled by the editorial team.
Further information is available here.
Submissions should be sent to: ola.financiera.unam@gmail.com
Submission Deadline: 31 December 2026
3–4 December, 2026 | Berlin, Germany
The Social Studies of Economics (SSE) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the role of economists, economics and economic knowledge in society. Over the past decade, SSE has consolidated as a distinct research area, focusing on the influence and performativity of economics — how economic theories and models actively shape social realities — and the intellectual and institutional structure of economics, including its homogeneity and epistemic authority. Key debates in SSE include
However, political-economic developments over the past 15 years and the mutually dependent disruptions associated with economic, political, social and ecological crises suggest that neoliberalism, at least as an economic policy paradigm, has come to an end. While several political activists and scientists argue for a social-ecological transformation as the progressive successor of neoliberalism, regressive alternatives — comprising right-wing populism, techno-libertarianism, and authoritarian ideologies — are gaining strength in the emerging era of post-neoliberalism. Economic knowledge and imaginaries, as central frameworks of thought that shape how societies perceive and organize economic realities, play a crucial role in these developments. These imaginaries not only underpin the rhetoric of these movements but also reveal fractures within traditional economic thought. For instance, the tension between economic liberalism, which emphasizes progress and market-driven innovation, and regressive ideologies, which often advocate protectionism, nationalism, or anti-globalization, highlights the contested nature of economic reasoning in contemporary society. At the same time, there are resemblances and mutual reinforcements between market-radical and right-wing concepts on several levels, including the discursive construction of dichotomous world views and an implicitly derogative conceptualization of masses. The project of socio-ecological transformation also has diverse connections to economic knowledge. On the one hand, technocratic "green growth" approaches rely on empirical evidence from academic economics; on the other hand, some voices call for a left-wing populism that challenges traditional economic liberalism as well as the epistemic authority of academic economics.
These developments challenge SSE and its established perspectives on economists, economics and economic knowledge. The workshop seeks to discuss how SSE can address recent societal and political trends in research on the role of economists, economics and economic knowledge in society, exploring the political-economic, ideological, epistemic and societal characteristics of a contested post-neoliberal era and their implications for SSE and related fields such as Science and Technology Studies (STS).
Contributions should address questions such as:
Travel costs, accommodation, and conference meals are covered for all participants, thanks to support from the VolkswagenStiftung.
Abstracts should be submitted to rouven.reinke@uni-hamburg.de, lukas.baeuerle@jku.at, and stephan.puehringer@jku.at.
Abstract Deadline: July 15, 2026
2–3 December, 2026 | Seville, Spain
The Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) is hosting a pre-conference workshop at the University of Seville on December 2, 2026, the day before the XIII Meeting of the Iberian Association for the History of Economic Thought (AIHPE). Organized in partnership with the Latin American Association of History of Economic Thought (ALAHPE) and AIHPE, the workshop seeks to advance research on the production, circulation, and reception of economic ideas in the Iberian world, with particular attention to historical connections between the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America.
A transdisciplinary approach is proposed, centered on the relationship between the dissemination of economic knowledge and the exercise of political power. Topics of interest include the consolidation of dominant theoretical and political approaches across different regions, their connections to economic policy and institutions, their modes of dissemination, and their reception, reinterpretation, or adaptation in contexts with distinct social, cultural, and institutional characteristics.
Five young scholars will be selected — including Master's students, PhD candidates, and postdoctoral fellows — whose research addresses the History of Economic Thought in Latin America or the Iberian Peninsula, or the intellectual and political connections between the two. Selected participants will present their research projects or working papers and receive feedback from senior scholars. Accommodation for the workshop and the first day of the XIII AIHPE Meeting (December 3) will be provided free of charge; travel funding is available on a case-by-case basis depending on the country of residence.
Applicants must be YSI History of Economic Thought Working Group members and plan to attend the XIII AIHPE Meeting. Submissions — a brief bio (max. 150 words) and a short abstract (max. 300 words) — may be submitted in Spanish, Portuguese, or English.
Further information and the application form are available here.
Application Deadline: June 30, 2026
25-27 June, 2026 | Napoli, Italy
The 23rd STOREP Annual Conference will take place in the beautiful city of Napoli from June 25-27, 2026. As in previous years, the conference will be preceded by a pre-conference day organized by the Young Scholars Initiative (on “The Political Economy of War, Militarism, and Geopolitical Conflict”) on June 24th.
This year's theme addresses one of the most pressing debates in contemporary economics. The Conference aims to foster a debate on all the issues related to “Causes and Consequences of Deindustrialization. Structural Change, Globalisation, and Labour Productivity”, like income distribution, relative prices, and the determination of activity and employment levels both in the short and long run. Senior scholars and young researchers will explore the issue through the lens of the history of economic thought. The Conference includes presentations across all fields that adopt historical and/or theoretical approaches from multiple perspectives.
D’Maris Coffman (Vice Dean and Professor of Economics and Finance at The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University) will give the keynote speech “The New Multilateralism: Multilateral Governance and Regional Economic Development after the SDGs”.
Carlo Panico (Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and formerly Professor of Political Economy at Università Federico II, Napoli, Italy) will give an invited talk entitled “The Classical-Keynesian approach and Pasinetti’s structural dynamics: some historical and methodological notes”.
Neri Salvadori (Università di Pisa, STOREP honorary member) will give the tenth “Raffaelli Lecture”.
The "Review of Political Economy" will consider selected papers presented at the STOREP Conference for publication.
Since 2023, STOREP has invited scholars from a ‘guest discipline’—a neighboring field of study—to explore its historical relationship with economics. These discussions include its current impact on economics and its potential contribution to the development of a new transdisciplinary behavioral science in the future. This year's STOREP conference hosts Law.
The Session program, with 35 sessions and 117 papers, is available here. Browse the program, discover its sessions, the papers to be presented, the Session categories, and plan your personal journey through STOREP 2026.
For further information please click here.
23 June, 2026 | Brighton, United Kingdom
The University of Sussex is hosting an interdisciplinary symposium on beyond-growth economics as part of the Sussex Summer of Research. The event brings together researchers from across the university to examine the implications of planetary boundaries and climate change for economic thinking, and to explore alternatives to the endless pursuit of GDP growth.
