Heterodox Economics Newsletter

Issue 259 February 17, 2020 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory

Although economics is an inherently political subject, the intersection between policy and economics is typically not the main focus of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter. This is slightly different in this issue, which includes a regular and a surprising item related to economic policy issues. The regular item stems from the Euromemorandum-Group, which annually announces a plea for implementing alternative macroeconomic policies in Europe - you will find this plea below and can take the opportunity to explicitly support this year's EuroMemorandum "A Green New Deal for Europe – Opportunities and Challenges" by using this form. The more surprising, if not unique, item is a note on the congressional testimony by Randall Wray on the implications of MMT for fiscal policies. While it might just be the case that I am ignorant and, hence, have overlooked similar occasions, I think it's the first time in my editorship that such a congressional testimony by a prominent heterodox economist has been requested and submitted. Congratulations on that!

Another issue, that relates more closely to the Newsletter's core agenda, is to alert our younger readers that the annual "wave of summer school-announcements" is starting with this Newsletter-issue, which already includes four related announcements for upcoming summer schools. All details on summer schools can be found in the "call for participants"-section that is regularly included in each issue and experience suggests that more such announcement will follow in the upcoming issues - so be sure to stay tuned.

All the best,

Jakob

© public domain

Table of contents

Call for Papers

11th Annual Conference of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) (Ferrara, Sept. 2020)

9-11 September 2020 | National University Centre on Applied Economic Studies, Ferrara, Italy

IIPPE calls for submissions to the 2020 annual Conference. We particularly welcome papers directly related to the core themes of “moving beyond neoliberalism and populism”, and “building progressive policies and alliances for our societies and economies”. As always, presentations on all aspects of political economy are also welcome. New participants committed to political economy, interdisciplinarity, history of economic thought, critique of mainstream economics, and/or their application to policy analysis and activism are strongly encouraged to submit an abstract.

In mainstream economics we often use the Robinson Crusoe metaphor. It represents the idealised economic man, the independent, industrious and self-sufficient man, who absolutely knows his needs and his surroundings; who rationally assesses his possibilities and makes choices; who seeks for novel ways to expand his potential; who conquers nature and defies backward-looking social checks; and who ingeniously combines all the means virtually available to him in order to increase personal prosperity and gratification. However, economists seem to be telling half of the story. Robinson Crusoe actually relied on the camaraderie of his fellowman Friday to deal with the obstacles they faced together, and he was only able to survive and progress by joining forces and associating with others. The self-serving aspects of economic man are far from reality and overlook the social and institutional dimensions of the economy. In fact, economic man is a social construct itself, which places markets over and above social values. In this session we wish to explore the collectives and networks people create to promote material well-being and restore substantive values of social and environmental protection. Examples of collectives include, among others, trade unions; environmental associations; worker-recuperated firms; commons and commoning; local communities; research and policy networks; public-private synergies; and social movements. How do these collectives emerge? What is their purpose? How do they evolve? How are they affected by history and culture? How can cooperation be achieved within and between collectives in view of conflicting interests and needs? These are questions we would like to address in the session.

We also encourage contributions that generally address the topic of social capital. We welcome works that derive from various social science disciplines and use different units of analysis (individual, regional, country or cross-country level), methodologies and techniques (theoretical, empirical, qualitative and quantitative). Participants can submit individual papers or organise sessions.

Please submit your proposal via the online portal. For further questions contact Asimina Christoforou.

Working Groups:

Teaching Political Economy Working Group

Coordinators:Kevin Deane, Lorena Lombardozzi and Elisa van Waeyenberge

The Teaching Political Economy working group welcomes proposals for individual research papers, panels and other presentations. Whilst the need for a more pluralist economics curriculum has been articulated by both academics and student movements alike, there are still a wide range of issues and experience that will contribute to an under-represented but vitally important aspect of our international community; teaching the next generation of economists.

Topics of interest could include, but are not limited to:

We welcome panel proposals and single paper proposals. If you are proposing a panel, all papers need to be submitted individually via the Electronic Proposal Form, which you can access through the website. In addition, please send an email indicating which papers (with their authors) you would like to be grouped into a panel (give title). This should go to Kevin, Lorena and Elisa.

Africa Working Group

Coordinators: Hannah Cross and Elisa Greco

The primary aim of the IIPPE Africa Working Group is to promote intellectual and practical exchange between scholars and activists of African political economy, and those in other IIPPE working groups. Many of the most pressing questions and themes concerning Africa’s political economies – including land reform, the politics of resources, the influence of IFIs and econometric methodologies in development policy and academia, the relationship between state, capital and labour, financialisation and the changing and continuous nature of capitalist transformation – open up channels for comparison with other processes and regions. At the same time, the continent’s modern histories of decolonisation and ill-conceived boundaries, structural adjustment, militarisation and the struggle for sovereignty over currencies and economic policy more generally, have created particular regional dynamics that merit an area focus.

The Africa working group is supported by the Review of African Political Economy, whose contributions are based on politically engaged scholarship from a range of disciplines. This journal pays particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation, oppression, and to struggles against them, whether driven by global forces or local ones such as class, race, community and gender. It sustains a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa in the context of capitalist globalisation.

In summary, the Africa WG’s aims are:

Political Economy of Health and Healthcare Working Group

Coordinators: Jonathan Filippon, Elias Kondilis andÁquilas Mendes

We welcome proposals for individual research papers, panels and other presentations that relate to the intersecting interests of the Political Economy of Health and Healthcare working group and the Africa working group. Our working groups are collaborating to promote the need for more political economy work on the broad issue of Health and Healthcare in the African context, as to date in many areas of health, work from a political economy perspective has been lacking. Topics of interest could include, but are not limited to:

We welcome panel proposals and single paper proposals. If you are proposing a panel, all papers need to be submitted individually as above following the IIPPE conference procedures. In addition, please send an email indicating what papers (with their authors) you would like to be grouped into a panel (give title). This should go to Hannah Cross, Elisa Greco and Jonathan Filippon. To submit to this joint call please select EITHER Political Economy of Health and Healthcare working group OR the Africa working group.

Agrarian Change Working Group

Coordinators: Leandro Vergara-Camus and Jens Lerche

As the crisis of neoliberal capitalism deepens and rightwing populisms engage in a sustained effort to keep the show on the road by mobilizing pseudo-nationalism and racist discourses, a sense of urgency animates the study of agrarian social formations in this conjuncture of multi-layered crises of production, reproduction, environment, politics and ideology. In the wake of failed neoliberalism and the limited and contradictory achievements of several experiences of left-leaning governments, Agrarian Political Economy faces the challenge of providing critical analysis of the dynamics and contradictions of this conjuncture.

In rural settings, this crisis far from leading to the emergence or consolidation of alternatives to neoliberalism has allowed for the continued expansion of the power of agribusiness, the strengthening of their global commodity chains, the dominance of financial interests, and grabs of different kinds (land, water, forests). These accumulation strategies have a direct but also contradictory impact on agrarian class relations. Capitalist agrarian classes consolidate themselves while petty commodity producers, peasants and rural labourers reproduce themselves under ever more precarious conditions, which requires more than ever to have one foot in the non-agrarian economy. This is in turn changing the household strategies of social reproduction, not only by further increasing the feminization of labour but also increasing the pressures on women’s unpaid labour within households and across generations. However, some sectors of the subaltern agrarian classes have managed to insert themselves in agribusiness-led commodity chains through different economic and political strategies, benefiting from the high prices of food and post-2007 rush on commodities. Surprisingly, in contrast to what had happened during the previous crisis of neoliberalism in the 1990s, land struggles and demands for land reforms seem to have faded away from the international agenda.

This raises important questions about the processes of integration into global capitalism, peasant resistance, social conflicts in the countryside, territoriality, semi-proletarianisation and surplus populations. Are the global and local movements promoting sustainable farming practices and food sovereignty and/or indigenous autonomy leading to more sustainable ways of managing natural resources capable of mounting a challenge to neoliberalism, agribusiness and right-wing populism? Politically, the recurrent crises and instability have led to calls for, and promises of, greater role for the state in regulating economic life – but to what effect?

The agrarian change working group invites you to submit proposals for individual papers, and thematic panels. In this spirit we welcome contributions on the following themes.

Abstracts of individual papers (max. 500 words) or panel proposals (max. 500 words plus abstracts of the individual papers) must be submitted via the IIPPE Webpage.

Agrarian Change and Social Reproduction Working Group

Coordinators: Hannah Bargawi, Jens Lerche,Leandro Vergara-Camus, Sara Stevano

The Agrarian Change and Social Reproduction Working Groups invite proposals for individual papers or panels in a joint stream at IIPPE 2020 Annual Conference (Ferrara, Italy, 9-11 September). These may include theoretical and empirical contributions that focus primarily on the deployment of a social reproduction lens to consider agrarian questions. Contributions that address these questions in the context of (alternatives to) neoliberalism and populism are strongly welcome owing to the overarching conference theme. We welcome contributions on the following themes:

Proposals should be submitted online by 15 March 2020 here. Please tick the Social Reproduction or Agrarian Change Working Group when you make the submission and then indicate clearly under the title or abstract tab that you are submitting to this joint call. If you are submitting a panel, all papers need to be submitted individually and the relevant working groups should be informed.

Political Economy of China’s Development Working Group

Coordinators: Sam-Kee Cheng and Niels Hahn

The positive and negative aspects of the “China model” and China’s role in world development

China’s continuous economic growth and general improvement in living standards form a sharp contrast to the falling living standards and sluggish growth around the world, which has been argued by some as the reasons for the rise of populism and the ultra-right in some parts of the world. China’s agreement to fully open its financial market to US financial institutions in Phase 1 trade deal with the US, however, may force a sharp change of trajectory and jeopardise planning objectives including elimination of absolute poverty and industrial upgrade. China’s increasing trade and investments in the world, particularly in the developing countries, are offering opportunities as well as challenges to world development. While China’s political economy departs from the trend of austerity and neoliberal practice, the pressure to conform and submit to US-led world capitalism can be surmounting.

The Political Economy of China’s Development Working Group invites you to submit proposals for individual papers or themed panels related to our lines of inquiry of China’s transformation and its impact on world development in relation to neoliberalism, capitalism and imperialism. We welcome contributions on the following themes:

We welcome panel proposals and single paper proposals. If you are proposing a panel, all papers need to be submitted individually via the electronic form and send an email to the working group coordinators with the titles of all papers. Please state clearly that you submitting to this call by selecting Political Economy of China’s Development in your submission.

Political Economy and Religions Working Group

Coordinator: Salvatore Drago

The Call for Paper aims at fulfilling essential purposes. To understand how actually the recent and financial crisis is also a crisis of religious and ethical values that have been excluded from the economic science legislation all over the centuries, starting from its financial origins to its effects on the real economy of citizens and enterprises. Incidentally, in its purpose, we want to analyze the ethical values of religious origin, such as solidarity, subsidiarity, common good, universal destination of good, social good, care and charity and see how these values can correct, lead and support the element that have been distorted by the traditional conventional economy of positivistic and marginal tendency. The comprehension of the religious influences that are able to change the direction of the conventional economy and those of the global capitalism means to use a non-conventional, practical and theoretical point of view, able to connect economy to the dimension from which depended before (the religion) and, therefore, the consequent philosophies and anthropologies deriving from that. An approach that is necessary, in order to understand the direction of the world capitalism in the XXI century and to consider the political economy as a result of the societies and cultures occurred over history.

Basically, we try to give an answer to the following questions: what are the religious roots, considered as the basis of the economic conception and of the capitalism of its logic and of its history? What are the reasons of the abandon of values and of the religious elements made by economy started from the middle of the XIX century, after the sunset of the civil-religious economy of the European enlightenment reformism? What are the proposals, the suggestions and the directions that the religions can give to the global capitalistic economy with their thoughts and politics, in a period of constant religious growth and where the structural crisis of the capitalism and the disparity among social classes, people and Nations increases?

We encourage abstracts from theoretical and practical point of view. To submit a paper, please go to IIPPE website and follow the instructions. When submitting, please select the IIPPE “Political Economy and Religions” Working Group. Moreover, please send the abstract to the Coordinator.

Financialisation Working Group

Coordinators: Bruno Bonizzi and Ezgi Unsal Bruno Bonizzi

We welcome proposals for individual research papers, panels and other presentations that relate to the broad interests of the Financialisation Working Group at IIPPE’s 2020 Annual Conference.

Following the abandonment of Keynesian theory and policies after the 1970s, a broad set of theory-making practices and social policies was introduced towards greater market liberalisation and greater use of finance and financial instruments for economic growth. As the decade of 2010s was further characterised by the rise of populism politically, the interrelations between economic theory/policy-making and political populism emerge as a crucial area of investigation.

