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WEA eBooks

Finance as Warfare

Michael Hudson

The Scientist and the Church

Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan

The Economy of the Hamster

Mauro Gallegati

On the use and misuse of theories and models in economics

Lars Pålsson Syll

Bubble Economics: Australian Land Speculation 1830 – 2013

Paul D. Egan and Philip Soos

Developing an economics for the post-crisis world

Steve Keen

Nuevos paradigmas, desarrollo económico y dinámica social

Jorge Buzaglo

Statistical Foundations for Econometric Techniques

Asad Zaman

Wealth and Illfare: An Expedition through Real Life Economics

C. T. Kurien

Appreciating Mental Capital: What and Who Economists Should Also Study

Robert Locke

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real-worldeconomicsreview

issue no. 110

May 2025

download whole issue

The 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics:
an example of how conventional economics misrepresents reality
Ted Trainer 2

Why only innovations based on degrowth principles can stop
further ecological and social destruction
Felix van Hoften and Rob van der Rijt 10

Neoclassical economics drives environmental destruction
and social inequality
Mark Diesendorf 25

Absolute, global, authoritarian capitalism:
Approaching the last stop of the capitalist algorithm
Handy Hanappi 30

Underdevelopment: A forgotten concept
Fidel Aroche Reyes 46

Economics of Gaza
Junaid B. Jahangir 56

A heterodox commentary on the new cronavarius economy
Marc Pilkington 67

India: non-inclusive economic growth and a plague of rising inequality
Ahmad Seyf 86

Fostering critical inquiry:
Radical pedagogies in teaching the economics of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Ceyhun Elgin 98

End Matter 111

Issue 109–December 2025

Culture – the elephant in the room
Hardy Hanappi 22

The capitalization of everything
Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan 18

From the Bretton Woods system to global stagnation
Leon Podkaminer 29

The role of internetization in creating sustainable development for the Global South
Constantine E. Passaris 35

The works of Ha-Joon Chang
Junaid B. Jahangir 56

A critique of Saito’s Slow Down; How degrowth communism can save the Earth
Ted Trainer 73

Causality in economics and Keynes’ General Theory
George H. Blackford 84

End Matter 108

issue no. 108–July 2024

Issue no. 107 –March 2024

How entropy drives us towards degrowth
Crelis Rammelt2

"It is much too soon to act " – Economists and the climate change
Giandomenico Scarpelli8

Addressing the climate and inequality crises:
An emergency market plan simulation
Jorge Buzaglo and Leo Buzaglo Olofsgård21

Stocking up on wealth ... concentration
Blair Fix40

Back to the past: income distribution in America
Ahmad Seyf57

Blinded by science: The empirical case for quantum models in finance
David Orrell68

Critique of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged political economy and its place in neoliberalism
Rafael Galvão de Almeida and Leonardo Gomes de Deus80

Twenty-first century money: Huber and the case for CBDC
Jamie Morgan97

Book review of Chang, Ha-Joon, (2022) Edible Economics
Junaid Jahangir110

Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc.116

please support this open access journal

Issue no. 106
Special Issue and now this book

Economics and the Biophysical Limits to Economic Growth

How can we construct an economics consistent
with the biophysical limits to economic growth?

Invitation4
PART I – PARTIAL ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION

Economics as if ecology mattered
Peter Newell6

An economic theory compatible with life processes and physical laws
James Galbraith14

Supporting well-being over time: Six kinds of capital required in a healthy economy
Neva Goodwin20

Oikonomics and the limits to growth
Andri Werner Stahel28

Reorienting economics to social ecological provisioning
Clive L. Spash and Clíodhna Ryan35

An economics of deep transformations
Hubert Buch-Hansen, Iana Nesterova, Max Koch43