Questions addressed include the relationship between GDP growth and innovation, the prospects for economic stability in a post-growth era, and the case for shifting focus to wellbeing metrics and sustainability indicators. The symposium features a keynote by Ida Kubiszewski (UCL) and a discussion led by Prof. Caroline Lucas, former Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, alongside short presentations by Sussex researchers.
The event is a collaboration between the Sussex Summer of Research and the Sussex School for Progressive Futures, spanning the strategic themes of Sustainability, Digital AI and Data Futures, and Human Flourishing.
For further information and registration, please click here.
18–19 September, 2026 | London, UK
Early-career researchers are invited to apply for a two-day workshop aimed at creating a collaborative space for PhD researchers to engage critically with each other's work and explore decolonial approaches within heterodox economics. The workshop welcomes contributions from PhD students working broadly within heterodox or critical political economy, particularly in the areas of finance and macro-finance, labour economics and class analysis, and feminist economics and social reproduction.
Day 1 focuses on presentations and feedback: participants deliver a 15-minute presentation on their PhD research, followed by discussion and feedback from a senior academic. Presenters are encouraged to reflect on the decolonial dimensions of their work, including the use of universalist assumptions in economic theory, conceptualisations of power and dependence, engagement with scholarship from the Global South, and questions of epistemic justice in methods and knowledge production. Day 2 is dedicated to collective reflection and collaboration, with small-group discussions aimed at identifying shared challenges and developing outlines for collaborative outputs such as blog posts or joint publications.
The workshop will host approximately 30 PhD researchers. Catering is provided throughout; limited travel support (up to £150) is available, and accommodation in London may be arranged through SOAS PhD volunteers.
Applications should include an abstract of up to 250 words and a short statement indicating the applicant's field. Further information and the application form are available here.
Application Deadline: 19 July 2026
25–26 June, 2026 | Vienna, Austria
The Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE), the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna, and partner institutions are hosting a symposium celebrating the academic legacy of Cornelia Staritz (1980–2025), a leading scholar in heterodox development economics whose work traced uneven and combined development trajectories in the global economy across more than 25 years.
The symposium engages with Staritz's conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions to political economy, economic sociology, and economic geography. Her research combined in-depth fieldwork across more than 15 countries with quantitative analysis of trade flows, prices, and financial markets, connecting macro-level processes — globalized trade, financialization, distributional struggles — with fine-grained analyses of firms, workers, and lived realities across different places.
Against the backdrop of intensifying geopolitical tensions, affordability crises, and climate change, the symposium pursues three aims: engaging with Staritz's work across the spheres of global finance, production, and consumption; fostering interdisciplinary exchange around current power structures and agency; and translating these insights into progressive strategies and concrete policy initiatives. Three thematic panels will address consumption and provisioning systems, global value chains and labour struggles, and financialization and global inequality.
For further information, please click here.
Registration is requested via email to: studienassistenz.ie@univie.ac.at
22 June 2026 | Online
This webinar focuses on the domestic and community care chapter of the report Care Work in the Just Transition: An International Inquiry, centering the discussion on the significance of the just transition strategy for domestic and community-caring workers. Considering housework as a set of tasks performed in both domestic and community caring, that are key to social and ecological wellbeing, this report has been built on testimonies from four representatives of domestic and community carers working in Italy, Peru, the UK, and at the international level, integrated by a desk review of recent reports on care work in the planetary crisis.
Interpretation English<>Spanish will be available for this webinar. Learn more.
To register please click here.
24–26 August, 2026 | Lusaka, Zambia (hybrid)
Cooperation Africa, in partnership with ICA–Africa, is hosting an international hybrid conference on worker cooperatives and decent youth employment in Africa. The event brings together policymakers, cooperative leaders, researchers, and practitioners from across the continent and beyond to explore practical pathways for advancing youth employment through worker cooperatives within Africa's evolving economic landscape.
Key themes include policy dynamics, the role of worker cooperatives in job creation, and enabling conditions for decent youth employment. The programme features expert presentations, case studies, and cross-sector dialogue aimed at strengthening understanding, sharing innovations, and promoting cooperative development and inclusive economic growth.
A central element of the conference is the participation of approximately 30 young people selected from across the continent for their credible proposals for worker cooperatives in their communities. During the conference, they will receive training, followed by up to six months of mentoring and support as they establish their cooperatives. This process will be facilitated through dedicated software designed to pair cooperatives with resource persons offering relevant skills and knowledge.
The conference is accessible online as well as in person.
Further information and registration are available here.
26 – 29.05.26 | Araraquara, Brazil
The II AFEE South American Conference took place in Araraquara, Brazil, bringing together scholars for debate and exchange around Original Institutional Economics (OIE) in South America. The programme included four keynote lectures and 17 paper sessions, with contributions from Danielle Guizzo, William Waller, Jacob Powell, and Laure Bazzoli, as well as a special session organized in dialogue with the Brazilian Keynesian Association (AKB). A pre-conference on Radical Institutionalism preceded the main event, drawing 33 undergraduate and graduate students.
A significant outcome of the conference was the founding of the Brazilian Association for Research in Original Institutional Economics (EINST), established in Araraquara with 64 founding members.
The event was supported by AFEE through CORIC.
Winner & Shortlist:
Winner:
Hannah Pool, The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe
Shortlist
For further information please click here.
The History of Economics Society has announced the winners of multiple prizes:
The Craufurd Goodwin Best Article on the History of EconomicsPrize went to Daniel Kuehn for his article "Before NBER: Warren Nutter's Soviet Research at the CIA," published in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought 47(2), 2025.
The article examines Nutter's contributions to the study of the Soviet economy prior to his appointment as director of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in 1954, focusing on his tenure at the CIA as director of the Economic Capabilities Branch and chairman of the Analysis Subcommittee of the interagency Economic Intelligence Committee. Drawing on archival material, Kuehn reconstructs a significant part of Nutter's intellectual trajectory, showing how the practical challenges of assessing Soviet economic performance led him to engage innovatively with the difficulties that structural change poses for the measurement of economic growth, and with the limitations of input-output economics as an analytical tool. The article also illuminates the broader relationships between the CIA and the NBER during the period 1951–1962, centred on research into the Soviet economy.
The Distinguished Fellow Award, presented at the HES-ESHET joint conference in Nice, went to Philippe Fontaine, Professeur des Universités at the École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay.