Our working group is working towards the promotion of the political economy on finance in economics and other social sciences. In accordance with the general call for papers, contributions to the IIPPE FWG may include, but not limited to, proposals addressing the following key questions:

We welcome panel proposals and single paper proposals. If you are proposing a panel, all papers need to be submitted individually as above following the IIPPE conference procedures. In addition, please send an email to working group coordinators, indicating the panel title, paper titles and author names

Neoliberalism Working Group

Coordinators: Alfredo Saad-Filho and Joanne Tomkinson

The Neoliberalism 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, under the ideological veil of non-intervention, a hegemonic project of recomposition of the rule of capital in each area of economic and social life. This is guided by the current imperatives of the international reproduction of capital, with the financial markets and the interests of 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. This has reduced the scope for 'autonomous' economic and social policies, and led to higher levels of unemployment and job insecurity in most countries than was the case previously. It has also created an income-concentrating dynamics of accumulation that has proven resistant to efforts at Keynesian and reformist interventions

The neoliberal transition in the world economy has been closely associated with 'globalisation' and with it, new modalities of imperialism. Indeed, the transfer of the main levers of accumulation to international capital, mediated by US-led financial institutions, and regulated by US-controlled international organisations, has consolidated the material basis of neoliberalism. Yet despite these global drivers, the neoliberal project has nonetheless reconstituted economic and social relations differently in different countries – rather than being globally homogenising (as often claimed by globalisation's critics and supporters alike). This calls attention to the national and local specificities of actually existing forms of neoliberalism.

Transcending neoliberalism, meanwhile, requires both economic and political transformations. These demand the construction of an alternative system of accumulation targeted at systematically dismantling the material basis of neoliberalism through a series of political initiatives, which will support a shift to less unequal distributions of income, wealth and power, as a fundamental condition for democracy. But these policy measures need to be supported by a re-articulated working class, as one of the main levers for its own economic and social recomposition. This virtuous circle cannot be wished into being. Its elements cannot be addressed purely academically, or through the organisation of another vanguard party, or simply through political alliances between existing forces. The development of new forms of political expression and representation by the working class are required in face of a hostile domestic and international environment.

In light of such concerns, the IIPPE working group on neoliberalism focuses its attention on:

The working group welcomes contributions in all areas of research related to neoliberalism as outlined above. In 2020 there is also a particular interest in papers which speak to the following specific themes:

The Marxist Political Economy Working Group

Coordinators: Gong Hoe Gimm and Heesang Jeon

The Marxist Political Economy Working Group aims to promote Marxist political economy, which is one of the tenets of IIPPE. Marxist political economy encompasses many diverse themes including, but not limited to, value theory, crisis theory, Marx’s method, and so on. Across these, value theory is taken as the starting point and the basis of other more complex analyses. However, this does not mean that value theory should stand on its own but it should be validated through the course of its application and development.

In relation to other IIPPE working groups which are not necessarily based on Marxian theories, the Marxist Political Economy Working Group acts as a horizontal group, informing and drawing upon the activities of other working groups by offering its own perspectives on specific topics such as privatization and neo-liberalism. We believe that value analysis provides integrity and analytical power to more complex Marxian analyses, and gives them the potential to explain systemic features of capitalism that other schools of thought have difficulty in addressing satisfactorily, especially in relation to broad historical developments in the economy and in society more generally.

This means that the Marxist Political Economy Working Group will not just focus on value theory as such but will also engage with other working groups in pursuit of the refinement and application of value theory. In addition, study of Marx’s intellectual development (e.g. the distinction between Young Marx and Mature Marx, development of the concept of world market, etc) is well-established, and will fall within the compass of the Working Group.

Whilst debate over Marx’s own political economy as theory remains imperative, the Working Group is keen to avoid continuing sterile and academic controversy at the expense of more constructive engagement across theoretical, empirical and practical issues. The Working Group will put more emphasis on the positive case for value theory, and Marxist political economy more broadly, rather than seeking to defend the theory against the mountains of criticism to which it has been subject.

Whilst Marxist political economy has played a crucial role in offering ways to critically understand contemporary capitalism as well as developing its own thematic areas across the social sciences, it is true that such power and intellectual command of Marxist political economy has significantly diminished under neoliberalism. This is why the coming IIPPE conference is expected to be a venue for reestablishing as well as deepening the analytical and critical capabilities of Marxist political economy in the face of the profound transformations within our societies and economies.

No particular topic is preferred. We welcome any single paper proposals and panel proposals that you think might fall within the bounds of Marxist political economy.

If you have any questions, please contact the Marxist Political Economy Working Group coordinators.

Submission Deadline: 15 March 2020

22nd Association for Heterodox Economics Conference (Milton Keynes, July 2020)

2 - 4 Juy 2020 | Milton Keynes, UK

Theme: Heterodox Economics Globally

As a thriving research community, heterodox economics is experiencing increased global interconnectedness and increased global engagement regarding the definition of heterodox economics, its theoretical foundations, methodologies and associated policy recommendations. This conference will bring together scholars from a variety of backgrounds to discuss how heterodox economics is understood differently in different contexts, exploring what the commonalities and variations are.

This Call for Papers invites proposals on any topic within heterodox economics, including (but not restricted to): multiple and competing conceptions of heterodoxy across the globe; history of heterodox communities and scholars in national or global contexts; any global and/or local challenges faced by heterodoxy; and how heterodoxy informs policy in different contexts. Proposals on the following areas are particularly welcomed: heterodox approaches in development, heterodox economics and decolonial theory, and heterodox economics and climate change.

The AHE has established a reputation as a major forum for the discussion and development of interdisciplinary and pluralistic alternatives to mainstream economics. It is committed to strengthening the community of heterodox economists, and to the development of heterodox economic theories. We especially encourage submissions from scholars who are underrepresented in Economics, such as women, people of color, and people from the Global South.

Abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words and submitted as MS Word documents or PDF files via email. For any questions about the CfP, please get in touch with AHE’s Academic Officers Danielle Guizzo and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven or visit the official website.

Workshops

The YSI (Young Scholars Initiative) invites Young Scholars interested in the History of Economic Thought, mainly with focus on heterodox economics and pluralism, to submit papers on the topic to our YSI workshop during the Association for Heterodox Economics Conference. The Workshop will take place during the same days of the Conference. We aim to organize a workshop that will include three sessions within the Conference, which will focus on these sub-topics (not exclusively):

Each selected young scholar should submit their their full paper before June 10th and present it at the workshop. Likewise, each young scholar will discuss the paper of a fellow. Besides, senior scholars that will be participating at the Association for Heterodox Economics Conference will be invited as discussants. Interested Young Scholars should submit a 1.000 to 2.000 words extend abstract. This and other information should be added in the form. The activities will be coordinated by Ian C S Almeida and Nicolás Dvoskin, members of the YSI History of Economic Thought Working Group. If you have any questions, please contact the YSI via email.

Submission Deadline for the YSI Workshop: 31 March 2020

Submission Deadline for Conference Papers: 1 April 2020

52nd annual meeting of the History of Economic Thought Society (Cambridge, Sept. 2020)

2 - 4 September 2020 | Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, UK

The 52nd annual meeting of the History of Economic Thought Society (THETS) will be held at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge from the 2nd to the 4th of September 2020.

Papers dealing with any aspect of the history of economics from any period are welcome. We encourage submissions from disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. We also welcome papers taking a non-European or global perspective. Presentations by PhD students and early career scholars are particularly encouraged.

Abstract proposals (200 words min.) or full papers should be sent to Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche. Proposals should have THETS 2020 in the subject line. Please attach a copy of your CV if you would like to be considered for a young scholar stipend, awarded by the Society to subsidise the cost of attendance.

Notifications will be sent by the 30th of April. Full papers are expected by the 17th of August. For more information, please check the THETS website and do not hesitate to contact us.

Submission Deadline: 31 March 2020

AISPE-SISE 2020 Conference: "Institutions and Socio-Economic Changes" (Rome, Sept. 2020)

17 - 19 September 2020 | Rome, Italy

The recent developments in world trade and world politics seem to mark a turnaround in international relations after 75 years of trade expansion, capitals and labour movements. Economic history and the history of economic thought offer a wide range of ideas and case studies aimed at comprehending the causes and consequences of the nationalistic policies. Moreover, they can illustrate how economic ideas, vested interests and power politics interact in order to foster economic development and maximise trade earnings. Foreign trade and commercial policy, however, are just one side of the multifaceted role that the State and national institutions can carry out to promote economic development.

AISPE and SISE invite scholars to offer their contribution regarding the role played by the institutions (understood in a broad sense: public, private, religious, local, national, international, etc.) in influencing the trajectories of economic and social development, in favouring or hindering the birth, growth and efficiency of businesses, in determining the distribution of income, the production of goods and services essential to the well-being of the population, and in promoting education, creativity and innovation. The topics can be treated from various points of view - with reference to both formal and informal institutions, as well as to political institutions and those regarding the economy, civil society and culture - with methodologies relevant to both economic history and the history of economic thought (micro-history, case studies, theoretical or economic policy debate between economists and policy makers, quantitative and qualitative analyses and institutional history of economic science).

The time reference to be considered is broad, with particular attention to the period, so full of significant and rapid changes and marked by incisive forms of international cooperation (albeit within the framework of permanent competition between blocs and between individual countries), that goes from the end of the Second World War to present day, also in consideration of the fact that 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the conflict. Contributions on the lengthy prior phase will also be welcome, especially those starting from the new philosophical, political and economic ideas that variously animated the 18th century reformism, the revolutionary vicissitudes of emancipation of the bourgeoisie, later followed by that of the proletariat, which determined important innovations to the institutions, their articulation and their tools in a prolonged phase of economic and social transformations, the complex construction and articulation of the State and administrative systems, in the context of the passage from the absolutist regimes of the Restoration, to the constitutional ones of the second half of the 19th century, to the democratic ones of the 20th century, set against totalitarian regimes of opposite inspiration. The various economic, social, cultural and educational policies implemented in this long and controversial evolution have profoundly marked not only the development of economic events, but also the ways in which economic sciences have been constructed, institutionalised and professionalised.

By way of example, here are some topics:

Paper or session proposals must be sent by registering through the conference website. The proposal must be accompanied by an abstract (max 500 words, 1000 per session, with an indication of title, objectives and mention of methodology). The session proposals, which must include the indication of at least two interventions (with title and respective speakers), must be considered as open proposals, subject to additions and adjustments, according to the proposals of the papers that will be received and the overall organisation of the conference. The methods of participation (registration fees for members, non-members, accompanying persons, social dinner, etc.) will be announced in the coming weeks. The methods of publication of the final
texts of the interventions will also be communicated. All the information and document exchange will take place through the site that has been created
ad hoc for the conference online.

Submission Deadline: 30 March 2020

Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) @ ASSA 2021 (Chicago, January 2021)

3-5 January 2021 | Chicago, USA

Theme: Returning Realism to Economics

To quote Bill Dugger, “Realism is the touchstone of institutionalism. Institutionalists may differ over many particulars, but on this we agree: economics should be realistic; it should deal with the real world, the world as we find it, not the world we must assume in order to build determinate models. This does not mean that institutionalists wish to be atheorectical. Institutionalism is not opposed to theory. Instead, the quest for realism means that institutionalism starts with history, with human economic experience. It is from experience, not a priori first principles, that institutionalists try to theorize, and we criticize those who take shortcuts that avoid the messy details of the human experience.” Recognizing the world as find it is the first step in constructing theories, policies, and institutions to mitigate the problems we find. We are at a turning in the evolution of capitalism and economic policy, whether we continue the reactionary policies of Trump or move beyond to address the problems at hand, economics must be rooted in the real world.

Of course, all papers that fall within the traditions of Veblen, Commons, and Polanyi will be considered. Papers that address the following, however, will receive special consideration.

Submission Requirements and Procedures

Membership Requirement: At least one of the authors of any paper must be a member of AFEE by the submission deadline. For registration information, please visit the website or contact Eric Hake (AFEE Secretary-Treasurer).

Submissions: Please send your proposal as an email attachment to John Watkins (program chair) and include the following information:

Submission Deadline: 4 May 2020

Association for Social Economics (ASE) at ASSA 2021 (Chicago, January 2021)

3-5 January 2021 | Chicago, USA

Theme: Stratification and Intergroup Inequality

Persistent racial and gender inequality remain central themes in economic analysis, challenging economists to develop new theoretical approaches to better understand this phenomenon and to guide policy solutions. The theme of the 2021 ASE meetings will be devoted to exploring stratification economics, a framework within which to explore the tenacity of intergroup inequality over time. This theoretical framework is differentiated from other approaches in that it incorporates the foundational role that identity group stratification has played in political economy. Stratification economics lends itself to a multidisciplinary approach that recognizes the roles of sociology, psychology, and political power in perpetuating intergroup inequality.

For the ASE sessions at the 2021 ASSA meetings, we welcome proposals for papers/sessions on all aspects of social economics, but preference will be given to papers that address the 2021 theme. Possible questions to consider include but are not limited to:

Proposals for papers as well as complete sessions are welcome.

Submission guidelines

Paper proposals should include: 1) author name, affiliation, and contact information, and 2) title and abstract of proposed papers (250 word limit).

Session proposals should include: 1) session title and abstract (250 word limit), 2) name, affiliation, and contact information of session organizers, 3) titles and abstracts of proposed papers (250 word limit each). Questions, as well as paper and sessions submissions should be sent to Stephanie Seguino.

Individuals whose papers are accepted for presentation must either be or become members of the Association for Social Economics by July 1, 2021 in order for the paper to be included in the program. Membership information can be found at the official website. All papers presented at the ASSA meetings are eligible for the Warren Samuels Prize, awarded to the best paper that advances the goals of social economics and has widespread appeal. Papers can also be considered for a special issue of one of the association’s journals, or for edited volumes.

Submission deadline: 25 April 2020

Conference "Unpacking Capitalism: Structures, Endurance, Reproduction" (Durham, July 2020)

30 - 31 July 2020 | St. Aidan's College, Durham, UK

As a group of researchers from Geography, History, Law, Sociology, and Anthropology, we are organizing a conference in Durham, UK, on the 30th and 31st of July 2020, and we are looking for abstracts.