Will economics ever become more...ecological?
Richard Parker48

Towards a relational economics
Tony Lawson55

Putting energy back into economics
Steve Keen65

Against the clock: Economics 101 and the concept of time
Jamie Morgan 79

The adoption of "complexity" in economics
Maria Alejandra Madi88

Biophysical limit and metabolic growth
Ping Chen94

Complex economies embedded in the biosphere with the commons restored
Geoff Davies107

Sharing planet Earth: overcoming speciesism in economics
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath114

PART TWO: BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS

On capitalogenic climate crisis
Jason W. Moore124

Unlimited limits and the challenges of living in reciprocity with nature
Richard Norgaard135

Positivism and the plight of the planet
Asad Zaman140

Economics needs to ditch most of what it does and . . . .
Heikki Patomäki149

Economics of abundance with degrowth
Susan Paulson158

Who gets what, how and why? The system of provision approach
Kate Bayliss and Ben Fine167

Liveability within planetary limits
Luca Calafati and Karel Williams 173

Demographics, the economy and the environment: an MMT approach
Randall Wray and Yeva Nersisyan180

On ecology and economics
Victor Beker189

Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc.196

Issue no. 100 – 30 June 2022

Introduction to RWER issue 100 3

Real Science Is Pluralist issue no. 5 – 2001
Edward Fullbrook 5

Is There Anything Worth Keeping in Standard Microeconomics? issue no. 12 – 2002
Bernard Guerrien 11

How Reality Ate Itself: Orthodoxy, Economy & Trust issue no. 18 – 2003
Jamie Morgan 14

What is Neoclassical Economics? issue no. 6 – 2006
Christian Arnsperger and Yanis Varoufakis 20

A financial crisis on top of the ecological crisis: Ending the monopoly of neoclassical economics issue no. 49 – 2009
Peter Söderbaum 30

U.S. "quantitative easing" is fracturing the Global Economy issue no. 55 – 2010
Michael Hudson 41

Capitalism and the destruction of life on Earth: Six theses on saving the
humans issue no. – 64
Richard Smith 53

Secular stagnation and endogenous money issue no. 66 – 2014
Steve Keen 81

Piketty and the resurgence of patrimonial capitalism issue no. 69 – 2014
Jayati Ghosh 92

Capital and capital: the second most fundamental confusion issue no. 69 – 2014
Edward Fullbrook 99

Deductivism – the fundamental flaw of mainstream economics issue no. 74 – 2016
Lars Pålsson Syll 112

Radical paradigm shifts issue no. 85 – 2018
Asad Zaman 134

Growthism: its ecological, economic and ethical limits issue no. 87 – 2019
Herman Daly 139

Producing ecological economy issue no. 87 – 2019
Katharine N. Farrell 154

Economism and the Econocene: a coevolutionary interpretation issue no. 87 – 2019
Richard B. Norgaard 164

Inequality challenge in pursued economies issue no. 92 – 2021
Richard C. Koo 184

What is economics? A policy discipline for the real world issue no. 96 – 2021
James K. Galbraith 208

Consumerism and the denial of values in economics issue no. 96 – 2021
Neva Goodwin 224

Of Copernican revolutions – and the suddenly-marginal marginal mind at the dawn of the Anthropocene issue no. 96 – 2021
Richard Parker 242

Postscript: RWER is for everyone and no one
Jamie Morgan 264

Issue no. 99 – 24 March 2022

Issue no. 98 – 15 December 2021

download whole issue

Issue no. 97 – 22 September 2021

Issue no. 96 – 29 July 2021

Issue no. 95 – 22 March 2021

Issue no. 94 -22 March 2021

Alarm. The evolutionary jump of global political economy needed2
Hardy Hanappidownload

Neoliberalism must die because it does not serve humanity27
Nikolaos Karagiannisdownload

Climate arsonist Xi Jinping: a carbon-neutral China with a 6% growth rate?32
Richard Smithdownload

All the good things a digital euro could do – and all the bad things it will53
Norbert Häringdownload