Fontaine's work has progressively expanded the boundaries of the history of economics toward a more collective and interdisciplinary history of the social sciences. His research has consistently connected intellectual contributions to their biographical and institutional contexts — as in his reading of Harsanyi's "impartial observer" through the lens of the game theorist's experience as a migrant scholar, or his interpretation of Ken Boulding's views on interdisciplinarity through Boulding's own marginalization within economics. A major 2016 survey examined "other histories of economics" written by historians and sociologists of science alongside economists-turned-historians. Most recently, Fontaine co-founded the journal History of Social Science (University of Pennsylvania Press, first issue 2025) with Jamie Cohen-Cole and Jefferson Pooley.
The committee also highlighted Fontaine's lifelong commitment to the internationalization of the field. He was instrumental in founding the European Conference on the History of Economics (ECHE) with José-Luis Cardoso, Albert Jolink, and Robert Leonard, and later helped establish the History of Recent Economics Conference. His doctoral supervision has likewise proved generative for the field: three of his eight PhD students have received the Society's Joseph Dorfman Best Dissertation Award, and two former students have received the Craufurd Goodwin Award.
The Joseph Dorfman Best Dissertation Prize went to Mirek Tobíaš Hošman for his dissertation "The World Bank, Economic Expertise, and the Reinvention of Global Economic Governance in the 1960s."
The dissertation offers a reinterpretation of the intellectual evolution of the World Bank during the 1960s, challenging the conventional view that associates the rise of economic expertise within the institution with Robert McNamara's presidency (1968–1981). Drawing on newly declassified archival files and oral histories, Hošman locates this transformation in the preceding presidency of George Woods (1963–1968), tracing the process by which the World Bank shifted from a project lender to a leading research and policy institution. The work reconstructs the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the Bank during a period of unusual openness to unconventional proposals, revealing an institution more experimentally and intellectually generative than orthodox accounts suggest.
TheJoseph J. Spengler Best Book Prize went to Jennifer Burns for her book Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023).
The book traces Friedman's intellectual trajectory across the full arc of twentieth-century economics, from his early statistical work under Simon Kuznets at the NBER and the contentious publication of his dissertation on income differentials between doctors and dentists, to his roles as price theory professor, monetary theorist, and policy adviser to figures ranging from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to Augusto Pinochet. Burns draws on extensive archival evidence to reconstruct the behind-the-scenes dynamics of Friedman's career, including his fraught relationship with Wesley Mitchell and the institutionalists at the NBER, his collaboration with and appreciation of Rose Friedman, his admiration for Arthur Burns alongside frustration at his mentor's indifference to monetarism during the stagflation of the 1970s, and his ambivalence toward Paul Volcker's subsequent embrace of his ideas.
The committee commended the book for the factual detail, analytical skill, and sensitivity to competing schools of economic thought and social values with which Burns integrates these disparate strands into a coherent and illuminating whole.
The History of Economics Society and the Journal of the History of Economic Thought have announced the winner of this year's JHET Early Career Scholar Award. It went to Adam Walke for his paper "The Export of Capital to the Colonies and the Falling Rate of Profit in Economic Thought, 1776–1917."
The paper examines how several classical thinkers writing in the second quarter of the nineteenth century — including Wakefield, Torrens, and Mill — envisioned the exportation of capital to the colonies as a counter to the declining rate of profit, and developed rationales for further colonization on that basis. Walke juxtaposes these classical theories with those of Marx and with post-1870 thinkers such as Hobson, Hilferding, Bukharin, and Lenin, who repurposed them in their critiques of imperialism.
For further information please click here.
François Allisson and Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche: A history of Dobb’s Wages
Judy Wajcman and others: Venture capital as male-lens investing
Arie Krampf: A case for a Keynesian–Schumpeterian problem-solving central banking: Bridging the law-practice gap
Jan Eichhorn: Borrowing to invest: Why the people in Germany and the UK do not prioritise fiscal responsibility
Maria Cristina Barbieri Góes and others: Productivity puzzle in European regions: A Kaldor–Verdoorn approach
Guido Baggio: A pragmatist contribution to 4E economics
João Vicente Manna and Alexandre Saes: Dialogues between Celso Furtado and the Cambridge School: The dynamization of economic models
Roncato Tounsi Christophe: Beyond emissions: Material-flow boundaries in California's transport transition scenarios
Kerstin Nolte, Hauke Kruse, Leonie Tuitjer: Sustainable food consumption in times of crisis
Erin Heinz, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Thomas Kwan, Johan Nordensvärd, Frauke Urban, Muhammad Asif, Weimin Zhang, Patrik Thollander, Patrik Rohdin, Niklas Arvidsson: Towards a typology of residential energy consumers: Social context and awareness as predictors of energy-efficient household behaviors in the United States
Andrea Vismara, Stephan Fahr, Richard Senner: Climate input-output amplification: Assessing the impact of physical risks on global supply chains
Tonja Iten, Max Rudolf, Manuel Suter, Maritza Satama, Marco Pütz, Roland Olschewski: Analyzing citizens' preferences for sufficiency policy in municipalities — An experimental approach
Sergio L. Franklin, Robert S. Pindyck: The supply of forest-based CO2 removal
Junhui Li, Yongguang Zhu, Shiquan Dou, Qian Zhang, Saleem H. Ali, Gang Liu, Yanqiong Zhao, Na Zhou, Jinhua Cheng, Deyi Xu: The dynamic complexity of critical mineral supply chains reveals the paradox of energy transition
Harold Opdenbosch, Emilia Mattsson, Oyakhilomen Oyinbo, Jens Rommel, Helena Hansson, Gordana Manevska-Tasevska: Beyond carbon sequestration: Swedish farmers' preferences and trade-offs between co-benefits of climate change mitigation measures
Avani Aravind, Sabya Mishra, Smruti Rekha Das: Message framing and sustainability awareness: Experimental evidence for advancing reduce, reuse, and recycle practices
Jorge H. Garcia, Fernando Carriazo, Fredrik Carlsson: Shades of outrage? Socio-economic causes of environmental degradation and stated WTP
Morena Hanbury Lemos, Jason Hickel: Open veins: Drain from Latin America through ecologically unequal exchange
Feiyu Chen, Tong Zhang, Honghui Cai, Zhexin Zhu: Moral persuasion and normative regulation: How transgenerational education influences green consumption behavior with varying power distance orientation
Markose Chekol Zewdie, Esther Magondu, Mariska Bottema, Rahma Adam, Cristiano M. Rossignoli, Sara Bonilla Anariba, Douglas Okemwa, Rodrigue Yossa: Valuing sustainability in aquaculture: A comprehensive demand and supply side study in Kenya
Abdikadir Ahmed Mohamed, Nasteha Ahmed Afrah, Abdi Majid Yusuf Ibey, Abdikani Salah Abdulle: Navigating pressure and profit: Coastal population dynamics, IUU fishing, and fisheries sustainability in Somalia
Weimin Jiang, Jiajing Sun, Michael Cole, Yuanbo Zhang: Virtual water in global supply chains: Trade structure, industrial composition, and policy levers
Sarah Huet, Abdoul Diallo, Julie Regolo, Ainhoa Ihasusta, Ludovic Arnaud, Valentin Bellassen: Biodiversity impact of agricultural products in France: Greater differences across product types than food quality schemes
Sarah Gomm, Jale Tosun, Thomas Bernauer: Limits of low-cost environmentalism: Experimental evidence on tap- versus bottled-water consumption
Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong, Jourdain C. Lokossou: The heat is on: Implications of extreme temperatures on productive and defensive inputs in West Africa
Anne Löscher: Climate change, international finance and the balance-of-payments. A proposal for two novel indices
Julien Vastenaekels: Degrowth futures as power struggles: Scenarios of accumulation, sabotage, and resistance
Steffen Kallbekken, Sofie Waage Skjeflo, Knut Einar Rosendahl: Is tax aversion dominant? A survey experiment on combining energy taxes and subsidies
Andreas Eder: Revealing the abatement costs of soil erosion: a cost frontier approach
Yang Zhou, Ran Wang, Xiyuan Li, Bo Meng: Evaluating the carbon footprint of multinational enterprises in China: Does the source of FDI matter?
