Heterodox Economics Newsletter
Issue 338 January 27, 2025 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory
While the sad news of Richard Easterlin's passing reached my desk somewhat late, I had to pause for a moment to reflect on his impact on my own development in my more formative years. Although Easterlin is a highly unconventional economics author, he is hardly listed among key heterodox sources and thinkers. Nonetheless, I have to admit that the Easterlin paradox and related debates about its robustness and validity had an important impact in my formative years as it made clear to me that contentment, confidence and satisfaction are subtle and complicated things. In turn, they pose a conundrum to economists of all persuasions as, effectively, our notions of social welfare should to some extent encompass and capture these notions. Some approaches side-step these challenges and assume relevant answers have to be exogenously given, others take the underlying task more seriously and ask, how and under what conditions does material affluence contribute to the good life.
Moreover, Easterlin's famous paradox diagnoses a de-coupling of material growth (i.e. rising GDP) and subjective well-being, which serves to provoke all those, who assert that there is an unconditional, more or less linear mapping of material welfare to effective well-being. And indeed, while quality of life builds on material means in many ways, the actual relationship is more subtle. For instance, when correlating GDP with other dimensions included in the Human Development Index (just to take another established measure of well-being), we will find a strong correlation. But we will also find many non-random, structural outliers – countries that seemingly get less or less well-being out of an additional dollar of income (see also here for a more sophisticated example of this line of reasoning). For another, quality of life in many European cities is astonishingly high although many of these now witnessed decades of rather low growth or even stagnation.
In my very humble view, there is much to gain when inspecting and deliberating this question from a heterodox viewpoint. An immediate concern that comes fore in such a perspective is one shared with Easterlin namely that the distribution of income matters as much as its average so that conventional measures that neglect aspects of 'relative income' only capture half of the story. Another core point from a heterodox perspective is that social infrastructures matter as they have great influence on how the provisioning of daily necessities impacts well-being in terms of time, money and social inclusion. In other words, it is our foundational economy that matters greatly for determining how and to what extent material wealth translates into overall well-being. And, finally, issues of working time and quality of work co-determine well-being outcomes related to material consumption or comfort – how much and under what conditions, we earn the income to spend is the often overlooked other side of the coin (see here or here for possible starting points on this).
Now before this extended abstract about the intricate and highly inspiring relationship between the works of Easterlin in particular and heterodox economics in general evolves into a full paper, let me, before closing, report some editorial news: Even though we are no business economics newsletter we decided to diversify our (social-media)-portfolio ;-) We joined large parts of academia and resettled our major account from X to BlueSky (@heterodoxnews.bsky.social); we, however, will continue to post updates on new issues on X and Mastodon also and see where all this goes in the near future...
All the best,
Jakob
PS: The inaugural conference of the Center for Heterodox Economics (CHE) at Tulsa University on "What's up with capitalism?" that is taking place from 6th to 8th February will also be streamed online – how exciting ;-) More details on this can, of course, be found below.
