Hi everyone,

Global Action Plan has released a new series exploring whether we can reshape the nature of economic demand to benefit people and planet.

We're really keen to hear thoughts on the concepts set out in the series. It would be great if you could have a read and let us know what you think!

https://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/files/demanding_change_by_changing_demand_series.pdf

New video up going over tulipmania, and how debates over it show, differences in orthodox and heterodox interpretations of more modern financial crises and markets.

Hi there, I was wondering if anyone knew of any work on this topic or any ideas to overcome quite an obvious seeming problem.

So, taking a global north "advanced" economy - how does one degrow?

I have seen a lot of focus within the degrowth community on more eco friendly production techniques such as replacing capital intensive with labour intensive production, but also anything that will reduce the environmental impact. The problem that jumps out to me is the reason we produce like this in the first place - it's cheaper (in monetary terms, or from the viewpoint of a business - as opposed to a society).

Degrowing economies will still need imports - i have heard roughly 20 percent as a best case scenario. And this is especially true in the early years, as our economies are geared towards large international supply chains - most countries are more specialised (or, cannot meet their own needs) than would be the case in a degrowth world.

How then do you engage in international trade if your goods aren't price competitive? As foreign producers engage in shifting costs onto their population, future generations or the non-human world - which you abstain from.

There is craft and culture which could be exported.

There are elements of technology which are useful in degrowth, e.g solar panels. But of course producing solar panels is neither degrowth or non degrowth - it depends on how they are used in the grand scheme of things, and doesnt seem toooo much different from selling arms to the highest bidder. Its likely this will (if, even successful) displace production from elsewhere globally and achieve net nothing - or worse than nothing - requiring building new factories domestically and wasting capital abroad.

So, what do you produce and how do you make it cost competitive?

Currency depreciation? (this would also make imports more expensive though, and would likely have to be substantial to make goods price competitive)

Negative tariffs on exports? I feel like this would only lower the value of the currency if the gov were creating new currency to do this with. I am an MMTer, but this does not mean that the government can simply create currency and do whatever with it without consequence, but I havent heard this specific policy discussed by professional MMT economists either - so im not sure what to make of it.

Maintain some amount of dirty industry for the purpose of exporting? Which you could reduce over time as you get the stuff necessary to become more self sufficient - hence less need for trade (hence less need for dirty industry to conduct said trade).

Problems would be greatly reduced if a large part of the world were onboard with degrowth as well, as you could form a bloc within which to perform mutal aid and trade on an "in kind" basis.

It would also greatly help to have international standards on production techniques (though loopholes i imagine would be largely unavoidable and a black market would probably be inevitable), but Im trying to think of what would happen if one country were to try and do degrowth first.

Any thoughts/papers etc much appreciated! Thanks for reading.

Good evening,

I'm willing to work in an aggregate supply - aggregate demand model with take into account the relation between income distribution and consume (traditional models only take into account wages in the supply).

Hence, if you know any resources or models that implement that feature I would be glad.

Hi guys, we are working on a new sub for Spanish economics and finances.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpainEconomics/

We want it to be a public space for objective and quality discussion without censorship

Good evening everyone,

Does anyone have a source where I can study the algebra of the Lerner-Lange Model? I would like to include it in my notes and understand it as well.

Additionally If anyone could cite similar models about socialist economy I would be glad, not necessarily planification but it is very welcomed as well.

This topic hasn't been studied in my bachelor and posgraduate studies, so I would like to understand it better.

Thank you in advance

I've looked into him via his website and other stuff (Wikipedia being a majority of it mostly his political activism) and a few lectures/debates, but I want to know how much heterodox he is, considering he is Marxian Economist.

Neoclassical theory says that the demand of labor L comes from profit B maximization.

So in short term we have:

Max: B = f(L,K) * p - wL -rK

Which has as solution:

p * d f(L,K)/ d L - w = 0

w/p = MgPL

Which means that real wage equals to marginal product of labor.

And this obviously false, we leave in an economic system completely based on don't pay workers what they product. No one earns what he products.

So where's the trick there? Is it in not taking into account capital K in the derivative?

Recently on June I graduated from my degree on economics and decided to do a Quantitative Economics Degree because numbers are entertaining for my. And oh my god, that was awful, it was pure propaganda dressed of mathematical rigour. I was ok with stats and maths, it's what I like, however when we started with macroeconomics that was disgusting, we beginning with Arrow-Debreu and the neoclassical growth model and I can't study that so I decided to quit. However for the academy seems that if you don't study in these pedigree faculties, if you haven't studied in the university college of London you are no one. So I've decided to don't do a PhD and move towards data science.