Is economics a science?61
Andri W. Staheldownload

Private equity and public problems in a financialized world: an interview with Rosemary Batt83
Rosemary Batt and Jamie Morgandownload

Macro: understanding quantitative easing109
Edward Fullbrookdownload

The hemispheres of finance: GDP and non-GDP finance113
Joseph Huberdownload

The digital twin of the economy: proposed tool for policy design and evaluation140
Patrick Pobudadownload

Heterodoxy, positivism and economism.
On the futility of overcoming neoliberalism on positive grounds149
Ulrich Thielemanndownload

Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc.186

Issue no. 93 –28 September 2020

Why are the rich getting richer while the poor stay poor?

Andri W. Staheldownload

Machina-economicus or homo-complexicus:

Artificial intelligence and the future of economics?

Gregory A. Danekedownload

Maybe there never was a unipower

John Benedettodownload

Empirical rejection of mainstream economics’ core postulates –

on prices, firms’ profits and markets structure

Joaquim Vergés-Jaimedownload

Humanism or racism: pilot project Europe at the crossroads

Hardy Hanappidownload

Towards abolishing the institution of renting persons:

A different path for the Left

David Ellermandownload

Simpler way transition theory

Ted Trainerdownload

Book Review

Degrowth: necessary, urgent and good for you

Jamie Morgandownload

Minimum wages and the resilience of neoclassical labour market economics.

Some preliminary evidence from Germany

Arne Heisedownload

Prelude to a critique of the Ricardian Equivalence Doctrine

Leon Podkaminerdownload

Public debt "causing" inflation? Very unlikely

Leon Podkaminerdownload

Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc.

Issue no. 92 –29 June 2020

Special Issue – The Inequality Crisis

The three options: an introduction

Edward Fullbrookdownload

Rethinking the word economy as a two-block hierarchy

Robert Wadedownload

Inequality in a time of pandemic

Jayati Ghoshdownload

The United States of Inequality

David Rucciodownload

Fixing capitalism: stopping inequality at its source

Dean Bakerdownload

Inequality challenge in pursued economies

Richard Koodownload

Inequality under globalization: state of knowledge and implications for economics

James Galbraith and Jaehee Choidownload

Thomas Piketty’s changing views on inequality

Steve Pressmandownload

Inequality: What we think, what we don’t think and why we acquiesce

Jamie Morgandownload

The art of balance: The search for equaliberty and solidarity

Peter Radforddownload

Globalization, digitization, shareholder capitalism and the summits of contemporary wealth

David A Westbrookdownload

Poverty and income inequality: a complex relationship

Victor A. Bekerdownload

The inequalities that could not happen: What the Cold War did to economics

Erik Reinertdownload

I Love You - investing for intergenerational wellbeing

Girol Karacaoglu download

Inequality in development: the 2030 Agenda, SDG 10 and the role of redistribution

Holger Apeldownload

Inequality and the case for UBI

Geoff Crockerdownload

Inequality and morbid symptoms of a financialised system

Ann Pettifordownload

Why COVID-19 Is the Great Unequalizer

Marshall Auerbackdownload

Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc.

Issue no. 91 –16 March 2020download whole issue

Complexity, the evolution of macroeconomic thought, and micro foundations2

David Colanderdownload

Models and reality: How did models divorced from reality become epistemologically acceptable?20

Asad Zamandownload

ECONOMICS 101 (editors invite more papers on Economics 101)45

The value of "thinking like an economist"

Bernard C. Beaudreaudownload

An essay on the putative knowledge of textbook economics53

Lukas Bäuerledownload

World population: the elephant in the living room70

Theodore P. Lianosdownload

The carbon economy – rebuilding the building blocks of economics and science83

John E. Coulterdownload

Breaking the golden handcuffs: recreating markets for tenured faculty91

M. Shahid Alamdownload

Reinforcing the Euro with national units of account102

Gerald Holthamdownload

Neoliberalism vs. China as model for the developing world108

Ali Kadridownload

Classifying "globally integrated" production firms from a worker/citizen perspective128