Title: Unpacking Capitalism: Structures, Endurance, Reproduction.

Since capitalism was first theorised and written about, it has been described as inherently crisis-prone and many have insisted that its tendency is toward its own abolition. Financial crises, decline of profit rates and manifest tendencies towards stagnation put into question economic viability of capitalism as a regime of accumulation. Similarly, increased precarity and intensification of work raise questions over the sustainability of capitalism as a way to organise social and economic relations. This said, capitalism remains the dominant way of structuring and organising social and economic relations globally. This conference will consider the structures, endurance and reproduction of capitalism. We therefore invite papers which consider the reasons for the endurance of capitalism, as well as papers which present alternatives to capitalism or suggestions of possible escape from the rule of capital The conference invites papers from a broad range of disciplines that combine theoretical analysis with empirical research. We encourage submissions which reflect on histories of capitalism; the legal structures which create, perpetuate and enforce capitalism; capitalism and imperialism; sociology of work; the creation of precariousness; and other relevant themes. The perspectives we seek to bring together are studies of capitalist political economy, historical inquiries into development and transformations of capitalism, and explorations of social and economic relations in capitalist societies.

The conference will take place in the beautiful historic city of Durham between Thursday 30 and Friday 31 July 2020. Our venue is St Aidan’s College with its marvellous hill-top location offering views of the cathedral and city. We would expect sunshine but can guarantee unhindered free debate on the exciting topic of capitalism. In addition to key notes and participants from other institutions, this conference will build on existing research across departments at Durham University to create a platform for ECRs with shared research interests. The conference will be free to attend for Durham University undergraduates to increase engagement and accessibility. Sign-up for the conference will be via Eventbrite, which will go live from 1 June 2020. We would like to thank Durham’s Institute for Advanced Study for their generous financial support of this conference, and St Aidan’s College for hosting us. Directions to St Aidan’s can be found on their website. More information about Durham’s Institute for Advanced Study can be found here.

Please submit abstracts for papers to Holly Chalcraft.

Submission Deadline: 29 February 2020

European Central Bank’s young economists’ competition 2020 (Sintra, June 2020)

29 June - 1 July 2020 | Sintra, Portugal

The call for papers for the European Central Bank’s young economists’ competition 2020 is now open for PhD students in economics or finance. Selected applicants will have the chance to present their research to top policymakers and academics at the ECB Forum on Central Banking and to win €10,000.This competition is an opportunity for young researchers to contribute to the future of Europe with their innovative research and for universities to enhance their international reputation, as selected finalists become ambassadors representing their respective academic institutions at the ECB’s flagship conference in Sintra.

Who can apply?

Students of all nationalities who are currently enrolled on a PhD programme in economics or finance are invited to participate. Applications from female candidates are particularly welcome. Students currently employed by, or collaborating with, the ECB or a national central bank within the European System of Central Banks are not eligible. Co-authors of eligible papers should either be students or have completed their PhD no more than five years ago.

What is the theme of this year’s competition?

The theme of the 2020 Forum is “Central banks in a shifting world”. PhD students are invited to submit papers addressing the following topics:

Papers on other topics relevant to central banking (including the deepening of the European Economic and Monetary Union, the functioning of the euro area economy and financial system, financial stability as well as banking regulation and supervision) will also be considered.

Howcan students apply?

Students should submit an online application and ensure that they answer all the questions on the registration form. They will also need to provide all of the necessary documents by 15 March 2020 in order for their entry to be considered valid.

Submission Deadline: 15 March 2020

Historical Materialism Conference South Asia (Kathmandu, Dec. 2020)

18-20 December 2020 | Kathmandu, Nepal

The Left in South Asia now has over one hundred years of experience. Freedom fighters crossed imperial borders to combine Marxism with other revolutionary ideologies with their own traditions of struggle, forming cells, groups and parties to combat empire. Memories of these anti-imperialist struggles continue to inspire today. Indeed, over one hundred years, communists in South Asia have organised millions of workers, peasants, women and other oppressed groups, building organisation and administration to parallel and even rival that of the state. They have sought and at times achieved governmental power at national and subnational levels through people’s wars, elections and even coups.

Yet, their experiences in and out of power appear to have resulted less in hopeful advances and more in a series of ambiguous impasses and even reversals. The Left has been unable to fulfil the promise of national self-determination leading to a socialist and internationalist sub-continent. In-stead, fascists and chauvinists appear to hold governments hostage even where they do not hold governmental power. Those sections of the ruling classes that are not explicitly majoritarian have little to offer by way of alternatives to more neoliberal austerity, with no promise of productive and dignified employment, while reproducing exclusionary structures of ethnic, caste/racial and gender oppression. All this in the context of climate destruction so severe that it disrupts the glaciers, the rivers, the seas—the very monsoon—and with them, exacerbates the crisis of proletarian and peasant lives and livelihoods. Even breathing has a heavy cost in the smog-ridden cities of the sub-continent.

This conjuncture calls for a reappraisal of the theory and practice of the Left in South Asia, at once attuned to the specificities of its diverse peoples and lands, and yet open to the insights of comparative analysis. In this vein, we invite debates on, but not limited to, the following themes, focused not only on South Asia but also on the Global South in general:

Paper proposals of up to 250 words and/or self-organised panels (limited to 4 participants per panel) of up to 250 words per participant (in addition to a brief description of the panel) can be submitted here. For further information visit the official website.

Deadline for Submission: 24 April 2020

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology (RHETM): Special Issue on "The work of William Baumol"

2022 marks the 100 birthday of William (Bill) Baumol (1922-2017). He is one of the economists most frequently mentioned in lists of economists who should have gotten the Nobel Prize but did not get one. He made seminal contributions to the new welfare economics, the theory of entrepreneurship, industrial organization and he originated the idea of the cost disease (named after him). This special issue will be devoted to his work spanning most of the twentieth century. The issue will be published in 2022 in the Research in the History of Economic Theory and Methodology series.

The history of 20 century (neoclassical) economics is increasingly dehomogenized. Historical scholarship increasingly distinguishes between different approaches that made up the mainstream of the 20-century: MIT, Chicago and other schools. Within this development it makes much sense to focus on an economist like William Baumol who contributed to many subfields in economics, and even pioneered new subfields such as the economics of the arts. There is also a wealth of historical material available for study, since his papers are available at the Duke archives.

We welcome contributions on various aspects of Baumol’s work, or those of social scientists closely linked to him, in particular about the following subjects:

Selected submission will be published in a special issue of Research in the History and Methodology of Economics (RHETM) in the Spring of 2022. Proposals for papers (max. 1000 words) are due September 12020, and full papers by April 30 2021. Any questions, or you want to express your interest, email: dekker.erwin@gmail.com

Submission Deadline: 1 September 2020

Session on "Global Challenges and Global Crises in the 21st Century: Revisiting IPE perspectives?" in the Political Science Conference "Politicologenetmaal" (Nijmegen, June 2020)

11 - 12 June 2020 | Nijmegen, Netherlands

Session Title: Global Challenges and Global Crises in the 21st Century: Revisiting IPE perspectives?

The current world order is in major flux. The liberal international order is being challenged from within and without. China is recognizing its role as a world power, enticing many developing countries to follow its distinctive state-led mode of capitalism. The advanced democracies are seeing the growth of populist politics, which is challenging faith in market capitalism. Inequality within and across countries is tearing at the seams of the social fabric, after a decade of austerity and the ongoing engorgement of the wealthy. And since the signing of the Paris Accord in 2015, global carbon emissions continue to break records, suggesting that efforts to slow climate change are likely to be too little and too late. These challenges and crises interrogate international political economists to provide explanations (and solutions) and may call for a rethink of our existing perspectives. For example, the rise of China and other explicitly ‘statist’ political economies have elicited growing debate on whether we are seeing the rise of a new ‘state capitalism’ and how to conceptualize this. The rise of a new type of political leaders in major Western economies who claim to speak for globalization’s victims reveals the crisis of neoliberalism and of the elite leadership in mainstream politics, but leaves open the question of with what - which configuration of social forces and ideas - it can and will be replaced. Technological developments and artificial intelligence are heralding a revolution in all domains of the (global) political economy, but its effects are just barely understood. The climate change crisis is creating new (or reinforcing existing) cleavages within and between states, but the impact of this on domestic and international politics remains uncertain. The growing power of ‘superstar firms’ is increasing calls for government action, but it is unclear if this will result in multilateral or unilateral measures, and if the heavy-lifting will be done by trade, competition or tax policies.

In this workshop we aim to have a pluralist dialogue among scholars of international political economy on how these and other current global challenges and crises can be understood by IPE approaches and how they are or should be forcing us to reassess how we approach political economy. We invite contributions from a wide and diverse range of theoretical, empirical, and normative angles in IPE and cognate fields.

Please submit a paper abstract (max. 250 words) that clearly explains your paper's connections to the proposed themes to the organizers Nana de Graaff (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Adam Dixon (Maastricht University), Ferdi De Ville (Ghent University). Specific questions regarding the session can be addressed to any of the organizers. Participants will be notified by 10 April 2020 if their abstract has been accepted. All accepted contributors must register online.

It is also possible to participate without presenting a paper. In that case, you do not need to contact the workshop coordinators and you can register for the conference directly.

Submission Deadline: 27 March 2020

Registration Deadline: 15 May 2020

Sustainability: Special Issue on "Social Capital as an Input of Social Sustainability in Rural and Agricultural Cooperatives"

In recent years, studies on social capital as an input to move toward social sustainability have opened up space for critical inquiry. Furthermore, scholars have also investigated the assessment and measure of social capital in different types of organizations through analytical, methodological, and conceptual tools.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore how social capital in rural and agricultural cooperatives helps to sustainably satisfy basic needs, capacities, and quality of life in communities. We welcome papers that analytically, theoretically, empirically, and methodologically explore the following research questions:

Articles that include transnational research are encouraged. Additionally, articles focusing on the Global South are particularly welcome. Potential contributors are welcome to contact the Guest Editors (Dr. Elena Pisani, Dr. Julien Vanhulst and Mr. Stefano Micheletti) to discuss the proposed submissions before 30 June 2020.

Submission Process

Manuscripts should be submitted online at by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Submission Deadline: 30 September 2020

Workshop on Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (Catania, June 2020)

25 - 27 June 2020 | Department of Economics and Business, University of Catania, Italy

Aims and scope

The Workshop on Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (WEHIA) is the annual conference of the Society for Economic Studies with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (ESHIA). The society aims to provide a unique medium of communication for multidisciplinary approaches, either empirical or theoretical, to the study of complex socio-economic problems. It intends to promote the cross-fertilization of ideas and exchange of concepts and techniques developed within diverse scientific disciplines including economics, social sciences, physics, and computer science. The focus of ESHIA is especially on simulating and synthesizing emergent phenomena and collective behaviors to understand real economic and social systems. Heterogeneity of agents and interactions among them are key concepts in multidisciplinary approaches and provide a major driving force to study, either empirically or theoretically, socio-economic systems.

WEHIA 2020 represents a unique opportunity to present and discuss the latest research on various aspects of the economy as a complex system made up of heterogeneous interacting agents. The Workshop is naturally intended to foster diversity in the approach and in the methodology used to analyze economic issues. Please visit the website of the Conference, where all details can be found, at www.wehia2020.org

Call for papers

Many aggregate patterns can be explained as emerging from complex systems of heterogeneous agents, in which the interaction of agents at the micro level forms the macro properties of the economic system, thereby determining the emergence of macro regularities such as economic growth, unemployment, and income distribution. This important link between the micro and macro level of an economic system has not received sufficient attention in the economic theory, which has traditionally been split in the two domains of microeconomics and macroeconomics. Frequently, macroeconomic models are based on a “microfoundation” by assuming that the population consisted of one single representative agent (or an army of "identical clones"). Although this preserves analytical tractability, it causes a relevant reduction in terms of realism. Agent-based economics opened up new perspectives on the exploration of socially relevant questions and can provide solutions to complex problems that are difficult to study with the methodological standard toolkit of economists. Such a methodology allows for the presence of feedbacks among agents and the economic environment in which they interact, such as the emergence of socio-economic networks with possible contagion effects, the characterization of non-Gaussian distributions, as well as the endogenous appearance of boom and bust cycles.

Main Topics of the Conference:

Submissions Process

Submission can be done by email. Contributions should be submitted in the form of extended
abstracts (max 2 pages) as PDF files via email. The first page of the submitted material must contain authors’ affiliations and, at least, three keywords. In case of co-authored research, the submitter will be assumed to be the presenter, unless differently specified. Only one paper per presenter is allowed.

Registration

The payment for the registration to WEHIA 2020 is done by Paypal. The account of the conference is: registration@wehia2020.org

Without correct registration, accepted papers cannot be included in the program of the conference.
All fees (registration and/or social dinner) cannot be paid in person during the conference. Please be sure that the note of your Paypal Payment contains your full name and the title of the paper (if you submitted one).

Submission Deadline: 28 February 2020

World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR): Workshop on "Repugnant Behaviours" (Montpellier, Feb. 2021)

Formally introduced in economics by Nobel laureate Alvin Roth, the concept of "repugnance" arises in the debate among philosophers (e.g., Elizabeth Anderson, Michael Sandel, Debra Satz) and other social scientists (e.g., Kristie Blevins, Amitai Etzioni, Kimberly Krawiec, Amartya Sen, Philip Tetlock) about how and why moral concerns, taboos and sacred values place, or ought to place, limits on market transactions. (A set of representative references is provided in the attached call for papers.