Mine might just be:

Is green growth possible - by Hickel and Kallis.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964?casa_token=g8zfFQSWO2kAAAAA:kNCqAaWFpuJ0mlGTYySeGEj-UHdEsVWAxSNVuT87D2GEblDjqxvGgRWuatGkbl8jeY5_e2kdfrxc

Or

Dan O'neil's one on problems with and best types of indicators.

https://degrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/oneill_degrowth-transition-to-a-steady-state-economy.pdf

Heterodox Economics

​

[Beginner] The Social Costs of Business Enterprise - Karl William Kapp

<http://www.kwilliam-kapp.de/documents/SCOBE_000.pdf>

​

+ What happened to Kapp’s theory of social costs? - Vítor Neves

<https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/09538259.2016.1208896>

​

The Best Uses of Economic Resources - Leonid Kantorovich

<http://digamo.free.fr/kantoro65.pdf>

​

The Entropy Law and the Economic Process - Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen

<https://de1lib.org/book/2729999/f53501>

​

+ The Entropy Law and the Economic Process in retrospect

<https://booksc.org/book/29153409/15c8c9>

​

+ The new entropy law and the economic process - Alan Raine

<https://booksc.org/book/20067959/501ba9>

​

+ A defense of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s Paradigm - Gabriel A. Lozada

<https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/0921-8009(91)90015-7>

​

Fractals and Scaling in Finance - Benoit B. Mandelbrot

<https://www.pdfdrive.com/fractals-and-scaling-in-finance-discontinuity-concentration-risk-selecta-volume-e-d157652398.html>

​

+ The Effortless Economy of Science? - Philip Mirowski

[(p251) Chapter 10: Mandelbrot's Economics after a Quarter-Century]

<https://b-ok.cc/book/6102074/0c369f>

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Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist Economy - Michal Kalecki

<https://b-ok.cc/book/2491888/1429ae>

​

+ What is Wrong with Heterodox Economics? - Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1845803>

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+ Answers (and Questions) for Sraffians (and Kaleckians) - Steve Keen

<https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/09538259800000048>

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+ Questions for Kaleckians: a response - Malcolm Sawyer

<https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/09538259200000012>

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Dynamic Economic Systems - John M. Blatt

<http://www.profstevekeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Dynamic-Economic-System.pdf>

​

The Monetary Theory of Production - Augusto Graziani

<https://b-ok.cc/book/821234/e89bf1>

​

+ Solving the Paradox of Monetary Profits - Steve Keen

<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46457953_Solving_the_Paradox_of_Monetary_Profits>

The Model-Platonism of Economics

[Beginner] [Important] Neoclassical economic thought in critical light - Hans Albert

http://www.iask.de/micro/paper/platonism1.pdf

[Important] 'Model Platonism' in economics: on a classical epistemological critique - Jakop Kapeller

https://jakob-kapeller.org/images/pubs/2013-Kapeller-JOIE.pdf

​

Critique of Microeconomics

​

[Important] The Arrow-Debreu Model - David Ellerman

[Chapter 4]

http://library.lol/main/F3C88BE556199DB4252427AE153B135C

​

[Important] The Incoherent Emperor: A Heterodox Critique of Neoclassical Microeconomic Theory

https://artsonline.uwaterloo.ca/rneedham/sites/ca.rneedham/files/needhdata/ncet.doc1.pdf

Emergent Effective Collusion in an Economy of Perfectly Rational Competitors

https://arxiv.org/pdf/nlin/0411006.pdf

Profit Maximization, Industry Structure, and Competition: A critique of neoclassical theory

https://www.albany.edu/~gs149266/Keen%20&%20Standish%20(2006).pdf

​

Profit Maximization, Industry Structure, and Competition: A critique of neoclassical theory

https://www.albany.edu/~gs149266/Keen%20&%20Standish%20(2006).pdf

+ [Important] Comment on “On the proper behavior of atoms”

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.3369.pdf

+ Rationality in the Theory of the Firm

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.3409.pdf

Critique of Macroeconomics

[Important] Heterogeneous Capital, the Production Function and the Theory of Distribution - Pierangelo Garegnani

https://crecimientoeconomico-asiain.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/9/0/1290958/heterogeneous_capital.pdf

[Important] Nonlinear Dynamics and Pseudo-Production Functions - Anwar Shaikh

https://college.holycross.edu/eej/Volume31/V31N3P447_466.pdf

​

Boylan's Constructive Empiricist Critique

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[Important] Pragmatism in Economic Methodology: The Duhem-Quine Thesis Revisited

https://sci-hub.se/10.1023/A:1022417025502

​

The critique of equilibrium theory in economic methodology: A constructive empiricist perspective

https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/02698599108573385

Rational choice theory

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[Beginner] [Important] Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory - Amartya Sen

http://www.ibiblio.org/philecon/General%20Information_files/rationalfools.pdf

​

[Beginner] Some Unresolved Problems in the Theory of Rational Behavior - Jon Elster

http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/2821/Elster.pdf?sequence=1

​

[Beginner] [Important] Rational choice, functional selection and empty black boxes - Philip Pettit

http://www.princeton.edu/~ppettit/papers/RationalChoice_EconomicMethodology_2000.pdf

​

[Beginner] Against Parsimony: Three Easy Ways of Complicating Some Categories of Economic Discourse - Albert O. Hirschman

