Economy Studies

Our economic system as it stands is doing growing damage to our life-world and the fabric of our societies. Though this is partially caused by pressures inherent in the system, the current curriculum makes things worse by assuming that markets always balance out, that ‘externalities’ are only minor issues, and that morality is neither present nor necessary in our economic behavior. As such, it fails to provide students with the intellectual tools to effectively address issues such as climate change and broader ecological damage, inequality and financial instability. It is abundantly clear that our current economic thinking has reached its limits, and requires an update.

The research project will, therefore, investigate how curricula could be updated and improved. This will be done by bringing together specialists from various economic and other social scientific fields and soliciting input from a large international network of academics and students. The result of the research project will be a thorough proposal for an interdisciplinary curriculum on how economic systems work.

Since the economy is not a stand-alone object of analysis (as the current, neoclassical mainstream assumes), this curriculum will analyse the economy as something that is embedded in and interwoven with other social institutions. Furthermore, this will be an interdisciplinary curriculum, incorporating theory from across the social sciences. The proposal will also contain an overview of eight core themes in economics, where each theme is coupled with the 2-4 of schools of thought which shed most light on these issues.

The student movement Rethinking Economics has been at the forefront of the campaign for a more realistic and socially relevant economics curriculum over the past years. To write this proposal, student activist leaders from Rethinking Economics in the Netherlands will work closely with colleagues from Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the UK.