John B. Benedettdownload

REVIEW ESSAY

Tony Lawson, economics and the theory of social positioning132

Jamie Morgandownload

INTERVIEW

Ecological and feminist economics: an interview with Julie A. Nelson146

Julie A. Nelson and Jamie Morgandownload

Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc.154

Issue no. 90 –9 December 2019download whole issue

Making America great again2
Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzandownload

American trade deficits and the unidirectionality error13
Kenneth Austindownload

The "Nobel Prize" for Economics 2019... illustrates the nature and inadequacy of conventional economics
Ted Trainerdownload 41

Greenwish: the wishful thinking undermining the ambition of sustainable business47
Duncan Austindownload

An evolutionary theory of resource distribution65
Blair Fixdownload

The case for the ontology of money as credit: money as bearer or basis of "value"98
Phil Armstrong and Kalim Siddiquidownload

Cross-current, or change in the direction of the mainstream?119
Arthur M. Diamond, Jrdownload

Negative natural interest rates and secular stagnation: much ado about nothing?126
Leon Podkaminerdownload

BOOK REVIEW
John Komlos's Foundations of Real-World Economics: What every economics student needs to know
Alan Freemandownload 133

INTERVIEW
The importance of ecological economics: An interview with Herman Daly137
Herman Daly and Jamie Morgandownload

Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc.155

Issue no. 89 – 3 October 2019

Special Issue: Modern monetary theory and its critics

Issue no. 87– 19 March 2019

Special Issue: ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Economics and the Ecosystem