Sean Pascoe, Koenraad Van Landeghem, Gabriela Scheufele, Solomon Abrahams: Rethinking the use of the residual value method for ecosystem services valuation
Laura Felício, Fridolin Krausmann, Tânia Sousa: Designing MEMME – A conceptual material and energy metabolism model for economies
Wolfram Barfuss, Jonathan F. Donges, Matthias Bethge, Simon A. Levin: Natural tipping dynamics as catalysts of human cooperation
Karel Zwetsloot, David Collste, Therese Bennich, Thomas Hahn, Matteo Pedercini: Modelling degrowth policies with system dynamics: Towards policy coherence
Gennaro Zezza: ‘I believe that the construction of an alternative to the mainstream is possible’
Olimpia Fontana , Lino Sau: Expansionary austerity in Europe: finally an oxymoron?
Paulo R. Mota: Employment rate hysteresis by gender and age group
Aleksandr Arsenev , Philipp Heimberger , Bernhard Schütz: The cyclical behaviour of government spending for social protection: is the OECD methodology robust?
Edouard Cottin-Euziol , Nicolas Piluso: Inadequacy of revenues and endogenous economic cycles in a monetary economy of production
Konstantinos Pitsakis and Tobias Gössling: Antecedents of university entry into association for technology transfer political action
Diego Sancho-Bosch and others: The influence of financial constraints on participation in and the impact of public policies for private R&D
Yojiro Ito and Daisuke Miyakawa: The impact of mergers on aggregate productivity: an empirical analysis using productivity decomposition
Radeef Chundakkadan and Subash Sasidharan: Gender equality and firm innovation
Shuping Li and others: Power contestability among large shareholders and dividend payouts: a sociopolitical perspective
Peter Scott and James T Walker: Modularity, life cycle and new entry without fundamental patents: lessons from the American household refrigerator industry before and after the great crash of 1929
René Belderbos and others: What do R&D spillovers from universities and firms contribute to productivity? Plant level productivity and technological and geographic proximity in Japan
Beliza Borba de Almeida: Radical Institutionalism on the Colonizing Nature of Power: Cultural Impositions and the Intersectionality of Myths
Franklin Obeng-Odoom: A New Research Agenda for Energy Conflicts and Economic Coherence: Rethinking Energy Disputes within the Political Economy of Law
Wilfred Dolfsma: Greening Business and Greening the Economy—Institutions and Policy
Valerie Kepner & Paula Cole: Pay Her More and Other Strategies for Closing the Gender Wage Gap
Newton de Lima Carlini: The Achilles’ Heel of Hydrological Commons Governance: Lessons from Mariana on Institutional Capture and Power Asymmetries
Robert Loube: Power Struggles in the Power Industry
Scott Alan Carson: The Environmental Protection Agency’s Regulatory Footprint: Quad-O’s Effect on International Crude Oil, Distillate Prices, and Industry Returns
Thomas E. Lambert: Revisiting “The Menace of Competition and Gambling Deregulation”
Ellen Mutari & Deborah M. Figart: Algorithmic Management and Worker Well-Being: An Institutionalist Lens
Novica Supic & Kosta Josifidis: AI-Driven Shifts in the U.S. Labor Market and Economic Power: Can We Expect Progressive Institutional Change?
Avraham Izhar Baranes: Nothing to Smile About: Why Progressive Institutional Change in the AI Era May Fail
Janice Peterson: Inequality: Power, Precarity, and Unreason
Anna Klimina: Exploring the Multifaceted Nature of Public Sector Predation in the Age of Unreason
David A. Zalewski: The Power to Enclose: Early and Modern Sources of Economic Insecurity
Charles J. Whalen: Danger and Opportunity: Precarity, Power, and the Promise of a New Political Economy
Ricardo C. S. Siu: How Variations in Institutional Structures by Country Differentiate the Power of Social Network Platforms: The Case of TikTok
Sebastião Neto Ribeiro Guedes & Rodrigo Constantino Jeronimo: Transaction Networks and Institutional Change in Brazilian Sugarcane Agroindustry
Andréa Almawi, Darine Bakkour & Faruk Ülgen: Transforming Capitalism into a Viable Society Through Ecological Transition
Raymond J. Leach, Reynold F. Nesiba & Meriem Abdulhafiz: Earned Wage Access: An Early Payday or Fintech Payday Lending?
Faruk Ülgen: Financialization and Power Regulation: Is Purposeful Capitalism Possible?