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Table of contents
- Call for Papers
- 10th Latin American Conference on the History of Economic Thought: “The Role of the State in the History of Economic Thought: Controversies surrounding an Interdisciplinary Challenge" (Mexico City, November 2025)
- 15th Annual IIPPE Conference: "Immigration: Crisis of the World Capitalist System, Crisis for the World Capitalist System" (Ankara, September 2025)
- 18th AISPE Conference on "Labour Transformations in the History of Economic Thought" (Macerata, Oct. 2025)
- 22nd Annual Conference of the Italian Association for the History of Political Economy (STOREP) (Termoli, June 2025)
- 28th Annual Workshop on Economics with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (London, June 2025)
- 52nd Annual Meeting of the History of Economics Society (Richmond, June 2025)
- Conference on the Power of Marxist Thought (Toronto, Sept. 2025)
- Conference: "Behavioural Insights in Research and Policymaking" (Tartu, June 2025)
- Historical Social Research: Special Issue on "Perceptions of Wealth Inequality"
- Seventh Behavioral Macroeconomics Workshop: "Heterogeneity and Expectations in Macroeconomics and Finance" (Bamberg, June 2025)
- Sixth Nordic Post Keynesian Conference (Aalborg, April 2025)
- The Past of the Futures: Inquiries Taking the Lens of Economic Philosophy (Switzerland, September 2025)
- WINIR Young Scholars Pre-Conference Workshop on Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Institutions (Prague, Sept. 2025)
- Workshop: Europe as a Global Actor? A Historical Perspective (Rome, Sept. 2025)
- Call for Participants
- 16th PKES PhD Student Conference (Hertfordshire, June 2025)
- 2nd Summer School of Applied Economics for Latin America (EVEAAL) (Mexiko City, June 2025)
- AHE Postgraduate Workshop on Advanced Research Methods (Hybrid, April 2025)
- Call for Applications: Duke Summer Institute on the History of Economics (Durham, June 2025)
- Center for Heterodox Economics (CHE): Inaugural Conference 2025 (hybrid, Tulsa, Feb. 2025)
- Levy Institute Summer Seminar on Money, Finance, and Public Policy (Annandale-on-Hudson, June 2025)
- Oxford Summer School in Economic Networks (June 2025, Oxford)
- Summer School on "Markets and Governments: a Theoretical Appraisal" (Italy, June 2025)
- Summer School on "The History and Epistemology of Econometrics" (Vienna, July 2025)
- URPE: David Gordon Memorial Lecture (Online, January 2025)
- Webinar: "Shaping Provisioning Systems for Social-Ecological Transformation" (Online, January 2025)
- Conference Papers, Reports, and Podcasts
- Hierachies of Development Podcast: Season 3
- Smith and Marx Walk Into a Bar - Episode 86
- The Legal-Economic Nexus Podcast: History of Legal Change
- Job Postings
- University of Groningen, Netherlands
- Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, Austria
- Awards
- Call for Nominations: Alice Amsden Book Award 2025
- Call for Submissions: Egon Matzner Award for Socio-Economics 2025
- Call for Submissions: Stephen A. Resnick Graduate Student Essay Prize
- Journals
- Advances in Economic Education 3 (2)
- Cambridge Journal of Economics 49 (1)
- GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 33 (4)
- Globalizations 22 (2)
- International Critical Thought 14 (4)
- Journal of Economic Methodology 31 (4)
- Journal of the History of Economic Thought 46 (4)
- Metroeconomica 76 (1)
- New Political Economy 30 (1)
- PSL Quarterly Review 311
- Rethinking Marxism 36 (4)
- Review of African Political Economy 51 (182)
- Revue de la régulation 37
- Socio-Economic Review 23 (1)
- The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 31 (5)
- Books and Book Series
- Capitalism and Migration: Freeing and Hunting Labor Power Across the EU
- Changemakers. Radical Strategies for Social Movement Organising
- Climate Change is a Class Issue
- Decolonial Narratives in Economics: Alternative and Underrepresented Voices
- Elgar Encyclopedia on the Economics of Competition, Regulation and Antitrust
- Faith, Finance, and Economy
- Neoliberal Economic Policy and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism: Western Civilization at the Crossroads
- Radical Political Economics Principles, Perspectives, and Post-Capitalist Futures
- Regions, Cities and the Circular Economy: Theory and Practice
- Research Handbook on the Economics of Tax Havens
- Rethinking Economic Transformation for Sustainable and Inclusive Development: Turning a Corner?
- Social Cohesion and Resilience through Citizen Engagement: A Place-Based Approach
- The Bailout State: Why Governments Rescue Banks, Not People
- Transforming Poor Economies: Effective Development Strategies for Agriculture and Industry
- Why States Matter in Economic Development: The Socioeconomic Origins of Strong Institutions
- Heterodox Graduate Programs, Scholarships and Grants
- EPOG-JM — Economic POlicies for the Global bifurcation master programme
- IIPP/UCL Postgraduate Studies (London, Feb. 2025)
- University College Dublin, Ireland
- University of Bristol, UK
- Calls for Support
- Sign against the introduction of fees for submissions to Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (SCED)