Subjects Archives: Economic Theory

Bitcoin’s growth from just being a tech curiosity was driven by popular discontent with banks and banking systems, mainly in the U.S. after 2008.

The starting point for radical political economists is agreement on the need to oppose injustice and oppression and the conviction that a theoretical understanding of contemporary societies can contribute to the political movements necessary to address them.

Ecuador provides an example of a government which officially decided to investigate the process of indebtedness so as to identify illegitimate debt and suspend its repayment.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take an unprecedented human and economic toll, wiping away years of modest and uneven progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Everyone knew that Amazon would fight the union drive in one of its fulfillment centers in Bessemer, Alabama. But the company’s union-busting tactics are drawing more scrutiny as the final days for workers to mail in ballots draw near.

As industrial agriculture encroaches into the last wild places of the Earth, it’s unleashing dangerous pathogens. Time to heal the metabolic rift between ecology and economy, suggests Rob Wallace.

The Brazilian Supreme Court this month dismissed all charges against former President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva. A towering figure in national politics, Lula was the country’s president for eight years between 2003 and 2011.

150 years ago, on 18 March 1871, the Paris Commune was born.

Money on the Left is joined by Dr. Lua Kamal Yuille to discuss heterodox economics, property law & the politics of vulnerability. We chat with Yuille about her path from law to heterodox economics, and, more specifically, about how Modern Monetary Theory has variously shaped and affirmed her critical perspective toward property law.

The Economist (2/15/20) ran a brief article last year with a startling headline: “Immigration to America Is Down. Wages Are Up. Are the Two Related?” Maybe, the article’s anonymous author answered, at least for the short term.

Vaccine developers’ refusal to share publicly funded vaccine research findings is stalling broader, affordable vaccinations which would more rapidly contain COVID-19 contagion. The pandemic had infected at least 109 million people worldwide, causing over 2.4 million deaths as of mid-February.

In the 1960s, the main forms of the Chinese assistance offered to Cuba were preferential trade and interest-free loans. From 1961 to 1965, China gave Cuba an interest-free loan of 60 million U.S. dollars.

Texas’s electricity market “reforms” made the current crisis inevitable.

A new IPS briefing paper highlights the unique role of tax policy in wealth concentration.

Money on the Left is joined by Julia McClure, lecturer in Late Medieval & Early Modern Global History at the University of Glasgow. McClure’s 2017 book, The Franciscan Invention of the World, draws compelling and confounding conclusions about the role of the late Medieval Franciscans in shaping the modern capitalist and colonialist world. We talk with McClure […]

During Tuesday’s confirmation hearings before the Senate, nominees for positions in Joe Biden’s cabinet expressed their support for a tough stance on China.

The peasants gathered on the Delhi border understand all these issues much more clearly than either Modi or the intelligentsia advocating a shift away from food grains. Ironically, it is the latter group who are suggesting that the peasants are ignoramuses!

The recently announced EU-China principally agreed investment deal is a watershed moment, marking a first EU-China investment deal of its kind that would open the doors for the EU to make direct investment in China.

In this episode we are joined by Christine Desan, Leo Goettlieb professor of law at Harvard Law School to discuss her excellent book, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism.

This is most clearly shown in what is allowed by the powers that run the financial system.