Alicia Girón & Adheli Galindo: Big Corporations, Chinese EVs, and the Energy Transition in the Global Order
Fadhel Kaboub: The Unfinished Business of Decolonizing African Economies: An Institutionalist Perspective
Tanweer Akram & Khawaja Mamun: The Evolution of Income Inequality, Its Consequences, and Some Policy Measures
Enrico Bellino, Ariel L. Wirkierman: Luigi Pasinetti on Capital: Critical and Constructive Aspects
Fabio Petri: Intertemporal General Equilibrium: Role in the First Phase of the Cambridge Controversy; and Why Indefensible
Heinz D. Kurz, Neri Salvadori: Solow's attempt to revive the concept of ‘social rate of return’ and Pasinetti's critique
Enrico Bellino, Gabriel Brondino: Rate of Interest and Intertemporal Preferences in Multisectoral Frameworks: A Critical View
Saverio M. Fratini: On the Notion of ‘Factor of Production’ in Economic Theory
Michael J. Murray: Luigi Pasinetti and Adolph Lowe: Bridging Capital Theory and Institutional Analysis
Takashi Satoh: Capital in Motion: Synthesizing the Circulation and Reproduction in a Multi‐Sector Growth Model
Christian Bidard, Guido Erreygers: Capital Goods, Employment and Dynamics
Juan Carlos Moreno Brid, Pérez Caldentey Esteban, Edgar Pérez Medina: Trade and growth in Latin America: examining investment requirements consistent with balance-of-payments constraints
Francisco Alejandro Crespo Ramírez, Luis Miguel Galindo Paliza: Infrastructure investment requirements and its adaptation to climate change in Mexico
Armando Sánchez Vargas: The effects of Mexican presidential elections and regime changes on the peso-dollar exchange rate, 2012-2024: a copula approach
Monika Meireles, Felipe Nogueira da Cruz, Gerardo Ruíz: Echoes of Kalecki in Tavares: capitalist dynamics, unbalanced growth and financing on the periphery
Noemi Levy Orlik: Michal Kalecki returns to Mexico: productive imbalances and financial instability
Nayeli Pérez Juárez, David Orlando Ramírez-Naranjo: The appropriation of social reproduction and its theoretical influence on the rate of profit
Maggie FitzGerald & Ajay Parasram: “Pluriversal Political Economy”: Introduction to the Theme
Robin Dunford & Vasilis Leontitsis: Rethinking the Political Economy of Degrowth in a Postdevelopment Pluriverse
Angela C. Tozer: Capitalist Pasts and Pluriversal Futures: Challenges to Canadian Imperial Political Economy
Ibrahim Murat Kara & Yonghong Dai: Infrastructure: For Grandeur or for People’s Good? A Veblenian Analysis of Global Infrastructure Competition
Hepzibah Muñoz-Martínez, Alexandra Dobrowolsky & Tammy Findlay: Feminist Governance and Governance Feminism: Mobilization, Resistance, and Transformation in Mexico
James J. Brittain: Academic (Un)Freedom in Nova Scotia: Signalling the Need for Dissent
Ana Paula Londe Silva: “Free labour ideology” before Adam Smith: free vs slave labour in the British public debate, 1746–1776
Kwangsu Kim: New light on Adam Smith’s view of taxation via the concept of equity
Sven Ove Hansson: John Stuart Mill’s robust egalitarianism
Nathaniel K. Gilmore: Economics and the human condition: Aristotle and Rousseau in Karl Polanyi’s thought
Roberto Romani: Economists’ politics of transition in Russia, 1990–1998
Pierre Januard: Thomas Aquinas on production and financing
Angela Ambrosino, Mario Cedrini & John B. Davis: Economics imperialism: Ambrosino, Cedrini, and Davis reply to Heisse
Christiane Heisse: Economics imperialism: a rejoinder to Ambrosino, Cedrini, and Davis
Valeria Pulignano, Lynford Dor, Yennef Vereycken: Contested hegemony in digital-age production politics
Chris Smith, Charlotte Goodburn, Devi Sacchetto & Pun Ngai: Living at work: accommodation, labour and social reproduction
Francesca Alice Vianello, Valeria Piro: The indeterminacy of time and tasks: negotiating practices among live-in farm and domestic workers
Eugenio Capitani: Alienation and job quality in the digital age: toward a relational and normative framework
Yueran Tian, Ngoc Luong: Diffused dormitory labour regimes in China and Vietnam: housing transformations and labour control through social reproduction
Rasmus Ahlstrand, Sara Eldén: Informalization and migrant labour exploitation: commercialized domestic cleaning in Sweden
Pau López-Gaitán: Financialization without shareholders: extending the disconnected capitalism thesis to a member-owned club (FC Barcelona, 2003–23)
Pedro Mendonça: Too fast to work, too slow to belong: platform acceleration and migration bureaucracy shaping platform workers’ time
Paul Thompson & Sarah Nies: Consent, coercion and conflict: interrogating the legacy of Michael Burawoy
Clelia Li Vigni: Absenteeism, or resistance of last resort: workers’ defence strategies to work intensification and managerial responses in the automotive industry
Alex J. Wood: Marxism with micro-foundations? The contradictory politics of Michael Burawoy
Charlotte Goodburn: Disciplining production and reproduction in special economic zones beyond China: migrant women and dormitory labour regimes in India and Uganda
Yu Zheng: Employer-provided housing and upskilling: evidence from Japanese manufacturing plants in China
Stephen J. Frenkel & Tom Barnes: New technology, work organization and workers: a power-centred framework informed by warehouse robotics
by Philip J Stern | 2023, Harvard University Press
Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society remained invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power.
Please find a link to the book here.
edited by Alicja Sielska, Joanna Turowska, Krzysztof Turowski | 2026, Edward Elgar Publishing
This fascinating book explores Nobel Prize winner Friedrich August von Hayek’s lasting influence on economics and social thought. Expert authors reflect on his contributions and apply them to various challenges in contemporary society.
By tracing the evolution of Hayek’s achievements, this book also explores lesser known aspects of his work such as the impact of religion, his critique of the welfare state and his unique interpretation of David Hume. Chapters highlight the modern relevance of these considerations, engaging with current debates not only within Austrian economics but also within other social sciences, including political philosophy, law and psychology. Drawing on Hayek’s intellectual connections and modes of analysis, contributors examine key themes of entrepreneurship, monetary theory, macroeconomics and the role of institutions, as well as his critical analyzes on socialism and classical liberalism.