Index Part 2

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Editor: Edward Fullbrook

Associate Editor: Jamie Morgan

Board of Editors

Nicola Acocella, Italy, University of Rome

Robert Costanza, USA, Portland State University

Wolfgang Drechsler, Estonia, Tallinn Uni. of Technology

Kevin Gallagher, USA, Boston University

Jo Marie Griesgraber, USA, New Rules for Global

Finance Coalition

Bernard Guerrien, France, Uni. Paris 1 Pantheon

Michael Hudson, USA, Uni. of Missouri at Kansas City

Anne Mayhew, USA, University of Tennessee

Gustavo Marques, Argentina, Universidad de Buenos Aires

Julie A. Nelson, USA, Uni. of Massachusetts, Boston

Paul Ormerod, UK, Volterra Consulting

Richard Parker, USA, Harvard University

Ann Pettifor, UK, Policy Research in Macroeconomics

Alicia Puyana, Mexico, Latin Am. School of Social Sciences

Jacques Sapir, France, Ecole des hautes etudes en

sciences sociales

Peter Soderbaum, Sweden, School of Sustainable

Development of Society and Technology

Peter Radford, USA, The Radford Free Press

David Ruccio, USA, Notre Dame University

Immanuel Wallerstein, USA, Yale University

PAST CONTRIBUTORS:James Galbraith, Frank Ackerman, André Orléan, Hugh Stretton, Jacques Sapir, Edward Fullbrook, Gilles Raveaud, Deirdre McCloskey, Tony Lawson, Geoff Harcourt, Joseph Halevi, Sheila C. Dow, Kurt Jacobsen, The Cambridge 27, Paul Ormerod, Steve Keen, Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Emmanuelle Benicourt, Le Movement Autisme-Economie, Geoffrey Hodgson, Ben Fine, Michael A. Bernstein, Julie A. Nelson, Jeff Gates, Anne Mayhew, Bruce Edmonds, Jason Potts, John Nightingale, Alan Shipman, Peter E. Earl, Marc Lavoie, Jean Gadrey, Peter Söderbaum, Bernard Guerrien, Susan Feiner, Warren J. Samuels, Katalin Martinás, George M. Frankfurter, Elton G. McGoun, Yanis Varoufakis, Alex Millmow, Bruce J. Caldwell, Poul Thøis Madsen, Helge Peukert, Dietmar Lindenberger, Reiner Kümmel, Jane King, Peter Dorman, K.M.P. Williams, Frank Rotering, Ha-Joon Chang, Claude Mouchot, Robert E. Lane, James G. Devine, Richard Wolff, Jamie Morgan, Robert Heilbroner, William Milberg, Stephen T. Ziliak, Steve Fleetwood, Tony Aspromourgos, Yves Gingras, Ingrid Robeyns, Robert Scott Gassler, Grischa Periono, Esther-Mirjam Sent, Ana Maria Bianchi, Steve Cohn, Peter Wynarczyk, Daniel Gay, Asatar Bair, Nathaniel Chamberland, James Bondio, Jared Ferrie, Goutam U. Jois, Charles K. Wilber, Robert Costanza, Saski Sivramkrishna, Jorge Buzaglo, Jim Stanford, Matthew McCartney, Herman E. Daly, Kyle Siler, Kepa M. Ormazabal, Antonio Garrido, Robert Locke, J. E. King, Paul Davidson, Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Kevin Quinn, Trond Andresen, Shaun Hargreaves Heap, Lewis L. Smith, Gautam Mukerjee, Ian Fletcher, Rajni Bakshi, M. Ben-Yami, Deborah Campbell, Irene van Staveren, Neva Goodwin, Thomas Weisskopf, Mehrdad Vahabi, Erik S. Reinert, Jeroen Van Bouwel, Bruce R. McFarling, Pia Malaney, Andrew Spielman, Jeffery Sachs, Julian Edney, Frederic S. Lee, Paul Downward, Andrew Mearman, Dean