Résumé de section

  • The current Covid-19 and economic crisis is surely going to lead to fundamental changes in the global economy as well as in all our societies. How, is a very big and open-ended question. Hopefully some good will come out of it, as we all re-examine what is really important, what could be done to create a fairer world and fairer societies, and what can really be done to slow down global warming.

    19 March 2020

    What is Political Economy?
    Wikipedia gives quite a good, broad definition of what Political Economy is. Academics are usually sceptical about Wikipedia as a source, but it has the advantage of being permanently challenged and reviewed by very many people, which is quite good (a group of undergraduate students even told me recently that it was their most trusted source of information). You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy.

    Course Outline

    The following is a course outline of what we will look at in class, and more detail is given in the sections of this Epi below. These will be steadily amended during the semester, which lasts for twelve weeks. Each section will therefore be covered in two weeks.

    1/ Economics in times of crisis: the 1970s and today's on-going economic crisis
    i) What is economics? What have you learned, and how does it correspond to the reality of your society of origin?
    ii) Inflation and the paradigm changes following the stagflation in the 1970s.
    ii) Complexity theory and the search for new ideas in today's global economy.

    2/ The neoliberal paradigm
    i) the primacy of monetary policy and the emergence of the Jackson Hole consensus;
    ii) market deregulation, privatisation and the weakening of labour;
    iii) New Public Management.

    3/ The "Washington Consensus", the end of alternative development theories, the "End of History" and "varieties of capitalism"
    i) From dependency theory and alternative development theories to the Washington Consensus.
    ii) The "End of History" and the emergence of "varieties of capitalism" literature.
    ii) New varieties of capitalism across the globe.

    4/ Money, financial globalisation and financial crises
    i) A return to the history and nature of money: the forgotten core of capitalism in the study of economics;
    ii) The rise of global finance;
    iiI) The 2007-2008 global financial crisis (GFC), Great Recession and today's "secular stagnation".

    5/ The changing International Political Economy (IPE)
    i) A review of the historical concepts of IPE (the American, British and radical schools);
    ii) Dany Rodrik's "Globalisation Paradox";
    iii) Brexit, Trump and the new disorder.

    6/ The contradictions of contemporary capitalism and the Covid-19 Crash
    i) The challenge of inequality;
    ii) Global warming and de-growth;
    iii) Feminist economics.

    Updated 21 December 2019