Providing comprehensive coverage of Hayek’s intellectual influence, this book is highly relevant to scholars and students of social philosophy, economics and the history of ideas, particularly those interested in the Austrian school of economics.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Arne Heise | 2026, Routledge
In 1936 John Maynard Keynes published a book that he believed would revolutionise the way the world thinks about economic problems: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Although the book became the foundation of a particular approach to economic theorising – later termed macroeconomics, in contrast to the microeconomics of the Neoclassical school, which had just begun to dominate the discipline in the early decades of the 20th century – it can be argued that Keynes never achieved what Thomas Kuhn described as a scientific revolution: A true paradigm shift.
This book not only revisits the debate on the "revolution that never was" within a philosophy of science framework – one that clearly distinguishes between paradigmatic variations and paradigmatic alternatives, thus differentiating between economic orthodoxy and heterodoxy – but also argues that the "Keynesian revolution" of the 1940s and 1950s was merely the orthodox response to ward off a genuine paradigm shift. This was made possible by the epistemological flexibility of the orthodox tradition on the one hand and, also, by the shortcomings in Keynes’s theorising and methodological exposition. An alternative is presented that attempts to extend and supplement what Keynes called a "Monetary Theory of Production" – offering links to modern discussions about financialisation and sustainability.
The book will be of interest to all readers seeking alternatives to mainstream economics, advocating for a pluralistic approach to the discipline and looking for a key to understanding the different strands of Post Keynesianism.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Rayelle Davis | 2026, Pluto Press
The United States is in a state of decline—a reality decades in the making. At the thin end of the wedge sits Appalachia, one of the nation’s most deprived regions, mythologized by outsiders and misunderstood the world over.
Embedded as a therapist within this community, Rayelle Davis frames the addiction, suicide, and “diseases of despair” that plague the region as a consequence of cultural trauma, exploitation, and systemic neglect. Her work is a searing exploration of generational adversity and a powerful indictment of the psychological abuse of the American Dream.
Davis reveals a profound truth: Appalachian trauma is colonial trauma. As in exploited nations abroad, everything of value—from wealth and health to life itself—is extracted by a distant elite. This courageous book exposes the predatory systems of power and challenges everything we think we know about identity, sovereignty, and the actual cost of inequality in America.
In a time of extreme political polarization, Money in the Mountains is not a requiem for Appalachia, but a manifesto for collective healing.
Please find a link to the book here.
Edited By Werner Raza, Christa Schlager, Viktor Skyrman, Michael Soder | 2026, Routledge
Amid accelerating global warming, the digital revolution and rising geopolitical tensions, industrial policy has taken centre-stage in EU policymaking. Consequently, initiatives such as the Green Deal Industrial Plan, the CHIPS & Science Act, the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEIs) and the InvestAI initiative have been developed or proposed recently. Meanwhile, by reintroducing competitiveness and security as primary objectives for industrial policy, European policymakers appear to backtrack on the social and environmental agenda, while not effectively addressing critical governance deficits and financing gaps. European industrial policy is thus at a critical juncture, and its strategic trajectory is currently under discussion. The volume intervenes into current industrial policy debates from a critical perspective. Achieving sustainable, inclusive and effective industrial policy depends on embracing a progressive approach that prioritises broad stakeholder engagement, effective governance and accelerated implementation, instead of a push for rearmament and geopolitical competition.
Progressive Industrial Policy in Europe serves as a key reference for scholars and students in a diverse range of academic disciplines. The volume is also intended for researchers active at trade unions, think tanks and NGOs, along with policymakers and specialised civil servants at supranational, national and local levels.
Please find a link to the open access book here.
by Michael Dunford | Edward Elgar Publishing 2026
This pioneering book appraises earlier literature and proposes methodological, theoretical and analytical tools for understanding the uneven evolution of development. Michael Dunford explores how global development and international, national, regional and social inequalities have been shaped by centuries of colonisation, imperialism, industrialisation and the rise and fall of hegemonic powers.
Advocating for an interdisciplinary approach to the topic, Dunford presents a macro-geographical and macro-historical account of the waves of uneven development that have resulted in an emerging multi-polar world, with Asia returning to the centre of the global economy. Chapters cover a wide range of theoretical perspectives from political economy, structuralist and developmentalist to dependency theories, and from classical location theories to contemporary geographical economics and economic geography. Dunford identifies economic and political mechanisms that drive the forces shaping the uneven course of development and emphasises the dynamics of investment and the roles of state sovereignty and governance capacity.
Rethinking Uneven Development is a vital resource for students and scholars of human geography, development studies, urban and regional studies and political economy.
Please find a link to the book here.
by Michael Schedelik and others | 2026, Cambridge University Press
This Element seeks to develop an empirical research agenda that explores the applicability of the growth model perspective in comparative political economy to emerging capitalist economies (ECEs). Such an approach emphasizes the variety of possible growth models and their implications for development, providing an alternative to universalizing economic models as prevalent in mainstream development discourse. Using national accounts data for several large ECEs in the period from 2001 to 2022, the authors first propose a typology of peripheral growth models with varying degrees of economic vulnerability. Most notably, they add an investment-led model to the prevalent juxtaposition of consumption-led and export-led growth models. Subsequently, they employ several case vignettes from Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam to unpack the effects of volatile international interdependencies, such as commodity cycles, and diverse political underpinnings on peripheral growth models. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Please find a link to the book here.
By Cristina Soeiro Matos | 2026, Routledge
This book develops an evolutionary economics approach to welfare state dynamics. Welfare states are complex settings, including social insurance, social assistance, and universal provisions. Their main aim is to shelter household incomes from instability and redistribute incomes. This book analyses welfare states in terms of how they pool business cycle uncertainty between the state (social security), firms, and households. The evolutionary and institutional analysis of welfare states, focusing, in particular, on labor market segmentation and national‑level policy design, is applied to two particular cases: a Southern European country (Portugal) and a deep‑rooted European welfare state (France). These two countries have introduced similar social protection reforms and experienced similar crises, yet the two welfare states are very different. This book explores and explains why that should be the case. It will be of interest to researchers and students of institutional evolutionary economics, welfare states, and European politics.
Please find a link to the book here.