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.2307/3823226

​

[Beginner] Economic Theory and Rationality: A Wittgensteinian interpretation - Thomas Boylan

https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/0953825032000064904

​

[Beginner] Beyond Homo Economicus: New Developments in Theories of Social Norms - Elizabeth Anderson

http://faculty.washington.edu/jtenenbg/courses/tgh303/f15/readings/anderson%20Beyond%20Homo%20Economicus%202000.pdf

​

Others

[Beginner] [Important] The General Impossibility of Neoclassical Economics - Ben Fine

http://www.economia.uanl.mx/revistaensayos/xxx/1/The-General-Impositive-of-Neoclassical-Economics.pdf

[Important] Heavens above: what equilibrium means for economics - Alan Freeman

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/65045/1/MPRA_paper_65045.pdf

​

+ Disembedded markets as a mirror of society - Christoph Deutschmann

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431015569655

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[Beginner] [Important] Kaldor on Debreu: The Critique of General Equilibrium Reconsidered’ - Thomas Boylan

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/09538250903073495[Important]

​

Towards an Arbitrage Interpretation of Optimization Theory - David Ellerman

https://economics.ucr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/10-16-03-Ellerman.pdf

Books

The End of Value-Free Economics - Hillary Putnam

https://sci-hub.tw/10.4324/9780203154007

​

+ A response to dasgupta

https://sci-hub.se/10.1017/S026626710700154X

​

Debunking Economics - Revised and Expanded Edition: The Naked Emperor Dethroned - Steve Keen

https://divulgacionmarxista.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/debunking-economics-steve-keen.pdf + [Resource] http://loudmouthcomms.com/Keen_supplement.pdf

Production of Commodities by means of Commodities - Piero Sraffa

https://archive.org/details/productionofcomm00srafrich or https://archive.org/details/SraffaP.ProductionOfCommoditiesByMeansOfCommodities/page/n7

​

+ [Important] A Reflection on the Samuelson-Garegnani Debate - Ajit Sinha

http://et.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-ET-4-2-Sinha.pdf

https://youtu.be/l-nQi4BwpUs

Please check out and comment on my new video

https://youtu.be/f1R0W0D20qY

Just finished a new, video, its a bit introductory, but hopefully a useful watch or useful to show to other people. I tried to make it a more useful in depth definition, focusing on what economics research tends to focus on, and how it connects with other social sciences and with policy rather than simply focusing on a theoretical definition.

I hope to learn more about the things that Raj Chetty misses out and the problems with technocratic solutions? Or if they even work on a broader scale?

Hi All -- I'm looking for good critiques of the above text. I really enjoyed that book, but I'd like to know read some critiques of it as well. Any recommendations?

Hello, I'm looking to study economics in one of these 2 universities. I've chosen those because of their pluralistic curriculum featuring heterodox theories. I need help deciding which, does anybody have any input regarding economics studies in Greenwich / SOAS? Thanks.

Or is there not a best place to start?

Mine are Karl William Kapp (!), Nicolas Georgescu Roegen, Michael Hudson, Bill Mitchell and Steve Keen.

Karl William Kapp I almost never hear mentioned but is in my mind a special kind of genious. Pick up "the social costs of business enterprise" (avaliable free online) and I bet you'll struggle to put it down. It contains the thesis that a system of private enterprise cannot be socially rational due to social costs. I always hear about exploitation, but rarely social costs. It really helps clarify many loose, related issues I see floating around and ties them all together brilliantly.

So, who are your biggest influences?

This is a video essay about interest, finance, growth, and values.

The main thesis, is that money and interest are best understood, not as proper or independent things in their own right, but a reflection of the people or other living things which create those tokens. Specifically, interest is not a passive phenomenon, and it is inherently not in "equilibrium", it is growth/exploitation(not necessarily in a "bad" way).

Here are some important lines.

"It is impossible to passively accumulate value"

"All financial dynamics have to do with living systems, living things communicating. You don't want to look at money itself to try to understand what is going on, you want to look at the living things."

"All living things replicate and regulate, just like informtion-- life is an information system"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLbrWX1XiOs

New video out on Thirlwall's law, a basic model used in post-Keynesian research on international trade.

https://youtu.be/-jb0dEwxKlk

Two common theories of value to explain price ratios between goods have been the labor theory of value and the subjective theory of value.

It is not hard to find criticisms about the labor theory of value and defenses for it, but what has been said about the drawbacks of a subjective theory of value in economics? It seems intuitive so what are some reasons an economist might be dissatisfied with it in their practice?

I would like to request for assistance in finding any articles or reading recommendations that address these questions, and I would be appreciative. If I find something more useful, I intend to share it here.

In the UK Jeremy Corbyn created a debate about bringing public utilities back in to public ownership.

I've heard some people say this is a brilliant idea, whereas other's say it will be anti-competitive, create a bureaucracy and ultimately drive up prices. However I'm not sure how far this view which I believe is seemingly grounded in some orthodox economic assumptions holds up to scrutiny.

I'd be interested to know if anyone can suggest any papers or books that explore this topic. Especially with regards to energy.