One of the most important questions in this debate is how repugnant behaviours should be dealt with, regulated or limited. Some suggest that repugnant behaviours should be punished by using fines rather than fees, because the former register moral disapproval, whereas the latter are simply prices that imply no moral judgment. This suggests that repugnant behaviors offend our moral or ethical values. Yet examples often used to illustrate repugnant behaviours include selling babies (or other human beings) and organs, as well as prostitution and sometimes even pollution. Littering the Grand Canyon is also deemed to be repugnant. But can all these behaviours be put on the same footing? If not, how ought we distinguish between them? Is repugnance an absolute concept or a relative one? Does it change across cultures? Does this mean that the limits of markets differ from one culture to another? If so, are we really talking about repugnance? What alternative concepts might be useful?

These questions are important from a philosophical, institutional and legal perspective. Indeed, can we rely on the same mechanism to punish someone who sold their child and someone who threw a can into the Grand Canyon? Must we rely on law and formal institutions to punish repugnant behaviours? Which ones? When and how do we draw the limit between the behaviours that can be punished by formal rules and those that must be punished by informal rules (such as ostracism, shaming or even embarrassment)?

The purpose of the WINIR Workshop on Repugnant Behaviours is to bring together theoretical and applied papers from different disciplines, including economics, philosophy, law and political science, to discuss these and other related questions, thereby clarifying the concept of “repugnance” and improving our understanding of how to regulate repugnant behaviours. A selection of the papers presented at the workshop will be included in a special issue currently being planned for publication in the fall of 2022.

Abstracts (400 words max.) or full papers should be sent to Alain Marciano.

Please note the following important dates: 15 July 2020 - Notifications of acceptance, 15 December 2020 - Full paper submission deadline

Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 June 2020

Call for Participants

2nd Summer School on "Economic Behaviours: Models, Measurements and Policies" (Como, June 2020)

28 June - 03 July 2020 | Como, Italy

The School is intended to foster reflection on economic models of rational as well as bounded or irrational decision, focusing on their explanatory power as well as normative/policy implications. More on the School’s topic online.

The second Summer School on “Economic Behaviours: Models, Measurements, and Policies” is co-organized by the Lake Como School of Advanced Studies, the International Network of Economic Method (INEM), the University of Insubria, and the University of Milan. The School will take place at Villa del Grumello, in Como, Italy, from June 28 (welcome drinks and registration, from 6.30 pm) to July 3 (end of school at 2.30 pm), 2019.

Structure

Fees

Euros 250. The fees include: accommodation (with breakfast) for five nights at Villa del Grumello or in a Hotel in Como, drinks, dinners and all other social activities.

Application Process

Papers can address any topic in the philosophy, methodology, or history of economics, also a topic different from the summer school’s main theme.

PhD students and young scholars (PhD degree obtained after January 2019) who wish to attend the school should submit an extended abstract proposal in English of 750 to 1,000 words, or a full-paper proposal of up to 7,500 words. Abstract or full-papers should be sent, together with a CV, and a letter of recommendation from a supervisor via email.

Submission Deadline: 31 March 2020

Call for Proposals: HES Webinar Series

The History of Economics Society (HES) is launching its new HES Webinar Series! The objective of this initiative is to offer HES members the possibility of organizing webinars to discuss relevant topics in the history and methodology of economics from any part of the world, any time of the year.

A webinar series typically consists of a series of regular online meetings in which invited speakers or panelists discuss a specific topic with participants from any part of the world. Other types of webinars can be thought of as “reading groups” or “journal clubs” in which participants discuss a specific book or paper that they should have read beforehand. Webinars are also accessible, inclusive, and environmentally friendly events allowing people to get together without moving from their offices or homes.

As part of this initiative, the History of Economics Society would like to invite its members to send proposals for the organization of webinars on any topic that can be of interest to the community of historians of economics. HES will provide its members access to an online meeting software to organize a webinar series or session. It is important to note that only the organizer of the webinar must be an active member of HES, the panelists and other participants don’t need to be active members of our Society.

HES is willing to provide support by publicizing the series through its website, mailing list, and social media. However, the organizer of each webinar series will be fully responsible for the functioning, contents, invitations and acceptance of participants, and management of each session and event.

It is important to note that each webinar series will have to be approved by HES. To propose a webinar series please send an email to Erich Pinzón-Fuchs at any time with the following information:

Proposals for the organization of a webinar series are open during the whole year. Please do not hesitate to contact Erich Pinzón-Fuchs if you have any questions. We look forward to receiving your proposals!

Pre-ESHET Workshop on Politics and Economic Thought (Sofia, May 2020)

27 May 2020 | Sofia, Bulgaria (before ESHET Conference)

The Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) History of Economic Thought Working Group is organizing a workshop on “Politics and Economic Thought” in Sofia (Bulgaria) on May 27th, one day before the ESHET 2020 conference. We are glad to announce that the workshop will be supported by Dr. Richard van den Berg (Kingston University) and Dr. Danielle Guizzo Archela (UWE Bristol).

We encourage young scholars working on the relationship between economics and politics to apply for the workshop. We hope to motivate around 12-15 young scholars to participate, discuss and present their work. For more details, please check the full workshop description here.

If you are interested in attending the workshop you should:

Accepted applicants benefit from travel stipends and enjoy free lodging during the workshop and the ESHET 2020 conference. Decisions are announced on March 7th.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: Ana Paula Londe Silva, Julia Marchevsky and Marius Kuster

Application Deadline: 29 February 2020

Pre-HES Workshop on Diversifying and Decolonising the History of Economics (Utrecht, June 2020)

17 June 2020 | Utrecht, Netherlands (before the 2020 HES Conference)

As widely documented, economics lacks gender and ethnic diversity. Women and economists from so-called minority groups face disadvantages and even outright discrimination. Within the history of economics, the topic of diversity has also raised some discussion and it has been acknowledged that history of economics meetings often lack of diversity of participants. This is paralleled by a lack of diversity when it comes to research. Research within the field is largely directed at the few, towering, (male) economists, as recent surveys of publications in history of economic thought journals have shown. That diversity in history of economic thought is essential can be seen in the fact that male dominated research has tended to “serve male interests” reinforcing gender inequality. At the same time, there is an interest in and a demand of increasing the diversity both of scholars and of research, as discussion within the HES and other organisations such as AEA have shown.

The aim of the workshop is to increase the visibility of diversity issues in the field of history of economic thought. We will be joined by two senior scholars working on diversity and decolonisation within economics and the history of economic thought: Dr. Rebeca Gomez Betancourt , and Dr. Sara Marzagora. We aim to address issues both of diversity of thinkers and of diversity of methods. This includes a reflection of how our own research might be impacted by taking into consideration issues of diversity. We encourage especially, but not exclusively, young scholars (including PhD level) researching on history of economic thought or those who adopt historical methods in their research to apply to the
workshop. A limited amount of travel stipends for scholars based inside and outside Europe is available. To apply, please submit a brief description of your own research (100-200 words) and a brief motivation for your application (200-300 words) via email. If you want to be considered for a travel stipend, please note this in your email. For further information and inquiries, please contact the organizing comitee: Danielle Guizzo, Ariane Hillig, and Reinhard Schumacher. The workshop is funded by the History of Economics Society’s New Initiatives Fund. Non-material support is given by the network Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-Econ).

Application Deadline: 29 February 2020

Summer School on: "Repoliticising capitalism: contradictions, critique and alternatives"(Roskilde, July 2020)

27 July - 7 August 2020 | Roskilde, Denmark

Course outline

The summer school brings together critical political economy scholars for an in-depth course on heterodox and political economy/economic sociology perspectives. The teaching team includes Catia Gregoratti (Lund University), Jesper Jespersen, Lotte Cooiman, Mikkel Flohr, Laura Horn and others. The course offers a unique opportunity to directly engage with original economic texts/source material and to explore core dimensions of the critique of (neo)classical economic theory and contemporary perspectives on global capitalism. The focus of the course is explicitly pluralist, encouraging students to widen their horizon for critical thinking and methodological reflection

The first part of the course ‘Economic Thought from Oikos to Economics’ traces the history of economic ideas with an emphasis on critical and heterodox approaches. The individual sessions will introduce students to carefully selected primary literature from classical, critical and heterodox strands of economic thought. The objective is to understand the varied historical effect of these theories on both the object of study and the discipline itself. This will provide the foundation for further elaboration on contemporary issues such as debt, unemployment, inequality, and growth.

The second part of the course ‘Contemporary Challenges, Critiques and Alternatives’ addresses present and pressing issues, through the lens of critical and heterodox political economy. This theoretical and applied pluralism will provide insights on issues such as e.g. digital capitalism, social reproduction, and climate crisis. Through the employment of recent critiques, the second section of the course hence offers potential pathways towards different conceptualisations and alternatives to “the economy” as we know it.

Why do this summer school at Roskilde University?

The ‘Repoliticizing Capitalism’ course at Roskilde University is the only one of its kind in Scandinavia. It offers a rare opportunity to engage with primary economic texts as well as leading scholars within heterodox economics and critical political economy. The course will contribute substantially to students’ understanding of economics, its history and usages. Moreover the specific focus on alternatives and critiques enables students to move beyond orthodox conceptualizations of the economy. RUC is a critical university, with an explicit focus on creating experimental and innovative learning experiences and knowledge. It has a unique history of student activism and legacy of critical thought that still leaves an impression on the university environment. The summer school at RUC not only provides an opportunity to take part in a vibrant academic community, but you will also be presented with the possibility of directly engaging with professors, lecturers and researchers leading within their fields. RUC’s dedication to student participation, problem solving and innovative learning approaches will positively add to the credentials of any student. Located at the city of Roskilde and a 25-min train-ride from Copenhagen, the cultural, social, economic and political happenings are within the reach of RUC’s beuatiful green campus.

Course format

The course takes place over a two week period and comprises a range of activities. Each week there are 4 ½ days of teaching (seminars and workshops), and one afternoon of self-study. The seminars presents a variety of critical approaches, drawing on the readings and the lecturers’ own work. The core element of the summer school is active learning-oriented workshops, in which the participants discuss the theoretical, methodological and empirical issues raised in the lectures. There will also be opportunities for participants to present their own work to the group. Self-study periods, facilitated by the enabling learning environment at the Roskilde university campus offer an opportunity for students to improve their knowledge and understanding of theoretical perspectives and current affairs. Social activities include film screenings, an evening discussing economics and science fiction, as well as a barbecue.

Admission and Fees

The summer school is available for master students as well as PhDs (course requirements differ according to which level participants are, PhD requirements are available here). The course carries 10 ECTS; admission for international participants (EU/EEA) is 560€ both for master and PhD level. Master students enrolled at a Danish university do not have to pay fees, but need to provide a forhåndsgodkendelse/pre-approval from their university. Accommodation needs to be organised by participants themselves, but we’re happy to help facilitate this. If you have any questions please contact Laura Horn (lhorn@ruc.dk). For registration and further information please visit the website.

Registration Deadline: 15 June 2020

The Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar (New York, June 2020)

7-13 June 2020 | Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., US

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce the 11th Minsky Summer Seminar will be held from June 7–13, 2020. The Seminar will provide a rigorous discussion of both the theoretical and applied aspects of Minsky’s economics, with an examination of meaningful prescriptive policies relevant to the current economic and financial outlook. It will also provide special sessions introducing the theory and applications of Wynne Godley’s stock-flow consistent modeling methods, supported by hands-on workshops.

The Summer Seminar will be of particular interest to graduate students, recent graduates, and those at the beginning of their academic or professional careers. The teaching staff will include international economists working in the theory and policy tradition of Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley. Applications may be made to Kathleen Mullaly at the Levy Institute (mullaly@levy.org), and should include a letter of application and current curriculum vitae. Admission to the Summer Seminar will include provision of room and board on the Bard College campus. The registration fee for the Seminar will be $375.

Due to limited space availability, the Seminar will be limited to 30 participants; applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis starting in January 2020. Accepted students can access logistical and other information on the password-protected conference site.

For further information please visit the official website.

Workshop: Teaching Ethics to Economists: Challenges and Benefits (London, March 2020)

19-20 March 2020 | London, UK

During the last 30 years, the conversation between economic theory and philosophy and ethics has been restarted, after a period of interruption, generated by the positivist era in economics. We cannot ignore, in this revival, the role of the recent financial crisis that has brought an interest in economists’ applied ethics, and the calls for a professional economic ethics by DeMartino (2011) and DeMartino and McCloskey (2016). Dolfsma and Negru (2019) have recently challenged the idea that ethics has no place in economics. The agenda of the book gravitates around the ethical formation of economists. Taking this book as a point of departure, we pose the questions: Is ethics important for the study of the economy? And, if so, how should it be taught? This two day workshop will be of interest to economics lecturers and students and anyone with an interest in the future of the economics curriculum.

To register for this event and for further information, please go to the website.

„Alternative Economic and Monetary Systems“ Summer School (Vienna, July 2020)

20 July - 7 August 2020 | Vienna, Austria

The AEMS Summer School addresses the problems of the current economic system and is open to motivated applicants from all walks of life. AEMS focuses on providing alternatives to the economic status quo. Keeping ecological borders in mind, the international participants critically discuss limits to growth. They learn why a drastic system change is necessary in order to stabilize the world climate at 1.5°C and debate over possible solutions in an interdisciplinary setting together with experts from various fields. Graduates will receive a certificate of participation over 5 ECTS credit points from the BOKU university.