There is an open call for applications to the XLII cycle of the LEES PhD Programme (International and Public Law, Ethics, Economics and Sustainable Development) at the University of Milan—a genuinely interdisciplinary environment at the intersection of institutional analysis, economic governance, and sustainability.
The programme engages with topics such as governance of commons, justice of economic institutions, and the law, economics and ethics of corporate governance.
Several funded positions (scholarships) are available.
Please find more info here.
Application deadline: 15 July 2026
Applications for doctoral scholarships at the University of Greenwich will open in September 2026. The positions are offered as part of the Economics Pathway within the UBEL Doctoral Training Partnership (ESRC).
Two entry routes are available: a 1+3.5 programme building on the taught MSc Economics, and direct entry to a 3.5-year PhD building on the existing Economics MPhil/PhD programme. Applications are also invited for the Intersectional Gender Inequalities route and the Climate, Environment and Development route at UoG/UBEL DTP.
UBEL will host a guidance webinar for prospective applicants on June 26, 2026, 13:00–14:00 (via Microsoft Teams).
Further information is available here.
Applications must be submitted via the UBEL website.
For general queries, contact o.onaran@gre.ac.uk.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026
There is an open call for applications for the PhD program, Department of Economics, Roma Tre. The program is pluralistic, taught in English. and comes with scholarships.
The call for applications for the Ph.D. Programme (42th cycle, beginning on 1 January 2027) is now open. The Department of Economics is offering 6 fully-funded positions (with scholarship), and 2 of them are co-financed and focus on specific research topics. Applications must be submitted via the Roma Tre online portal by 14 July 2026, 2pm CET.
To apply and know more about the necessary documents and the admission procedure please visit the dedicated webpage.
Research topics
The six positions will be allocated as follows:
The preferred topic, whether general or one of the others, must be specified when submitting the online application.
Admission procedure
Admission is based on a two-stage selection procedure: an assessment of academic qualifications and a subsequent interview.
Assessment of qualifications. The selection committee will assess all the documents and academic qualifications submitted by the applicant. Particular attention will be given to the applicant’s academic record in their Master’s degree and their Master’s thesis. This phase can award up to 30 points, and a minimum of 18 points is required to be admitted to the oral examination.
Interview. The interview may be conducted in Italian or English, either in person or online. It consists of two parts. The first part is designed to assess the applicant’s understanding of key concepts in economics and their familiarity with the main research tools used in the field. The second part focuses on discussing the applicant’s academic background, research proposal, research interests, and motivation for pursuing a PhD.
The research proposal should be approximately 4 pages long (around 2,000 words) and structured as follows: a brief introduction to the theoretical and empirical context of the proposed thesis project, outlining the potential contribution of the research and its possible theoretical and policy implications; a review of the relevant academic literature, identifying the main strands of research the project aims to build upon, the specific issues the applicant intends to address, and the original contribution the project seeks to make relative to existing studies; a list of bibliographic references cited in the proposal.
As for the research project, it should be about 4 pages (2000 words) long and must be structured as follows: a brief introduction to the framework (both theoretical and empirical) in which the thesis project is set, aimed at identifying the potential of the proposed research work and the possible theoretical and economic policy implications; a review of the international scientific literature of reference, aimed at identifying the main lines of research to which the project refers and, if possible, the specific points the candidate intends to address, and the original contribution to the existing literature; precise bibliographic references used in the description of the project.
The language proficiency of each applicant will be assessed. For interviews conducted in Italian, applicants will also be tested on their knowledge of English. The whole interview (both parts combined) awards a maximum score of 30 points, and a minimum score of 18 is required to pass.
Additional information
The programme lasts 3 years, from 1 January 2027 to 31 December 2029. Knowledge of Italian is not compulsory.
Admission to the PhD Program in Economics will be based on the applicant’s academic background and the relevance and quality of the proposed research project.
Any reference letters must be sent via email directly by the referees (not by the applicants themselves) to ricerca.economia@uniroma3.it before the deadline.
Applicants are expected to be familiar with standard introductory textbooks in microeconomics and macroeconomics. To strengthen and deepen this foundational knowledge, the following texts are recommended:
Please find more info here.
Application deadline: 14 July 2026, 2pm CET.
The Philadelphia Inquirer 26 May 2026
The Trump administration's announcement of a $1.776 billion federal fund to compensate his political allies has blown open a much older debate. As Cornel West noted last week, if Washington can mobilize nearly $2 billion to redress the politically aggrieved, it can no longer claim the cupboard is bare for the descendants of the enslaved. The truth is that both Britain and America have a long history of paying massive reparations — they simply paid them to white enslavers. The question is no longer whether a fiscal mechanism exists, but who is deemed worthy of receiving it.
In 1833, British taxpayers took on a £20 million loan — 40% of the national budget — to compensate 46,000 enslavers for their "loss of property." Today, that sum represents an economic power of roughly £106 billion ($132 billion). The enslaved and their descendants received nothing. This generational wealth sustained families for centuries, including that of Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax until 2024, whose family still retains Drax Hall, the ancestral Barbados sugar plantation.
America's record is identical. Under the 1862 D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act, enslavers in the nation's capital received up to $300 per person. Even when enslaved men enlisted in the Union Army to fight for their freedom, the federal government paid a further $300 per person to their former captors in the border states. Again, the enslaved and their descendants received nothing.
While governments stall, private blueprints have set a successful precedent. The Scott Trust, owner of the Guardian, committed £10 million to restorative justice to atone for its founders' ties to cotton grown by enslaved people. Harvard has committed $100 million to address its historical ties, and the University of Glasgow established a £20 million reparative initiative. On an individual level, aristocratic descendants like Laura Trevelyan and David Lascelles launched the Heirs of Slavery collective to pour personal wealth into Caribbean educational funds, while in America, heirs of the DeWolf family — whose ancestors were the largest merchants of the slave trade in United States history — have funded community repair and reconciliation.
The fiscal mechanisms are ready. As Washington proves this week, the missing ingredient has never been the money. It has always been the political courage to do the right thing.
— Richard Romm, West Sussex, U.K.
1 June, 2026 | NY, US
The Economics Students Union (ESU) of the New School for Social Research (NSSR) has issued a statement addressing recent personnel decisions at the institution. In the past week, almost two dozen tenured faculty and staff positions were eliminated as part of the University's ongoing restructuring process. Among those terminated is Professor Sanjay Reddy, Professor of Economics and one of the most prominent representatives of the New School's tradition of critical social inquiry:
Dear friends of the NSSR Economics Department
We are writing to bring to your attention certain developments that we, the Economics Students Union, believe have profound and deleterious implications for the future of the institution.