Baker, Tom Green, David Ellerman, Wolfgang Drechsler, Clay Shirky, Bjørn-Ivar Davidsen, Robert F. Garnett, Jr., François Eymard-Duvernay, Olivier Favereau, Robert Salais, Laurent Thévenot, Mohamed Aslam Haneef, Kurt Rothschild, Jomo K. S., Gustavo Marqués, David F. Ruccio, John Barry, William Kaye-Blake; Michael Ash, Donald Gillies, Kevin P.Gallagher, Lyuba Zarsky, Michel Bauwens, Bruce Cumings, Concetta Balestra, Frank Fagan, Christian Arnsperger, Stanley Alcorn, Ben Solarz, Sanford Jacoby, Kari Polanyi, P. Sainath, Margaret Legum, Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, Igor Pauno, Ron Morrison, John Schmitt, Ben Zipperer, John B. Davis, Alan Freeman, Andrew Kliman, Philip Ball, Alan Goodacre, Robert McMaster, David A. Bainbridge, Richard Parker, Tim Costello, Brendan Smith, Jeremy Brecher, Peter T. Manicas, Arjo Klamer, Donald MacKenzie, Max Wright, Joseph E. Stiglitz. George Irvin, Frédéric Lordon, James Angresano, Robert Pollin, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, Dani Rodrik, Marcellus Andrews, Riccardo Baldissone, Ted Trainer, Kenneth J. Arrow, Brian Snowdon, Helen Johns, Fanny Coulomb, J. Paul Dunne, Jayati Ghosh, L. A Duhs, Paul Shaffer, Donald W Braben, Roland Fox, Marco Gillies, Joshua C. Hall, Robert A. Lawson, Will Luther, JP Bouchaud, Claude Hillinger, George Soros, David George, Alan Wolfe, Thomas I. Palley, Sean Mallin, Clive Dilnot, Dan Turton, Korkut Ertürk, Gökcer Özgür, Geoff Tily, Jonathan M. Harris, Thomas I. Palley, Jan Kregel, Peter Gowan, David Colander, Hans Foellmer, Armin Haas, Alan Kirman, Katarina Juselius, Brigitte Sloth, Thomas Lux, Luigi Sapaventa, Gunnar Tómasson, Anatole Kaletsky, Robert R Locke, Bill Lucarelli, L. Randall Wray, Mark Weisbrot, Walden Bello, Marvin Brown, Deniz Kellecioglu, Esteban Pérez Caldentey, Matías Vernengo, Thodoris Koutsobinas, David A. Westbrook, Peter Radford, Paul A. David, Richard Smith, Russell Standish, Yeva Nersisyan, Elizabeth Stanton, Jonathan Kirshner, Thomas Wells, Bruce Elmslie, Steve Marglin, Adam Kessler, John Duffield, Mary Mellor, Merijn Knibbe,Michael Hudson, Lars Pålsson Syll, Korkut Erturk, Jane D’Arista, Richard Smith, Ali Kadri, Egmont Kakarot-Handtke, Ozgur Gun, George DeMartino, Robert H. Wade, Silla Sigurgeirsdottir, Victor A. Beker, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Ali Kadri, Egmont Kakarot-Handtke, Ozgur Gun, George DeMartino, Robert H. Wade, Silla Sigurgeirsdottir, Victor A. Beker, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Dietmar Peetz, Heribert Genreith, Mazhar Siraj, Ted Trainer, Hazel Henderson, Nicolas Bouleau, Geoff Davies, D.A. Hollanders, , Richard C. Koo,Jorge Rojas, Marshall Auerback, Bill Lucarelli, Robert McMaster, Fernando García-Quero, Fernando López Castellano, Robin Pope and Reinhard Selten, Patrick Spread , Wilson Sy, Esteban Pérez-Caldentey, Trond Andresen, Fred Moseley, Claude Hillinger, Shimshon Bichler, Johnathan Nitzan, Nikolaos Karagiannis, Alexander G. Kondeas, Roy H. Grieve, Samuel Alexander, Asad Zaman, L. Frederick Zaman, Avner