Heterodox Economics Newsletter
Issue 320 December 04, 2023 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory
It is now close to two months that another moral conundrum arising from path-dependent, historical lines of conflict has unfolded into an escalating spiral of violence. Such lock-ins into violent escalation, even if they should only be temporary, always come at an incredible human cost and leave me largely speechless. However, nonetheless the underlying dynamics of such conflicts – both in terms of actual armed confrontations as well as with respect to the continous reinforcement of latent conflicts due to exclusionary politics – can at least be rationalized using a cornerstone of heterodox political economy, namely the idea of self-reinforcing effects.
While such self-reinforcing effects are typically emphasized in the context of path dependency, distributional analysis (e.g. the notion of cumulative advantage) or analysis related to power asymmetries (e.g. the notion of preferential attachment), they are also somewhat helpful to better understand escalating, violent developments, that have the potential to lead to long-term gridlocks of conflict and hate. Such gridlocks leave participants with very small (or even empty) sets of morally legitimate options, which often contributes to prolonging and intensifying the respective conflicts. Similarly, self-reinforcing effects can be referenced to provide a possible explanation for the empirical observation that the 'intensity of armed conflicts' seemingly follows a power law (see, e.g., here).
This view could maybe inspire a novel take on the definition of heterdox economis as the 'true dismal science'. In this vein, the task of heterodox economics is to explain why so many things, that irritate our Smithian passions for sympathy and justice, emerge in this world (without assuming that people are evil from the start). While this might sound all-too defeatist at first, one should note that an applied version of a so-defined science could be one that effectively contributes to more peace among humans as its core question of interest asks for the emergence of violence, oppression and injustice in the first place.
Also, in a more technical matter, such reflections could also motivate us to think more deeply about, how exactly, a general notion of self-reinforcing effects permeates much of heterodox economics and whether and to what extent it makes sense to synthesize different variants and applications to make this (allegedly) general principle more explicit and accessible.
All the best,
Jakob
PS: A maybe more optimistic news item in this issue concerns the fact that one of the homes of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter – the Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy at Johannes Kepler University Linz – will expand its staff and activities in the upcoming year. If you are interested in participating in this expansion, check out the related post below!
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Table of contents
- Call for Papers
- 2024 Annual IIPPE Conference in Political Economy (Istanbul, Sept. 2024)
- 20th International Conference of the Charles Gide Association (Bordeaux, June 2024)
- 22nd Conference of the International Association for the Economics of Participation (Italy, July 2024)
- Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics: Special Issue on "Gender approaches of Social Economy and State-Owned Enterprises"
- Conference "Institutions and Survival: Challenges for Sustainability" (Poland, February 2024)
- Conference on "Rethinking the History of Global Capitalism" (Rio de Janeiro, March 2024)
- Cuadernos de Economía: Special Issue "New Turn to the Left"
- European PPE Network 2024 Conference (Warwick, April 2024)
- Research in Political Economy: Special Issue on “Money, Value and Marx’s Circuit of Capital” (June 2024)
- Revue de la Régulation: Special Issue on "The wage-labour nexus: rediscovering why its issues are so central"
- Shirkers, Saboteurs, and Shoregazers: Work Refusal in Theory and Practice (Germany, February 2024)
- The Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) South American Conference (Brazil, May 2024)
- The Association for Evolutionary Economics South American Conference (Curitiba, May 2024)
- Women and the Economics of Social Cooperation and Organization (Online, February 2024)
- Call for Participants
- 9th International FMM Summer School on "Keynesian Macroeconomics and European Economic Policies" (July 2024, Berlin)
- Conference "Central Banks and the Common Good" (Paris, January 2024)
- Conference on "Plantationocene: Racial Capitalism, Land and Labour" (Brasília, Dec. 2023)
- Workshop: Alternative Approaches to Innovation in a Dynamic World (Madrid, March 2024)
- Conference Papers, Reports, and Podcasts
- Smith and Marx Walk into a Bar: A History of Economics Podcast: Episode 73
- Job Postings
- Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
- Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany
- HTW Berlin, Germany
- Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria
- Saint Peter's University, USA (1/2)
- Saint Peter's University, USA (2/2)
- University of Bath, UK
- University of Queensland, Australia
- Awards
- 2023 EAEPE prizes: Winners' statements
- Call for Nominations: ESHET Awards 2024
- Journals
- American Journal of Economics and Sociology 82 (5)
- Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics 94 (4)
- Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 43 (4)
- Ecological Economics 216
- European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies 20 (2)
- Historical Materialism, 31 (3)
- Industrial and Corporate Change 32 (6)
- International Review of Applied Economics 37 (5)
- Journal of Evolutionary Economics 33 (4)
- PSL Quarterly Review 76 (306)
- Research in Political Economy, 39: Value, Money, Profit, and Capital Today
- Review of International Political Economy 30 (6)
- Review of Keynesian Economics 11 (4)
- Books and Book Series
- Alvin Hansen: Seeking a Suitable Stabilization - An Academic Biography
- Empire of Normality Neurodiversity and Capitalism
- Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to Know
- Global Marx History and Critique of the Social Movement in the World Market
- Individuality and Entanglement: The Moral and Material Bases of Social Life
- Marx, A French Passion The Reception of Marx and Marxisms in France’s Political-Intellectual Life
- Media, Economy and Society: A Critical Introduction
- Sylvain Maréchal, The Godless Man
- The 'Labour Question' and the Genesis of Social Theory in Imperial Germany (1884-1899)
- The Penguin History of Economics
- The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Health and Healthcare
- The Spectre of Capital: Idea and Reality
- Urban Revolutions
- Heterodox Graduate Programs, Scholarships and Grants
- EPOG-JM: Economic POlicies for the Global bifurcation International Joint Master Degree
- Queen Mary University of London, UK
- Newsletters
- URPE Newsletter Announcement: Call for Submissions
- Websites
- AI Historian and the Turkish Political Economy Database, from the 1800s to date
- Heterodox Economics in the Media
- When economists shut off your water: A story about a misguided RCT