In the last week, almost two dozen tenured faculty and staff positions have been eliminated as part of the University's ongoing restructuring process. Among those to be terminated is Professor Sanjay Reddy, Professor of Economics and one of the most prominent representatives of the New School's tradition of critical social inquiry. Other tenured faculty members and long-serving staff across the University have likewise been fired.
The central issue is not any one individual appointment, but what these decisions signify for academic freedom, tenure, faculty governance, and the future of critical scholarship at the New School.
We are appalled by what appears to be a significant departure from long standing norms governing tenure in American higher education. The firing of tenured faculty members outside the context of clear program closures or a formally declared financial exigency raises fundamental questions about the meaning of tenure itself.
Professor Reddy was among the most prominent faculty voices challenging the administration's account of the University's finances and questioning the priorities that contributed to its present crisis. Whether one agreed with his conclusions or not, criticism of institutional leadership lies at the heart of the university's mission. Academic freedom is inextricably linked to the possibility of secure livelihoods, and if tenured faculty can be fired in this manner, the consequences extend far beyond the careers of individual scholars. Universities can recover from financial difficulties; it is far more difficult to rebuild academic communities, traditions of inquiry, and relationships of trust once they have been dismantled.
It is particularly important to note the decision to fire several faculty who have been actively participating in ongoing efforts to organize the faculty and who have raised alarm at the erosion of faculty governance norms.
As students of economics, we are also unconvinced by the rationale that appears to underlie these decisions. The University's difficulties were not created by tenured faculty, academic programs, learning center staff, or administrative assistants. They are the result of years of financial mismanagement, unsustainable debt burdens, declining enrollment, and strategic choices made at the highest levels of the institution. Firing faculty and staff may reduce expenditures in the short term, but it does not address the underlying causes of the crisis and will only exacerbate the institution's problems with declining enrolment and student retention.
We therefore encourage alumni, former faculty, students, scholars, and friends of the New School to stand in solidarity with those who have been fired and to consider what practical steps can be taken to resist this erosion of tenure, academic freedom, and faculty self-governance. At a moment when academic freedom faces mounting pressures across the United States, the decisions being made at the New School carry significance far beyond a single institution. We urge members of the wider New School community to intervene where they can, whether through public discussion, collective action, or engagement with the University's leadership; to seek the reversal of these firings and to defend the values that have historically defined the institution.
In Solidarity,
The Economics Students Union
12 July, 2026 | Online
This nine-week course offers a pluralist introduction to political economy and economics. The organizers 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 (for more information see here). 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 lecture (at whatever time suits you). You then undertake some suggested reading, and then participate in a weekly 90-minute tutorial (which has a 5-minute break halfway through) where we discuss set questions and also field any questions and comments you might have. Tutorial sizes have a maximum upper limit of 24 people in order to generate a conversational, easy-going and genuinely interactive experience. You can engage with the tutorials (and the subject itself) in the manner, and in the depth that suits you. One-on-one help is provided whenever you need to clarify anything.
All tutorials start in the week commencing 12th July 2026. Currently, one weekly tutorial is scheduled on Tuesdays 6-7.30pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time – which is 10-11.30am Central European Time). Other tutorials are likely to be scheduled, so if this tutorial time does not suit you, register an expression of interest, indicating what time(s) would suit and we will see will try to schedule something that works for you either this coming term, or in future terms.
Weekly tutorial discussions provide you with the opportunity to test and clarify and ideas. There are also detailed questions and answers in each week’s learning materials. These Q&A’s allow you to self-assess your knowledge. Whenever you find a gap in your knowledge you are encouraged to reach out for help before, during or after the discussion sessions.
If you attend at least 7 of the 10 classes, the organizers can upon request issue you with a record of completion.
Please find more info here.
All sound good? If so, click here to enrol. If you have any questions, submit them here.
The British Sociological Association (BSA) and WES invite applications to join the journal as Associate Editors. Work, Employment and Society is a highly respected journal with an international profile. It is strongly centred in the sociological tradition, drawing upon adjacent disciplines to make an original contribution to debates in the sociology of work and employment. It receives over 1000 submissions a year, has an Impact Factor of 3.8 and is ranked 4 in the Chartered Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide. WES is a journal of the British Sociological Association and the current publishing partner is Sage.
WES is seeking a new Chair of the Editorial Board, 2026-2029 as a new board members.
The Chair of the Board will have authority, flexibility and impartiality. The role involves oversight of the Editorial Board, chairing the board meetings, the handling of potentially contentious and sensitive publishing ethics cases and some editing when the journal receives submissions from its Editors.
The Editorial Board meetings twice a year virtually. With an Editorial Board of 80+ individuals, based internationally, we are looking for a chair with experience of chairing large meetings and fostering participation. These meetings are supported by the BSA staff.
Nominees should demonstrate previous experience of the WES journal, understanding of its ethos, and be nominated by a current WES Editorial Board member. Nominees should be BSA members at time of nomination and will maintain BSA membership throughout the term of office. Chairs are able to submit and publish in the journal during their terms of office.
The journal has a robust method in place to ensure unbiased peer review.
Please find the full call here.
Nomination Deadline for the Chair of the Board: 13 August 2026
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The appointed editors will join the current team in editing papers and developing the intellectual agenda and international reach of the journal. In recent years there have been significant, community-led changes with in the journal: editorial and Board structure changes; and the introduction of new initiatives – like the incredibly popular PhD Showcase. Editors, working closely with the Editorial Board, initiate and support such changes during theirterms of office.
Editorial responsibilities include the following:
The editors work in a highly collaborative way, meeting online monthly. New editors will be integrated into the existing team through mentoring and peer support. Typically, editors work a full day a week onWES activities.
WES is looking for 6 new editors -scholars who demonstrate an understanding of WES, offering a range of methodological and sociological expertise matching the WES remit, and who are keen to work closely with a team of colleagues to advance the journal. Although WES has its roots within British Sociology and the BSA, it is interested in a wider range of international voices. WES is looking for editors from a broad international arena.
Essential
Desirable
Please find the full call here.
Application Deadline: 17 September 2026