In 2019, 51 participants from 23 nations between 19 and 83 years took part in the programme.

This year’s AEMS will take place from July, 20th to August, 7th – application is already possible online.

AEMS is unique in its holistic approach: Up-to-date contents from economic, natural and social sciences are linked and conveyed in form of lectures, workshops, (panel) discussions, excursions and a final project work. Together with experts, participants develop alternative solutions and discuss them. The program is held in close cooperation with universities and supported by numerous (inter-)national partners (such as the Club of Rome).

Application Process

Alternative Economic and Monetary Systems is an academic course. If completed successfully, BOKU-students or "MitbelegerInnen" from other Austrian universities acquire 5 ECTS credits from the University of National Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU). Foreign students get a BOKU certificate that needs to be acknowledged by your home university. You can find more information about this here.

Please apply through our online application system. For a successful procedure you are required to complete all fields and to upload the following information:

Your contract partner is the OeAD student housing. By submitting your application you agree to the General Terms and Conditions and automatically start the nomination process. You acknowledge that the Withdrawal or Deferral Refund Policy applies from the moment of Submission.

Criteria

We are an equal opportunity provider of international education on sustainable development and will never discriminate on nationality, race, religion, physical handicaps or any attributes of this nature. As we are aiming at a heterogeneous group of people from a variety of backgrounds we highly encourage students from all fields of studies and work to apply. The following key elements of your application will be taken into account:

Scholarship

We cooperate with several companies and organizations to provide student grants for outstanding applicants in need of financial aid. Thanks to this sponsorship program we're able to offer regular participation to selected students for a reduced fee of EUR 490,- (incl. VAT).

If you are in need of a scholarship be sure to apply.

Registration Deadline for Scholarship: 15 April 2020

Conference Papers, Reports, and Podcasts

November 2019 Seminar at Queen Mary University London: "Minsky at 100" - video online available

On Thursday 7 November 2019 the Minsky@100 event took place in Graduate Centre, Queen Mary University of London. Now, a video record of this event is online and ready to be watched. Please find a link to the video here.

Job Postings

Bucknell University, US

job title: Economics Visiting Assistant Professor - Heterodox Economics

Bucknell University’s Department of Economics invites applications for a visiting position in Heterodox Economics beginning in the fall semester of 2020 at the rank of Assistant Professor. The successful candidate will be prepared to teach a pluralistic Economic Principles course, Intermediate Political Economy, and an elective in the candidate’s field of specialization, which should be in a realm of political economy of the type grounded in the traditions of Marx and Veblen.

Candidates are expected to have a Ph.D. or be ABD in Economics (if completion is imminent). For additional information and to apply visit the official website. The application should include a cover letter, curriculum vita, teaching portfolio (statement of teaching philosophy, course evaluations and syllabi if available), research statement and research sample (in one document), diversity statement, and official graduate course transcripts. Three letters of recommendation must be submitted separately.

The Department of economics has a distinguished record in hiring diverse faculty, whose courses expose students to a variety of intellectual, racial, ethnic, and cultural perspectives, and we are especially interested in candidates whose teaching and research will contribute to the department’s commitment to pluralism, diversity, and academic excellence. The department is committed to mentoring visiting faculty by providing opportunities for professional development.

Questions about the position should be addressed by email to Geoff Schneider, co-Chair of Economics.

About Bucknell

Bucknell University is a private, highly ranked, primarily undergraduate, national liberal arts institution that also offers strong professional programs in engineering, management, education, and music. Bucknell University is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The university believes that students learn best in a diverse, inclusive community and is therefore committed to academic excellence through diversity in its faculty, staff, and students. Applications from members of groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education are encouraged.

Bucknell is committed to creating a climate that fosters inclusion, growth, and development for a diverse student body, and seeks candidates who are also committed these goals.

Bucknell is committed to supporting the teacher-scholar model of faculty development. With a student-faculty ratio of about 9:1, small class sizes are a hallmark of the Bucknell educational experience. The university sponsors a range of activities to support the development of its faculty, including a Teaching-Learning Center and generous research support and leave policies.

Bucknell is located in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Susquehanna River. The Lewisburg area offers a combination of outdoor recreation opportunities and small-town amenities. In addition to the cultural and athletic events offered at the University and in town, the region offers strong schools and medical facilities, and an affordable cost of living. Bucknell is about three hours from Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

Application Deadline: 15 March 2020

Catholic University Lille, France

Job title: assistant/associate professor with tenure in International Political Economy

The European School of Political and Social Science (ESPOL) at Lille Catholic University invites applications for a full-time permanent position as a Maître de conférences (equivalent to assistant/associate professor with tenure) in International Political Economy. The new faculty member will contribute to research at ESPOL and have the opportunity to pursue her or his own research. The selected candidate will teach in the B.A. and M.A. programmes in political science at ESPOL, as well as participate in other activities. This candidate will play an important co-leadership role in the creation of a “Philosophy, Global Ethics and Political Economy” MA programme.

The candidate must have a PhD in Political Science or a related discipline and a proven ability to undertake high quality research and publish in international peer-reviewed journals. The candidate should have prior teaching experience and will be expected to teach general courses in international political economy, as well as other courses in related fields, depending on departmental needs and personal qualifications/interest. These may include general courses at both B.A. and M.A. level on “International Political Economy”, “European/Global Economic Governance”, “Financialization and Global Economy” or “Macroeconomics” for example. The main language of instruction is English, but proficiency in French is an important asset. For candidates without a sufficient knowledge of French, proficiency is expected within 2 years after the appointment. The appointment starts on 1st September 2020 on a full-time basis.

ESPOL is a young, diverse, and rapidly growing political science school dedicated to excellence in research and teaching. Bringing together an international faculty and investing in bilingual English-French study programmes, ESPOL is committed to an innovative, international, and multi-disciplinary path of development in education and research since 2012. It is an autonomous department at Lille Catholic University, France’s largest private university with over 30 000 students, which includes five Faculties (Law, Literature and Human Sciences, Medicine, Management, Economics and Sciences, and Theology), twenty Schools and Institutes including six engineering schools, three business and management schools, medical and paramedical schools, social sciences, tertiary sector executives, a Hospital, and in all, nearly fifty research teams. Collaborative research at ESPOL-LAB revolves around three broad thematic axes, ‘the quality of democracy’, ‘the politics of anthropocene’, and ‘reconfigurations of the international’, providing platforms for faculty members to participate in common events and projects, alongside their own research, which ESPOL also supports through travel grants. More info on research at ESPOL can be found on the official website.
The position includes the teaching of 4 to 5 (18- or 24-hour) courses per year, oral exams conducted in the 1st year of the B.A.s, administrative tasks, and B.A. and M.A. thesis supervision.

Remuneration depends on experience and qualification. The employment package includes public and additional private health insurance, a pension scheme, and annual leave entitlement of minimum six weeks (in addition to official holidays). The post also comes with an additional year-end bonus (thirteenth salary), a yearly performance-based research bonus, transport allowance, luncheon vouchers (tickets restaurant), as well as a yearly conference/travel and book allowance. This post does not include a relocation package.

Applications must include:

Applications should be addressed to Dr. Alexis Massart, Director of ESPOL, and sent by email to the following two addresses: espol.recrutements@univ-catholille.fr and carine.ledoux@univ-catholille.fr. (attachments size should not exceed 8Mb, in the event it exceeds, please use file-sharing service such as Framadrop, WeTransfer, etc.). Please do not send us additional documents beyond those listed above.

Applications received after the closing date will not be accepted. Interviews with short-listed candidates will take place in the end of April. Please note that ESPOL is unable to reimburse interview travel expenses; hotel accommodation before or after the interview will be provided upon request. Candidates who have not been notified by mid-April should assume that their application has not been successful. For further questions and inquiries about the position, please contact espol.recrutements@univ-catholille.fr.

ESPOL encourages diversity in its recruitment. We particularly welcome female applicants and applicants from ethnic and cultural minorities.

Application Deadline: 15 March 2020

Salem College, US

job title: Assistant Professor of Economics

The Business and Economics Department of Salem College, a liberal arts college for women located in Winston Salem, North Carolina, invites applications for a position in Economics effective August 2020. Salem College provides an attractive and collegial academic environment with a strong focus on teaching, service, and community relationships.

The successful candidate will be committed to effective and creative teaching methodologies, will offer a program of scholarly activity having the potential to enrich the intellectual lives of our students, and will engage with the Salem and related communities. Teaching responsibilities will include appropriate combinations of the following courses: Introductory Economics, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Econometrics, and other related disciplinary topics. The person selected for this position will also guide independent studies and supervise internships.

Other responsibilities associated with this position include advising students in their academic endeavors and career choices, serving on college governance committees, participating in student recruiting as guided by the Admissions Office, and assisting with the pursuit of funding opportunities as guided by the Institutional Advancement Office. Preference will be given to candidates who have significant work experience in the field as well as experience in current research methods, systems, and software.

The nominal teaching load is 4-3 with some evening and online courses each semester. The Ph.D. in Economics is required for appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor. In some cases, exceptionally well-qualified candidates may be considered for appointment at a higher rank and ABD candidates who will not hold the Ph.D. by the time of appointment may be considered for appointment at the rank of Instructor.

To apply please send your cover letter, teaching philosophy, CV, transcripts, and contact information for three references to Emily Young, Director of Human Resources and Benefits.The cover letter may be addressed to Dr. Tina Flowers, Chair of the Business and Economics Department. The review of applications begins immediately and continues until the position is filled.

Salem College is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, age, religion, disability status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, pregnancy, or any other characteristic protected by law.

University of Liege, Belgium

job title: full-time Academic positon in Macroeconomics and Economic Thought

HEC® Liège is the management school of the University of Liège. HEC® Liège is one of the leading Belgian university business schools for graduate and postgraduate programs with more than 115 fulltime faculty members and researchers and more than 3000 students. HEC® Liège is a dynamic institution that heavily promotes an active pedagogy, leading students to contribute actively to their own education. The international vision of HEC® Liège translates into multiple research activities in management and economics, numerous partnerships with worldwide companies and universities, and growing internationalization of its programs and faculty.

The school's commitment to, and continuing investment in, quality improvement has been recognized through the AACSB award and the EQUIS award delivered by the international accreditation body EFMD. HEC® Liège also holds the EPAS award for each of its three main programs: the Master in Management, the Master in Business Engineering, and the Doctoral Program. The specialization “Banking and Asset Management” of the Master in Management has recently been accepted into the CFA Institute University Recognition Program. HEC® Liège is also a member of the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles. HEC® Liège is located in Liège, Belgium’s third largest city, and the largest agglomeration of the Frenchspeaking Walloon region. At the heart of Europe, Liège is the third inland port of Europe and the seventh freight airport in Europe. Recognized for its quality of life and its rich historical heritage, Liège is ideally situated within the Meuse-Rhin Euregio, 30 km from Maastricht (the Netherlands) and 60 km from Aachen (Germany). It is less than 1.5 hours away from Cologne, 2.5 hours from Paris and 4 hours from London by high-speed train (TGV) starting from the new magnificent train station designed by the renowned architect Santiago Calatrava.

A description of the HEC® Liège work environment can be found online.

Teaching

This chair includes at least four courses : (1) “Economic and Social Development” (compulsory, 5 credits ECTS) for bachelor students in Economics and Management (in French); (2) “History of Economic Thought” for the Master in Economics (compulsory, 4 credits ECTS); (3) “International Macroeconomics” for the Master in Economics (compulsory, 4 credits ECTS); and (4) A specialized course (5 credits ECTS) to be defined according to the chosen candidate’s profile. All the Master’s courses are taught in English. The candidate will, in addition, be expected to supervise internships and theses in economics, in particular in synergy with the finance department.

Research

This post requires a strong commitment to developing research conducted within the economics department of HEC® Liège. The candidate should contribute to the development of the research in the “Economic Analysis and Policy” field. He/she should commit to leading scientific research in his/her field and to contributing to the high reputation of HEC® Liège internationally. The candidate will be expected to supervise PhD students in macroeconomics and economic thought. He/she will also actively participate in research seminars organized by HEC® Liège and represent the school at events organized by other institutions. In addition, the lecturer should strive to raise external funds for research.

Profile

•The ideal candidate will hold a doctoral degree in economics. The candidate will demonstrate an ability to lecture in French and English. He will also demonstrate an ability to teach introductory economics in Bac 1.

The candidate will have a thorough knowledge of macroeconomic analysis and of the history of economic thought. The candidate will demonstrate his or her ability to carry research at an international level certified by publications in scientific journals. The candidate should propose a research program at an international level that is complementary with the research currently conducted in the economics department. He/she should contribute to the development of the research in the “Economic Analysis and Policy” field.

The candidate should commit to leading scientific research in his/her field and to contributing to the high reputation of HEC® Liège internationally. The candidate will be expected to supervise PhD students in macroeconomics and economic thought. The candidate will contribute to the development of macroeconomics and economic thought at HEC® Liège through teaching and research. The candidate will contribute to the school’s international standing.

Tenure track candidates start with limited teaching duties allowing them to allocate 40% of their working time to research activities. A positive evaluation at the end of the 4-year probation period is subject to the candidate’s demonstrated performance in teaching and research.

