Opinion

Steve Keen and IDEAnomics have launched a project to create a graphic version of Steve Keen’s book Debunking Economics – which is recommended and on our reading list – to try and make economic ideas outside the mainstream more accessible. This looks like a pretty cool project which should give heterodox ideas more exposure among students and the general public. They have also created this […]

Read the response to our 2014 report from the University of Manchester Economics Department here:

A recent post by blogger Tony Yates presents an opportunity for us to give a brief clarification of what we would like to see on the economics curriculum, and to debunk some common myths that seem to circulate among mainstream economists about campaigns like ours. This will only be a whistle-stop tour of the kind of stuff

Known chiefly as Karl Marx’ sidekick, Friedrich Engels was the other pioneer of post-Enlightenment communist philosophy. Engels and Marx worked together on nearly everything either of them produced – history had room to give only one of them the luxury of an ideological ‘-ism’, however. A work Engels did research and publish entirely on his own is The

Dame Nancy Rothwell, the President of Manchester University arrived at University Place yesterday to debate the purpose of education with hip-hop artist Akala, Steve Jones from the Manchester Institute of Education and Paul Cottrell, the former Head of Public Policy at the UCU, in talk hosted by Manchester’s Challenging Orthodoxies Society. The debate started with a brief

We are glad that the coverage of our society seems to have renewed debate about the state of economics, economists and economics education. In particular, we appreciate the thoughtful response our lecturer Peter Backus has given to our society’s general aims and arguments, which we published a short while ago on this blog. However, naturally, we have some things to say in response. This post will be loosely based around the same

Peter Backus, one of our lecturers here at Manchester, invites you to engage in an open discussion about the current standings of our Economics education. In this open letter to the PCES he has presented to us his personal opinion on the academic teaching of Economics. We believe an insight into such an alternative perspective

“Please know that this decision was not rash. In fact, it was anything but—it was completely devoid of emotion. I just made a series of quantitative calculations, culled from available OECDdata on comparable families and conservative estimates of future likelihoods. I then assigned weights to various “feelings” based on importance, as judged by the relevant scholarly

“…that’s what Economics is all about: understanding the material conditions of our existence, the jobs we do, the incomes we receive…things we buy…the role of governments in providing our rights…the right to avoid abject poverty- there is a challenge to understand the material conditions of our existence, so that we may make them better…we want

We’ve recently jumped across this rather interesting series of videos on website called Positive Money, aiming to strip away the layers of mystery that surround the banking system and roll out the very core of bankmoney as a real-life operation. A few key points are made: *The general idea of how money operates is known