Offer Jack Reardon, Yinan Tang, Wolfram Elsner, Torsten Heinrich, Ping Chen, Stuart Birks, Arne Heise, Mark Jablonowski, Carlos Guerrero de Lizardi, Norbert Häring, William White, Jonathan Barzilai, David Rosnick, Alan Taylor Harvey, David Hemenway, Ann Pettifor, Dirk Helbing, Alan Kirman, Douglas Grote, Brett Fiebiger, Thomas Colignatus, M. Shahid Alam,Bryant Chen, Judea Pearl, John Pullen, Tom Mayer, Thomas Oechsle, Emmanuel Saez, Joseph Noko, Joseph Huber, Hubert Buch-Hansen, Brendan Sheehan, C P Chandrasekhar, Heikki Patomäki, Romar Correa, Piet-Hein van Eeghen, Max Koch, John Robinson, Oscar Ugarteche, Taddese Mezgebo, Donald Katzner, Crelis F. Rammelt, Phillip Crisp, John B. Benedetto, Heikki Patomäki, Alicia Puyana Mutis, Leon Podkaminer, Michael Kowalik, Mohammad Muaz Jalil, José A. Tapia, Robert W. Parenteau, Alan Harvey, C. T. Kurien, Ib Ravn, Tijo Salverda, Holger Apel, John Jeffrey Zink, Severin Reissl, Christian Flamant, Rainer Kattel, Amit Bhaduri, Kaustav Banerjee, Zahra Karimi Moughari, David R Richardson, Emil Urhammer, Michel Gueldry, Rüya Gökhan Koçer, Hee-Young Shin, Kevin Albertson, John Simister, Tony Syme, Geoff Tily, Ali Abdalla Ali, Alejandro Nadal, Steven Klees, Gary Flomenhoft, Bernard C. Beaudreau, William R. Neil, John B. Benedetto, Ricardo Restrepo Echavarría, Carlos Vazquez, Karen Garzón Sherdek, Paul Spicker, Mouvement des étudiants pour la réforme de l’enseignement en économie, Suzanne Helburn, Martin Zerner, Tanweer Akram, Nelly P. Stromquist, Sashi Sivramkrishna, Ewa Anna Witkowska, Ken Zimmerman, Mariano Torras, C.P. Chandrasekhar, Thanos Skouras, Diego Weisman, Philip George, Stephanie Kelton, Luke Petach, Jørgen Nørgård, Jin Xue, Tim Di Muzio, Leonie Noble, Kazimierz Poznanski, Muhammad Iqbal Anjum, Pasquale Michael Sgro, June Sekera, Michael Joffe, Basil Al-Nakeeb, John F. Tomer, Adam Fforde, Paulo Gala, Jhean Camargo,Guilherme Magacho, Frank M. Salter, Michel S. Zouboulakis, Prabhath Jayasinghe, Robert A. Blecker, Isabel Salat, Nasos Koratzanis, Christos Pierros, Steven Pressman, Eli Cook, John Komlos, J.-C. Spender, Yiannis Kokkinakis, Katharine N. Farrell, John M. Balder, Blair Fix, Constantine E. Passaris, Michael Ellman, Nuno Ornelas Martins, Jason Hickel, Eric Kemp-Benedict, Sivan Kartha, Peter McManners, Richard B. Norgaard, William E. Rees, Joachim H. Spangenberg, Lia Polotzek, Per Espen Stoknes, Imad A. Moosa, Salim Rashid, Richard Vahrenkamp, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Michalis Nikiforos, and Gennaro Zezza, Abderrazak Belabes, Phil Armstrong, Bruno Bonizzi, Annina Kaltenbrunner, Jo Michell, Dirk H. Ehnts, Maurice Höfgen, Richard Murphy, Louis-Philippe Rochon, Malcolm Sawyer, Jan Toporowski, Kenneth Austin, Duncan Austin, Kalim Siddiqui, Arthur M. Diamond, Jr., Theodore P. Lianos, John E. Coulter, Gerald Holtham, Jaehee Choi, Girol Karacaoglu, Geoff Crocker, Andri W. Stahel, Gregory A. Daneke, Joaquim Vergés-Jaime, Hardy Hanappi. Rosemary Batt, Patrick Pobuda, Ulrich Thielemann, Tanja von Egan-Krieger, Steve Roth, Ron Wallace.