In particular, with regard to research, the candidate is expected to

In addition, the candidate is expected to

Application package:

To be sent, by registered post, to Professor P. Wolper, Recteur, Université de Liège, 7 Place du 20 Août, 4000 Liège, Belgium with an electronic copy to Mrs. S. Borras. For further information, contact Professor B. Thiry, Head of the Economic Department. The salary grids and their rules of application are available from the University’s Human Resource Office: Mrs L. Depas

Application Deadline: 1 March 2020

Utrecht University, Netherlands

job title: 2 post-doc Positions in the Project "The Business Corporation as a Political Actor"

Companies are being regulated by politics, but they also shape the political arena themselves, whenever they influence politicians and political parties. Moreover, companies fulfill public functions such as providing public goods, regulating their own business activities, or addressing societal problems, like environmental harms. Can such a mixture of private activity and public responsibility be legitimate, in a democratic society? Doesn’t this give corporations too much political power? Are multinationals different in this respect from other companies? These are central questions in the recently awarded ERC-Consolidator Grant-project ‘The Business Corporation as a Political Actor’.

The project is based on the hypothesis that a new social contract is necessary to legitimate the public role of contemporary corporations. This requires transplanting notions traditionally used for legitimizing states – like respecting human rights, democratic procedures, and standards of social justice – to corporations. Is such a thing possible? To answer this question, the project engages in a philosophical reflection on the possibilities to apply existing political theories of legitimacy to corporations. It combines this with practical case studies on different types of regulation of corporate activity: corporate governance regulating, tax policies, and competition law, etc. The home base of the project is in political philosophy, but it aims to integrate insights from other disciplines, such as law, economics, political science and history.

You will work under the supervision of the program leader, Rutger Claassen. You will be part of a research team consisting of two PhD-candidates and two postdoctoral researchers. You will play an active role in the research team, organize and take part in workshops, public events and other activities. The positions are based at the Ethics Institute, which is part of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Utrecht University, which provides a stimulating and internationally oriented research environment. All positions start at September 1, 2020.

Postdoc position 1: ‘Transnational Corporations and Globalization’ (2,5 years at 1.0 fte)

The first postdoc position addresses the exercise of political power by, specifically, transnational corporations. It asks the question whether the complexities that arise when corporations operate in several countries change the (application of) legitimacy conditions such as the rule of law, democracy and justice, compared to corporations only operating in one domestic context. Furthermore, the subproject will normatively evaluate the current global regime of trade and investment rules and ask whether different cultures have different notions of justice to evaluate the outcomes of such trade and investment practices.

Postdoc position 2: ‘Economic Theories of the Corporation‘ (2,5 years at 1.0 fte)

This second postdoc position is on a project which seeks to integrate insights from prevailing economic theories of the firm into the discussion about a politically legitimate role of corporations. Can economic theories account for corporate power? To what extent do economic constraints arising from market competition make it more difficult to render corporate political power legitimate? Moreover, the subproject will evaluate whether competition law/policy ought to remain focused (as it has been) on criteria of economic efficiency, or rather whether it ought to be re-focused on combatting political power; and if the latter, how.

Qualifications

Offer

For the Postdocs: We offer a position (1.0 FTE) for a total of 2,5 years. Initially the contract will be for one year. In case of good performance and a positive evaluation, the contract will be extended for the remaining two years. The gross salary - depending on previous qualifications and experience - ranges between €3,389 and €4,274 (scale 10 according to the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities) per month for a full-time employment.

Salaries are supplemented with a holiday bonus of 8% and a year-end bonus of 8.3% per year. In addition, Utrecht University offers excellent secondary conditions, including an attractive retirement scheme, (partly paid) parental leave and flexible employment conditions (multiple choice model). Please find more information about working at Utrecht University online.

About the Organization

A better future for everyone. This ambition motivates our scientists in executing their leading research and inspiring teaching. At Utrecht University, the various disciplines collaborate intensively towards major societal themes. Our focus is on Dynamics of Youth, Institutions for Open Societies, Life Sciences and Sustainability. The Faculty of Humanities has around 6,000 students and 900 staff members. It comprises four knowledge domains: Philosophy and Religious Studies, History and Art History, Media and Culture Studies, and Languages, Literature and Communication. With its research and education in these fields, the Faculty aims to contribute to a better understanding of the Netherlands and Europe in a rapidly changing social and cultural context. The enthusiastic and committed colleagues and the excellent amenities in the historical city center of Utrecht, where the Faculty is housed, contribute to an inspiring working environment.

Apply

N.B. Before applying, please read the full project description, which includes a description of the subproject for which you want to apply.

To apply, please upload the following documents:

Candidates can apply for either one or both of postdoc projects. In case you apply for both projects, you can write a combined research notes of 1-2 pages.

Interviews are scheduled on 18 and 19 March. Employment will become effective by 1 September 2020. To apply, please click here for the Post-doc positions.

Application deadline: 25 February 2020

Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, Austria

Job title: Pre-Doc Economist specialised in international economics and with an interest in environmental issues

The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) is one of the principal centres for economic research on Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) with more than 45 years of experience. We cover a wide variety of issues in International Economics, focusing on macroeconomic analysis and policy; labour, migration and income distribution; international trade, competitiveness and FDI; regional development; and sectoral studies. Our research projects are commissioned by Austrian and international clients, and emerge from applications to research funding agencies. We coordinate and are integrated in a large number of international research networks. For more details please visit our website wiiw.ac.at

Major tasks:

The position is limited to one year in the first instance, but can be extended following a satisfactory probationary period. Start: as soon as possible – ideally by April 2020.

Requirements:

Monthly remuneration for the 30 weekly hours position will be € 2,162.40 gross, 14 times per year, following the standard personnel costs for FWF project proposals. Women are particularly encouraged to apply. Please send your application (with cover letter, CV, list of publications, copies of certificates) per email.

York University, Canada (1/3)

Job title: Assistant Professor for Curriculum Development, Experiential Education, Professional Development

The Urban Studies Program in the Department of Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, invites applications for a tenure-track teaching stream position at the Assistant Professor level in Curriculum Development, Experiential Education, Professional Development to commence July 1, 2020.

A PhD with specialization in Urban Studies or a relevant related field is required. Candidates must demonstrate additional expertise in one or more of the following: urban issues in Canada; urban Indigeneity; Black urban studies; urban economies; urban governance. The primary responsibilities of the position will be the teaching of undergraduate courses in both lecture and seminar formats. Applicants must demonstrate the ability to teach core courses in the Urban Studies Program, along with demonstrable excellence in two other areas: incorporating experiential education opportunities into undergraduate teaching and furthering professional development of undergraduate students. Candidates are also required to have recent and relevant course directorship experience. Candidates must demonstrate excellence or promise of excellence in pedagogy, interdisciplinary teaching and a commitment to interdisciplinary pedagogy and curriculum development. A record of pedagogical innovation in high priority areas such as technology enhanced learning and community-based learning is preferred. Publications in urban studies or related to the scholarship of teaching and learning in urban studies would be an asset. The Department is keen to attract a scholar who has a particular interest in student experience, teaching-related service, and shows a willingness to take a leadership role in the coordination of the program. The successful candidate is also expected to provide evidence of service contributions or potential to contribute to service in administrative and committee work. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. All York University positions are subject to budgetary approval.

Applicants should submit a signed letter of application, a curriculum vitae, a teaching dossier, and three confidential letters of recommendation through the online application system. For further inforamtion please visit the website. Questions may be addressed to Professor Uwa Idemudia. (subject line "URST appt").

Application Deadline: 28 February 2020

York University, Canada (2/3)

Job title: Assistant Professor for Gender, Social Justice and Health

The Health and Society Program in the Department of Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, invites applications for a tenure-track professorial stream position at the Assistant Professor level in Gender, Social Justice and Health to commence July 1, 2020.

Candidates are expected to have a record of accomplishment in the social study of health and medicine, broadly defined. Preference will be given to candidates with a research and teaching focus in empirically based health research projects, community advocacy, or participatory action research, and research on health inequities within historically oppressed or marginalized communities. Research specialization and area are open, although preference will be given to candidates whose research deals with gender or sexuality outside of Canada. The successful candidate will teach and develop undergraduate courses in the Health and Society Program and should be able to situate their research within transdisciplinary approaches to the social study of health and medicine. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. All York University positions are subject to budgetary approval. The successful candidate will have a completed PhD in one of the social sciences, humanities or a related interdisciplinary program (including social epidemiology or gender studies) and will demonstrate excellence or the promise of excellence in teaching, and research and publications. There is a strong preference for candidates who teach from a critical, interdisciplinary perspective, with a particular focus on health inequities within historically excluded communities, such as: Social justice and human rights in health; or health and human rights bureaucracies (i.e. UN, WHO); or human rights law and health; or community-based health advocacy; or indigenous women’s health; or gender/trans/women health; or sexual or reproductive rights; AND extensive experience with the community-based research or participatory action research in health. The successful candidate will enhance our unit’s strengths in this area of research and take the lead in covering our program courses that address health inequities. The successful candidate will further develop our focus on community-based advocacy and human rights and take a lead in strengthening our required experiential education offerings. Pedagogical innovation in high priority areas such as experiential education and technology enhanced learning is preferred.

Applicants should submit a signed letter of application, a curriculum vitae, a teaching dossier, and three confidential letters of recommendation through the online application system. For further inforamtion please visit the website. Questions may be addressed to Professor Uwa Idemudia. (subject line "URST appt").

Application Deadline: 28 February 2020

York University, Canada (3/3)

Job title: Assistant/Associate/Full Professor for Socio-Legal Studies, Indigeneity and Indigenous Peoples

The Law and Society Program in the Department of Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies invites applications for a professorial stream tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant/Associate/Full Professor in the area of Socio-Legal Studies, Indigeneity, and Social Justice to commence July 1, 2020. Information about the Law and Society Program can be found here. Information about the affiliated Graduate Program in Socio-Legal Studies can be found here.

The Law and Society Program at York has a long tradition of critical interdisciplinarity in research and teaching. We approach the study of law and law-like institutions as situated social and cultural practices and are guided by a commitment to challenge colonial structures both within and beyond the university. We recognize that our program is strengthened by the diversity of our communities, our students and our faculty. We seek applicants whose research is grounded in Indigenous methodologies, with a preference for specialization in one or more of the following areas: law, social justice and Indigenous knowledge with particular emphasis on processes of de/colonization in the Canadian context. Qualified candidates must have a completed PhD (or near completion) with specialization in Socio-Legal Studies, Law, Indigenous Studies, or a relevant related field in the Humanities or Social Sciences. Candidates must demonstrate excellence or promise of excellence in interdisciplinary research and teaching as well as demonstrate a willingness to take a leadership role in program/curricular innovation and university service. Candidates are expected to have produced scholarly or artistic works relevant to the field of Law and Society appropriate to their stage of career. The position will involve undergraduate teaching as well as graduate teaching and supervision. Candidates must demonstrate in their research and teaching an engagement with Indigenous methodologies and pedagogies. A record of collaboration with Indigenous communities and/or organizations in Canada is strongly desired. Pedagogical innovation in high priority areas such as experiential education and technology enhanced learning is preferred. The successful candidate will be expected to teach interdisciplinary courses in their areas of specialization as well as core courses in the Law and Society Program. The successful candidate will ideally be eligible for prompt appointment to the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat, and the Métis. It is now home to many Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region. York University supports Indigenous research and education through its Indigenous Framework for York University, the Centre for Aboriginal Student Services, the York Aboriginal Council, and Skennen'kó:wa Gamig, or the House of Great Peace, a space for Indigenous faculty, staff, and students. York is committed to fostering understanding of, respect for and connections with Indigenous communities; and the University is working to support the recruitment and success of Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students, the integration of Indigenous cultures, approaches and perspectives into curricular offerings and research, collaboration with indigenous communities, and recruitment and retention of Indigenous faculty and staff.

Applicants should submit a signed letter of application, a curriculum vitae, a teaching dossier, and three confidential letters of recommendation through the online application system. For further inforamtion please visit the website. Questions may be addressed to Professor Uwa Idemudia. (subject line "URST appt").

Application Deadline: 29 February 2020

Awards

Call for Submissions: "Stephen A. Resnick Graduate Student Essay Prize"

The Association for Economic and Social Analysis, in collaboration with Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society, is proud to announce that submissions are now being accepted for the 2020 Stephen A. Resnick Graduate Student Essay Prize.

Stephen A. Resnick (1938-2013) earned his Ph.D. in economics from MIT, taught for eight years in the Economics Department at Yale University and two years at the City College of New York, before joining the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1973. Resnick was an award-winning undergraduate and graduate teacher. He also pioneered, in collaboration with Richard D. Wolff, an antiessentialist approach to Marxian economic and social analysis. Of their many jointly authored works, the best known are Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (1987), New Departures in Marxian Theory (2006), and (with Yahya Madra) Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian (2012). Resnick was a founding member of the Association for Economic and Social Analysis and Rethinking Marxism. Submissions are invited from Ph.D. students in any academic discipline whose work offers a novel, compelling engagement of the modes of analysis and philosophical concerns found in Resnick’s work or in the pages of Rethinking Marxism. In particular, we seek essays that explore the complex intersection of class with economic, political, psychological, or other social processes or the intellectual, social, and political conditions that shape Marxian interventions and analyses. The winner will receive a $2,000 award and publication of their essay in Rethinking Marxism.

