society, markets, and [in]equality

Society, Markets, and [in]Equality expands the intellectual project of political economy. There have been centuries of thought towards the construction of an alternative political economy. Heterodoxy today is a diverse set of theories built on insights from Marx, Keynes and Kalecki to contemporary thought in feminism, post-Keynesianism, stratification, institutionalism and neo-Marxism. Expanding this ongoing intellectual project would demand deeper connection to other social sciences, history and law as well as interdisciplinary fields like gender studies, black studies, environmental studies, social innovation, urban studies. An important motivation for elevating heterodox economics is to gain insights from these fields and build a narrative of capitalist dynamics that is useful across disciplines and to a more diverse population. The focus of the research will be on concepts of power, inequalities, institutions (business enterprise, the family and the state) and generally on the creation and distribution of value.

Economics: Markets, Society, [in]equality– a free online course

Paulo dos Santos, Teresa Ghilarducci, William Milberg

Department of Economics, The New School for Social Research

This free online economics course, Economics: Markets, Society, [In]equality, seeks to turn mainstream economics — Econ 101 — on its head, offering you a tour of the real-world dynamics and impacts of economics, as if people and the environment, civic engagement, community activism, and the public good matters. We seek to help you to build knowledge and a sensibility towards the economy that gets you thinking in new ways.

It’s an important moment for us to challenge orthodox views of markets and the economy. In the past 15 years the economy has been buffeted by large and unpredicted shocks. The economic “applecart” was first toppled by the financial crisis of 2008. The “Great Recession” that ensued from 2008-20012 has changed our politics and the way we think about economics. Then the Covid-19 pandemic further unraveled our textbook view of the economy, as supply chains froze up, there was another sudden and deep recession, and the return to work and to in-person work was slow. And even the economic recovery currently being experienced in the US is rooted in unorthodox economic policies, initially — the 2008 crisis — with unprecedented loosening of monetary policy (called “quantitative easing”) and more recently with more government spending than at any time since FDR’s New Deal was adopted as a plan for economic recovery from the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Economics: Society, Markets, [In]equality offers a glimpse of what lies behind the supply and demand curves of the Econ 1010 text book, how a narrow focus on supply and demand hides other aspects of society and the economic problem — what Robert Heilbroner called “the veil of economics.” This book will take us behind that veil to look at community relations, power dynamics and history, to think about how economies work today and what we might do to make them work better in the future.