Thoughts that led to

the creation of this journal

". . . economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems"

Milton Friedman

" [Economics as taught] in America's graduate schools... bears testimony to a triumph of ideology over science."
Joseph Stiglitz

"Existing economics is a theoretical [meaning mathematical] system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world"

Ronald Coase

" We live in an uncertain and ever-changing world that is continually evolving in new and novel ways.Standard theories are of little help in this context.Attempting to understand economic, political and social change requires a fundamental recasting of the way we think"

Douglass North

"Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas [...] Year after year economic theorists continue to produce scores of mathematical models and to explore in great detail their formal properties; and the econometricians fit algebraic functions of all possible shapes to essentially the same sets of data"

Wassily Leontief

" Today if you ask a mainstream economist a question about almost any aspect of economic life, the response will be: suppose we model that situation and see what happens...modern mainstream economics consists of little else but examples of this process"

Robert Solow

"Economics is supposed to be social science, i.e. an intellectual discipline resting upon empirically-observed facts, in which mathematics and conceptual frameworks are tools for understanding. But in contemporary mainstream economics, the tools are often in the driver's seat, declaring evident facts impossible and reducing the subtleties of the real world to whatever clockwork economists best know how to build."

Ian Fletcher

"Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing."
Mark Blaug

" . . . the close to monopoly position of neoclassical economics is not compatible with normal ideas about democracy.Economics is science in some senses, but is at the same time ideology.Limiting economics to the neoclassical paradigm means imposing a serious ideological limitation.Departments of economics become political propaganda centers . . ."
Peter Söderbaum

" Economics students . . . graduate from Masters and PhD programs with an effectively vacuous understanding of economics, no appreciation of the intellectual history of their discipline, and an approach to mathematics that hobbles both their critical understanding of economics and their ability to appreciate the latest advances in mathematics and other sciences.A minority of these ill-informed students themselves go on to be academic economists, and they repeat the process.Ignorance is perpetuated"

Steve Keen

" The human economy has passed from an "empty world" era in which human-made capital was the limiting factor in economic development to the current "full world" era in which remaining natural capital has become the limiting factor "

Robert Costanza

"Most courses deal with an ‘imaginary world,’ and have no link whatsoever with concrete problems."
Emmanuelle Benicort

" All of these textbooks fail to explain how prices are determined in ‘markets’’ and thus how markets work.Where do prices come from?Who determines them?How do they fluctuate?These questions are never addressed, even though it is through the price mechanism that the ‘invisible hand’ is supposed to operate."
Le Mouvement Autisme-Économie

" . . . mainstream economists seek knowledge through numbers to stop the messy reality of people, processes and politics dirtying their invisible hands."
Alan Shipman

" Multinationals are everywhere except in economic theories and economics departments."

Grazia Ietto-Gillies

". . . the economist must engage him or herself as a citizen with convictions regarding the public good and ways of treating it, rather than as the holder of universal truth that he or she substitutes for discussion in order to impose it on us all."
André Orléan

" The Taliban, and its variety of fundamentalist thinking, has been the most controlling and oppressive regime with regard to women in contemporary times.Contemporary academic economics, and contemporary global economic policies, are gripped by other rigidities of thinking – what George Soros has dubbed ‘market fundamentalism.’Fantasies of control are operative in both phenomena, and gender is far from irrelevant to understanding their power, and their solution."
Julie A. Nelson

" There is an urgent need for a more realistic economics of the environment, with theories and analyses that can help to create environmentally sustainable economic activity."

Frank Ackerman

"Modern economics is not very successful as an explanatory endeavour. This much is accepted by most serious commentators on the discipline, including many of its most prominent exponents"

Tony Lawson

" Because mathematics has swamped the curricula in leading universities and graduate schools, student economists are neither encouraged nor equipped to analyze real world economies and institutions."

Geoffrey M. Hodgson

" . . . the concepts of uneconomic growth, accumulating illth, and unsustainable scale have to be incorporated in economic theory if it is to be capable of expressing what is happening in the world. This is what ecological economists are trying to do."

Herman E. Daly

" The application of mathematics to economics has proved largely unsuccessful because it is based on a misleading analogy between economics and physics. Economics would do much better to model itself on another very successful area, namely medicine, and, like much of medicine, to adopt a qualitative causal methodology."

Donald Gillies

" Economic history courses have been disappearing from classrooms across the world. Once a compulsory part of economics education, they have been relegated to the remote corners of ‘options’ and even closed down."

Ha-Joon Chang

" In Smith is a forgotten lesson that the foundation of success in creating a constructive classical liberal society lies in the individuals’ adherence to a common social ethics. According to Smith, virtue serves as ‘the fine polish to the wheels of society’ while vice is ‘like the vile rust, which makes them jar and grate upon one another.’ Indeed, Smith sought to distance his thesis from that of Mandeville and the implication that individual greed could be the basis for social good. Smith’s deistic universe might not sit well with those of post-enlightenment sensibilities, but his understanding that virtue is a prerequisite for a desirable market society remains an important lesson. For Smith ethics is the hero-not self-interest or greed-for it is ethics that defend social intercourse from the Hobbesian chaos."

Charles K. Wilber

". . . conventional economics . . . remains fixated on the view that economics is the physics of society.In other words, most of the profession behaves as if there were a single universally valid view of the world that needs only to be applied."

Paul Ormerod