To be considered for the 2020 Resnick Prize, please submit a current CV and a 4000-8000 word essay (consistent with Rethinking Marxism guidelines) to resnickaward@rethinkingmarxism.org. The winner will announced by August 1, 2020.

Submission Deadline: 1 June 2020

Winner Announcement: RHETM Students' Work-in-Progress Competition

The results of the first annual RHETM Students' Work-in-Progress Competition are in!We received a total of eighteen submissions, from which seven papers were selected for mentoring assistance by members of our esteemed editorial board. The seven semi-finalists worked with these mentors to revise their papers for final evaluation by the remaining board members. Four finalists were chosen and evaluated as follows:

  1. $500 Stipend: Marina Uzunova (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) - "Penrose and the Indifferent Crowd"
  2. $250 Stipend: Alexander Linsbichler (University of Vienna) - "Rationalities and their limits: Reconstructing Neurath’s and Mises’s prerequisites in the early socialist calculation debates"
  3. (tie) Pat Higgins (University of Łódź) - "Walter Lippmann and the Austrian School: Towards a Deeper (Epistemological) Convergence"
    (tie) David Coker (George Mason University) - "Rawls and Knight: Connections and Influence in A Theory of Justice"

All four papers will be published in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology. Keep an eye out for a call-for-papers this summer for the second iteration of the competition. If you have talented students working on relevant topics, please make them aware of the competition.

Journals

Accounting, Organizations and Society 80

Giovanna Michelon, Michelle Rodrigue, Elisabetta Trevisan: The marketization of a social movement: Activists, shareholders and CSR disclosure

Benedetto Lepori, Martina Montauti: Bringing the organization back in: Flexing structural responses to competing logics in budgeting

Niklas Wällstedt: Sources of dissension: The making and breaking of the individual in Swedish aged care

Benedikt Müller-Stewens, Sally K. Widener, Klaus Möller, Jan-Christoph Steinmann: The role of diagnostic and interactive control uses in innovation

Ecological Economics 170

Tian Liu, Weiyan Hu, Yan Song, Anlu Zhang: Exploring spillover effects of ecological lands: A spatial multilevel hedonic price model of the housing market in Wuhan, China

Keila Meginnis, Nick Hanley, Lazaaro Mujumbusi, Poppy H.L. Lamberton: Non-monetary numeraires: Varying the payment vehicle in a choice experiment for health interventions in Uganda

Octavio Fernández-Amador, Joseph F. Francois, Doris A. Oberdabernig, Patrick Tomberger: The methane footprint of nations: Stylized facts from a global panel dataset

Irene Monasterolo, Luca de Angelis: Blind to carbon risk? An analysis of stock market reaction to the Paris Agreement

Yacov Tsur: Optimal water pricing: Accounting for environmental externalities

Thomas Bolognesi, Stephane Nahrath: Environmental Governance Dynamics: Some Micro Foundations of Macro Failures

Cornelius Hirsch, Tamás Krisztin, Linda See: Water Resources as Determinants for Foreign Direct Investments in Land - A Gravity Analysis of Foreign Land Acquisitions

Robert Steiger, Eva Posch, Gottfried Tappeiner, Janette Walde: The impact of climate change on demand of ski tourism - a simulation study based on stated preferences

Luca Fraccascia: Quantifying the direct network effect for online platforms supporting industrial symbiosis: an agent-based simulation study

Kristine Grimsrud, Maximo Graesse, Henrik Lindhjem: Using the generalised Q method in ecological economics: A better way to capture representative values and perspectives in ecosystem service management

Gilles Grolleau, Lisette Ibanez, Naoufel Mzoughi: Moral judgment of environmental harm caused by a single versus multiple wrongdoers: A survey experiment

Global Labour Journal 11 (1)

Maria Lorena Cook, Madhumita Dutta, Alexander Gallas, Jörg Nowak, Ben Scully: Celebrating Ten Years of the Global Labour Journal

Edward Webster, Robert O'Brien: Ten Years of the Global Labour Journal: Reflecting on the Rise of the New Global Labour Studies

Stefanie Hürtgen: Labour-process-related Racism in Transnational European Production: Fragmenting Work meets Xenophobic Culturalisation among Workers

Peter Birke, Felix Bluhm: Migrant Labour and Workers' Struggles: The German Meatpacking Industry as Contested Terrain

Kirsten Sehnbruch, Sofia Donoso: Social Protests in Chile: Inequalities and other Inconvenient Truths about Latin America's Poster Child

Industrial and Corporate Change 29 (1)

Samuel C MacAulay , John Steen, Tim Kastelle: The search environment is not (always) benign: reassessing the risks of organizational search

Natália Barbosa, Ana Paula Faria: The effect of entrepreneurial origin on firms’ performance: the case of Portuguese academic spinoffs

Federico Caviggioli, Giuseppe Scellato, Elisa Ughetto: Lenders’ selection capabilities, patent quality, and the outcome of patent-backed loans

Sen Chai, Alexander D’Amour, Lee Fleming: Explaining and predicting the impact of authors within a community: an assessment of the bibliometric literature and application of machine learning

Special Section in Honor of James G. March

Daniel Levinthal, Luigi Marengo: Organizations, ambiguity, and conflict: introduction to the special issue in honor of James G. March

Robert Gibbons: March-ing toward organizational economics

Luigi Marengo: Organizational politics and complexity: Coase vs. Arrow, March, and Simon

Michael Christensen, Thorbjørn Knudsen: Division of roles and endogenous specialization

Peter W Glynn, Henrich R Greve, Hayagreeva Rao: Relining the garbage can of organizational decision-making: modeling the arrival of problems and solutions as queues

Daniel A Levinthal, Luigi Marengo: Organizations, ambiguity, and conflict: introduction to the special issue in honor of James G. March

Mie Augier, Sean F X Barrett: Organizational perspectives on the maneuver warfare movement in the United States Marine Corps: insights from the work of James G. March

Marie Bengtsson, Cecilia Enberg, Fredrik Tell: Foolishness without consequence? From physical to virtual modeling in the history of military aircraft development at Saab

Jerker Denrell, Gaël Le Mens: Revisiting the competency trap

Stefano Brusoni, Daniella Laureiro-Martínez, Nicola Canessa, Maurizio Zollo: Exploring exploration: the role of affective states as forces that hinder change

William Ocasio, Luke Rhee, Dylan Boynton: March and the pursuit of organizational intelligence: the interplay between procedural rationality and sensible foolishness

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education 10 (3)

Tiago Camarinha Lopes; Rafael Galvão De Almeida: What would have been Keynes' position in the socialist economic calculation debate and why it matters

Marie Christine Duggan: Unscripted economics in an industrial community

Jacqueline Strenio: Why a pluralist economics education is important for incarcerated individuals

Will Fisher: Teaching the tragedy of open access: a classroom exercise on governing the commons

Thomas P. Andrews: Econ FilmMaking: an experiential, problem-based, multimedia project for microeconomics

Hideki Sato: Teaching economics outside the box: using the circular-flow diagram to indicate efficient resource allocation in intermediate microeconomics

Journal of Economic Methodology 27 (1)

Ramzi Mabsout & Hossein Radmard: Experimenting with the Coase theorem

Morten Fibieger Byskov: Beyond ‘having reason to value’: why we should adopt a procedure-independent and value-neutral definition of capabilities

Magdalena Małecka: The normative decision theory in economics: a philosophy of science perspective. The case of the expected utility theory

Mickey Peled: Restoring constitution: saving performativity from Mäki’s critique

Alessandra Cenci & M. Azhar Hussain: Epistemic and non-epistemic values in economic evaluations of public health

Menno Rol: Ladders of abstraction, support factors, and semantics in the design of policies

Leonardo Ivarola: Abstract principles, causal cakes and asymmetry of results in policy making. A reply to Menno Rol

New Political Economy 25 (2)

Hulya Dagdeviren, Jiayi Bala: Financialisation, Welfare Retrenchment and Subsistence Debt in Britain

Leslie Elliott Armijo, Daniel C. Tirone & Hyoung-kyu Cheysuriya, Sheila Luz, Ali Malik & Haider Shah: The Monetary and Financial Powers of States: Theory, Dataset, and Observations on the Trajectory of American Dominance

Moritz Liebe & David Howarth: The European Investment Bank as Policy Entrepreneur and the Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships

Rowan Lubbock: The Social Contradictions of Regional Development in the ALBA-TCP: The Case of Food Production

Stefan Wallaschek: Framing Solidarity in the Euro Crisis: A Comparison of the German and Irish Media Discourse

Nick O’Donovan: From Knowledge Economy to Automation Anxiety: A Growth Regime in Crisis?

Marius Birk & Matthias Thiemann: Open for Business: Entrepreneurial Central Banks and the Cultivation of Market Liquidity

Niels Søndergaard: New Lines Within the European Civil Society Mobilizations Against the TTIP

Giselle Datz & Katharine Corcoran: Deviant Debt: Reputation, Litigation, and Outlier Effects in Argentina's Debt Restructuring Saga

PSL Quarterly Review 72 (291)

Carlo D'Ippoliti: Adding new “Perspectives” to our debate

Alicia Girón, Monika Meireles, Andrea Reyes: Banking concentration and financial reorganization: Greece, Portugal, and Spain in the post-crisis period

Ricardo Ramalhete Moreira: Monetary policy velocity and its financial effects: an empirical analysis for an emerging economy

Oscar Campuzano, Francisco Javier Ayvar: Supplementing Household Income through Self-Supply and Exchange: The Case of a Multiple-Exchange Fair in Mexico City, 2016.

Witness Nyasha Bandura, Canicio Dzingirai: Financial Development and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Institutions

Rethinking Marxism 32 (1)

Ross Wolfe: Religion in Russian Marxism

Gerald O. West: Serving the Sighs of the Working Class in South Africa with Marxist Analysis of the Bible as a Site of Struggle

Oxana Timofeeva: Spirituality Beyond Man: Toward a Labor Theory of the Soul

David Kristjanson-Gural: Case Studies of Actually Existing Communism: Mulder’s Transcending Capitalism through Cooperative Practices

Jessica Gordon Nembhard: Understanding Why Capitalism Is Not Always Transcended: A Review

Boone W. Shear: From Worker Self-Directed Enterprise Analysis to Solidarity Economy Movement

Catherine P. Mulder: Symposium on Transcending Capitalism through Cooperative Practices: Class Transformation and Beyond

The Journal of Philosophical Economics 13 (1)

Arne Heise: The resilience of modern neoclassical economics – a case study in the light of Ludwik Fleck’s “harmony of deception"

Peter Söderbaum: Reconsidering economics in relation to sustainable development and democracy

Mariusz Maziarz: The unrealistic realist philosophy. The ontology of econometrics revisited

Frederic B. Jennigs: Economic essays (part one): toward a realistic concept of choice

Richard E. Lee: In Memoriam: Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019)

The Review of Black Political Economy 47 (1)

Naomi Zewde: Universal Baby Bonds Reduce Black-White Wealth Inequality, Progressively Raise Net Worth of All Young Adults

Maude Toussaint-Comeau, Yi David Wang and Robin Newberger: Impact of Bank Closings on Credit Extension to Businesses in Low-Income and Minority Neighborhoods

Andre Comandon and Paul Ong: South Los Angeles Since the 1960s: Race, Place, and Class

Mina Baliamoune-Lutz: Political Elites, Democracy, and Education

Sheilla Nyasha and Nicholas M. Odhiambo: Does Remittance Inflow Granger-Cause Economic Growth in South Africa? A Dynamic Multivariate Causality Test

Books and Book Series

A Great Leap Forward: Heterodox Economic Policy for the 21st Century

by Randall Wray | 2020, Academic Press

"A Great Leap Forward: Heterodox Economic Policy for the 21st Century" investigates economic policy from a heterodox and progressive perspective. Author Randall Wray uses relatively short chapters arranged around several macroeconomic policy themes to present an integrated survey of progressive policy on topics of interest today that are likely to remain topics of interest for many years.

key features

Please find a link to the book here.

Bit Tyrants: The Political Economy of Silicon Valley

by Rob Larson | 2020, Haymarket Books

For all their famed disruption of the economy, Big Tech's secret sauce turns out to be Capitalism's standard issue blend of exploitation and corporate maleficence. If the stories they tell about themselves are to be believed, all of the tech giants—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon—were built from the ground up through hard work, a few good ideas, and the entrepreneurial daring to seize an opportunity when it presented itself. With searing wit and blistering commentary Bit Tyrants provides an urgent corrective to this froth of board room marketing copy that is so often passed off as analysis. For fans of corporate fairy-tales there are no shortage of official histories that celebrate the innovative genius of Steve Jobs, liberal commentators who fall over themselves to laude Bill Gates's selfless philanthropy, or politicians who will tell us to listen to Mark Zuckerberg for advice on how to protect our democracy from foreign influence.

In this highly unauthorized account of the Big Five's origins, Rob Larson sets the record straight, and in the process shreds every focus-grouped bromide about corporate benevolence he could get his hands on. Those readers unwilling to smile and nod as every day we become more dependent on our phones and apps to do our chores, our jobs, and our socializing can take heart as Larson provides us with maps to all the shallow graves, skeleton filled closets, and invective laced emails Big Tech left behind on its ascent to power. His withering analysis will help readers crack the code of the economic dynamics that allowed these companies to become near-monopolies very early on, and, with a little bit of luck, his calls for digital socialism might just inspire a viral movement for online revolution.

Please find a link to the book here.

Classical Political Economics and Modern Capitalism: Theories of Value, Competition, Trade and Long Cycles

by Lefteris Tsoulfidis and Persefoni Tsaliki | 2019, Springer Verlag

This book promotes an in-depth understanding of the key mechanisms that govern the functioning of capitalist economies, pursuing a Classical Political Economics approach to do so. It explores central theoretical issues addressed by the classical economists Smith and Ricardo, as well as Marx, while also operationalizing more recent theoretical developments inspired by the works of Sraffa and other modern classical economists, using actual data from major economies.

On the basis of this approach, the book subsequently provides alternative explanations for various microeconomic issues such as the determination of equilibrium prices and their movement induced by changes in income distribution; the dynamics of competition of firms within and between industries; the law of tendential equalization of interindustry profit rates; and international exchanges and transfers of value; as well as macroeconomic issues concerning capital accumulation and cyclical economic growth.

Given its scope, the book will benefit all researchers, students, and policymakers seeking new explanations for observed phenomena and interested in the mechanisms that give rise to surface economic categories, such as prices, profits, the unemployment rate, interest rates, and long economic cycles.

Please find a link to the book here.

Education and Intergenerational Social Mobility in Europe and the United States

edited by Richard Breen and Walter Müller | 2020, Stanford University Press

This volume examines the role of education in shaping rates and patterns of intergenerational social mobility among men and women during the twentieth century. Focusing on the relationship between a person's social class and the social class of his or her parents, each chapter looks at a different country—the United States, Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Contributors examine change in absolute and relative mobility and in education across birth cohorts born between the first decade of the twentieth century and the early 1970s. They find a striking similarity in trends across all countries, and in particular a contrast between the fortunes of people born before the 1950s, those who enjoyed increasing rates of upward mobility and a decline in the strength of the link between class origins and destinations, and later generations who experienced more downward mobility and little change in how origins and destinations are linked. This volume uncovers the factors that drove these shifts, revealing education as significant in promoting social openness. It will be an invaluable source for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of mobility and inequality in the contemporary world.

Please find a link to the book here.

Morbid Symptoms: The Global Rise of the Far-Right

by Owen Worth | 2019, Zed Books Ltd

As established centrist parties across the Western world continue to decline, commentators continue to fail to account for the far-right’s growth, for its strategies and its overall objectives.

Morbid Symptoms examines the far-right’s ascendancy, uniquely tracing its history from the end of the Cold War, revealing how its different dimensions have led to a series of contradictory strategies and positions that often leave their overall significance unclear. From the United States to Russia and from Britain across Europe to Greece, Owen Worth’s analysis reveals that the left’s failure to mount a radical alternative to the prevailing order has allowed the far-right to move in and provide an avenue for discontent and for change. Crucially though this avenue hasn’t necessarily offered a definite alternative to the status quo as yet, meaning there is still a chance to change its significance in the wider global order. This is an essential primer to the future of international politics and international relations.

Please find a link to the book here.

The Age of Experiences: Harnessing Happiness to Build a New Economy

by Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt | 2020, Temple University Press

In "The Age of Experiences", Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines how the advance of happiness science is impacting the economy, making possible new experience-products that really make people happy and help forward-looking businesses expand and develop new technologies. In today's marketplace there is less interest in goods and services and more interest in buying and selling personal improvements and experiences. Hunnicutt traces how this historical shift in consumption to the "softer" technologies of happiness represents not only a change in the modern understanding of progress, but also a practical, economic transformation, profoundly shaping our work and the ordering of our life goals. Based on incisive historical research, Hunnicutt demonstrates that we have begun to turn from material wealth to focus on the enrichment of our personal and social lives. "The Age of Experiences" shows how industry, technology, and the general public are just beginning to realize the potential of the new economy. Exploring the broader implications of this historical shift, Hunnicutt concludes that the new demand for experiences will result in the reduction of work time, the growth of jobs, and the regeneration of virtue—altogether an increasingly healthy public life.

Please find a link to the book here.

The Dissolution of the Financial State: A Marxian Examination of the Political Economy of Money Since the 1930s

by Simon Mouatt | 2017, New York: Lexington Books

This book argues that post-Keynesian theories of endogenous money can be combined with Marxian analysis in order to give insight into the changing power relations between the state, finance sector and real economy since WW2. A key theme is that financial power, derived from the control of money-issue and its purchasing power, is determined by the state and market in varying proportions (depending on context) but that state sovereignty has been lost in recent decades. In addition, the growth of financial markets in recent decades, so-called financialization, has led many to assume that private finance is an important proximate driver of economic affairs in general. In contrast, the book argues that this provides insufficient explanation of events. To discuss financial factors as causes of financial crisis risks describing the phenomena without illustrating the root causes. Instead, the book argues that systemic drivers of capitalism (rooted in production), probably best understood by Marx, actually do provide a more plausible explanation of the causes of the financialization and erosion of state sovereignty. In addition, the Post-Keynesian descriptions of monetary processes are considered to best reflect the actual reality of the monetary system. This represents an interesting synthesis of the classical Marx with modern money theory. The interpretation of Marx used to explain this financial transformation has been named the Temporal Single System Interpretation, which illustrates Marx’s value theory across periods and identifies a tendency towards falling profit rates. It is claimed that falling profits, in turn, are an underlying driver of the systemic propensity towards financialisation, crisis and stagnation. The empirical findings presented, taken from case studies of the UK and Germany, appear to support this view.

The central argument is that the response of agents (including the state) to the profit tendency has been a significant driver of the observed financial transformation. The book then concludes that this synthesis provides a more appropriate explanation of the historical transformation of the financial system since the Great Depression, than much of the financialization literature, and illustrates the source (and operation) of financial power in the modern capitalist state and market.

Please find a link to the book here.

The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Walls

by Serena Natile | 2020, Routledge

Focusing on Kenya’s path-breaking mobile money project M-Pesa, this book examines and critiques the narratives and institutions of digital financial inclusion as a development strategy for gender equality, arguing for a politics of redistribution to guide future digital financial inclusion projects.

One of the most-discussed digital financial inclusion projects, M-Pesa facilitates the transfer of money and access to formal financial services via the mobile phone infrastructure and has grown at a phenomenal rate since its launch in 2007 to reach about 80 per cent of the Kenyan population. Through a socio-legal enquiry drawing on feminist political economy, law and development scholarship and postcolonial feminist debate, this book unravels the narratives and institutional arrangements that frame M-Pesa’s success while interrogating the relationship between digital financial inclusion and gender equality in development discourse. Natile argues that M-Pesa is premised on and regulated according to a logic of opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution, favouring the expansion of the mobile money market in preference to contributing to substantive gender equality via a redistribution of the revenue and funding deriving from its development.

This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students in Global Political Economy, Socio-Legal Studies, Gender Studies, Law & Development, Finance and International Relations.

Please find a link to the book here.

Book Reviews

The Dissolution of the Financial State: A Marxian Explanation of the Political Economy Since the 1930s

The Dissolution of the Financial State: A Marxian Explanation of the Political Economy Since the 1930s (2015)

Heterodox Graduate Programs, Scholarships and Grants

Ad Astra Phd Scholarship in the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice (Dublin, Ireland)

4-year Ad Astra PhD Scholarship in the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice
Start Date – either September 2020 or January 2021 (to be agreed)

The School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, UCD, invites applications from highly motivated and talented students wishing to undertake a PhD in Social Policy, broadly defined. The successful candidate will be working under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Donoghue, Assistant Professor (Ad Astra Fellow) in Social Policy. The Ad Astra PhD scheme provides the opportunity for researchers with strong analytical skills to work in an interdisciplinary setting with the freedom to decide on their own topic of study. It is open to applicants of any nationality.Dr Donoghue welcomes applications in any area related to his research interests, especially:

  1. Social citizenship and social rights
  2. Resilience, hardship and inequality
  3. Social cohesion and integration
  4. Intersections between ideology, politics and policy(making) – inc. issues surrounding austerity, Brexit, etc.

Those working in a qualitative tradition, or in the subfields of interpretive or critical policy studies, are particularly welcome to apply – although this by no means a requirement.

Benefits
The Ad Astra PhD programme has been designed to attract and support talented students throughout the PhD process. This is reflected in the generous studentship, which includes:

Requirements

Application Process

Please send applications via email. Applications received after this deadline cannot be considered. Applications must include:

Applications will be considered by an appointment committee, who will recommend a shortlist of candidates to be invited to interview. Potential applicants are welcome to contact Dr. Donoghue to discuss informally the PhD programme and the studentship prior to applying.

Application Deadline: 30 April 2020 (23:59 pm)

De Montfort University (DMU): Full Bursary Scholarship

The Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA) invites outstanding prospective PhD students to apply with us for a De Montfort University (DMU) Full Bursary Scholarship. We welcome applications from students capable of developing innovative, interdisciplinary and internationally relevant research in any field related to cities, urban living and austerity. We particularly welcome proposals focusing on urban dimensions of austerity governance and resistance, urban labour movements, revitalising cities and racialised urban inequalities.

Applicants interested in joining CURA should, in the first instance, submit a research proposal of up to 750words to Dr Mercè Cortina Oriol, outlining the proposed project and its fit with CURA. The proposal should include:

The proposal should be submitted, with a CV, to the CURA Institute Head of Research Students, Dr Mercè Cortina Oriol via email. Once approved by a potential supervisor, students must submit a full application via email no later than 9 March 2020. Further details and the application form can be accessed here.

Application Deadline: 24 February 2020

Levy Economics Institute: Graduate Programs on "Economic Theory and Policy"

The Levy Economics Institute Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy were created to offer students an alternative to mainstream programs in economics and finance. These innovative programs combine a rigorous course of study with the exceptional opportunity to participate in advanced economics research.

For further information please visit the website.

SOAS University of London: Call for applications for master programmes in economics and development

The Department of Economics at SOAS University of London invites applications for its exciting MSc programmes in economics and development. The programmes are distinctive in their commitment:

The programmes reflect the key institutional role that SOAS plays in leading the debates in political economy and pluralistic economics, with a special focus on the challenges that our economies and societies are currently facing, like the climate crisis and gender inequality. The critical approach to economics that the SOAS MSc programmes provide is a gateway to various job opportunities in the private sector, the government sector and international organisations. The advanced nature of the programme also serves as an excellent foundation for PhD studies. More information about each programme can be found in the links below:

Application Deadline: 30 June 2020

Calls for Support

EuroMemorandum 2020: A Green New Deal for Europe – Opportunities and Challenges

We are pleased to send you the EuroMemorandum 2020: "A Green New Deal for Europe – Opportunities and Challenges". This EuroMemorandum draws on discussions and papers presented at the 25th Workshop on Alternative Economic Policy in Europe, organised by the EuroMemo Group in cooperation with the Paris University 13, from 26-28 September 2019 in Paris.

Given its urgency, this year’s EuroMemorandum puts special emphasis on the climate crisis and other planetary boundaries. In tandem with deepening social inequalities, renascent authoritarian nationalisms and the crisis of global governance, they urgently need comprehensive and effective policy responses. The EuroMemorandum 2020 critically analyses recent economic developments in Europe against this background and makes the case for a properly designed and sufficiently funded Green New Deal as the most promising way to tackle climate change in the short to medium term. Such a Green New Deal is understood as a political compact to combine massive investment for ecological conversion with an agenda of social inclusion. In contrast to proposals such as from DiEM 25 and progressive US democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the European Green Deal proposed by the new European Commission falls however short of effectively addressing the current challenges. While a progressive Green New Deal could be a first step to get a more comprehensive and long-term trajectory of socio-ecological transformation off the ground, ultimately the expansionist dynamics of capitalism need to be overcome.

The EuroMemorandum 2020 will be published together with a list of signatories.

Therefore, if you are in broad agreement with the main lines of argument of this year's EuroMemorandum, please express your support. In order to submit your declaration of support to the EuroMemo Group, please fill in the form online and send it back via email.

Deadline for Signatures: 19 February 2020

For Your Information

Congressional Testimony: "Reexamining the Economic Costs of Debt"

On November 20, 2019, Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray testified before the Budget Committee of the US House of Representatives. In this written testimony submitted to the committee, Wray and Yeva Nersisyan argue for a reexamination of the economic impact of public debt and deficits—explaining how deficits have become the norm for the US economy and why they are helpful in the current environment—and respond to a Question for the Record submitted by Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on the matter of the Green New Deal and the benefits of targeted public spending.

A video of the testimony is available on the House Budget Committee's website. A link to the written testimony can be found here.

INET Education presents "Inequality 101"

The INET (Institute for New Economic Thinking) Education Program is proud to announce the release of "Inequality 101," with Branko Milanovic (CUNY Graduate Center) and Arjun Jayadev (Azim Premji University). In this five-part lecture series these renowned scholars break down what inequality is, how we measure it, why it exists, and how to address it.

Professors Milanovic and Jayadev guide students through an effective and methodical way of understanding what economists mean when they discuss inequality. They investigate this important topic and embed it in its historical, institutional, and global context. The complexities and urgent challenges of inequality are explored throughout the series.

"Inequality 101" is just one of several projects the INET Education Program has embarked on to broaden the scope and improve upon how economics is currently taught. We are currently developing more supplementary educational resources and platforms for students and teachers.

Explore the "Inequality 101" series here and visit the official website for more series and projects.