Heterodox Economics Research Articles

Disentangling the gender-differentiated determinants of home-based self-employment choices in Nigeria

Abstract Understanding gender disparities in home-based self-employment (HBS) and their links to homeownership and socioeconomic factors is crucial for advancing sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially Nigeria. This study uses data from the 2010/2011, 2012/13, 2015/16, and 2018/19 waves of the Nigerian General Household Survey (GHS). It employs random effect probit regression, the LASSO method for identifying predictors, and the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique to analyse gender differences in nonlinear binary outcomes. The results show that female business owners are more likely to engage in HBS compared to males, highlighting the importance of gender equality (SDG 5) and decent work (SDG 8). While male entrepreneurs are mainly driven by profit, females prioritise balancing paid and unpaid work, reflecting motivations beyond profit within heterodox economics. Significant gender-differentiated impacts are observed in relation to monthly rent, post-secondary education, dwelling space, energy, and regional locations. Notably, the presence of children significantly increases female involvement in HBS, a trend not seen among males. Marriage also influences female participation, suggesting that marital circumstances and economic benefits play a role. These findings highlight the need for policies addressing gender-specific constraints, challenging traditional gender roles, and promoting inclusive human development within the SDG framework.

Recent contributions to heterodox economics: meaning, ideology, and future

Recent contributions to heterodox economics: meaning, ideology, and future

The Place of World Economy Research in the Heterodox Analytics of Eurasian Integration

Aim. The article shows the increased productivity of heterodox approaches in the part of economics that studies the problems of the world economy, including regional integration.Methods. Illustrations of the apparent paradoxicity (for representatives of the economic mainstream) of geopolitical and world economic dynamics after 2022 are used to explain the importance of analyzing economic processes in the world economy, taking into account approaches of related social disciplines. The connection of some important scientific results of Russian scholars in the field of economics with the achievements of historians, orientalists and cultural scientists, representatives of economic and political geography and studies of international relations is shown.Results. The article describes the boundaries of the mathematization of the considered segment of heterodox analysis related to the unreliability of world economic statistics, with examples of the successful application of approximate (in a broad sense relative to mathematical terminology) calculations to assess shifts in foreign trade and foreign direct investment in contemporary Russia. The author demonstrates that the heterodox approach reveals the absence of contradiction between Russia’s intensification of Eurasian economic integration (including within the narrow limits of the EAEU) and our country’s efforts to build a more equitable polycentric world order, including strengthening the BRICS format. Greater interdisciplinary transparency for heterodox economists against the background of representatives of the mainstream, among other things, makes it possible to intensify fruitful cooperation between scientists and practical analysts representing analytical centers — think tanks of the post-Soviet space and neighboring countries in the interests of developing integration projects.Conclusions. The proposed methodological framework can enhance the effectiveness of the work of the analytical community of Russia and its friendly countries in obtaining new applied conclusions in the economic sphere, especially in terms of enhancing the effectiveness of integration efforts in Greater Eurasia. At the same time, heterodox economists are more receptive to cooperation with historians, political scientists and other analysts who have focused on Eurasian economic integration.

Paul Davidson (1930–2024) and the founding of Post Keynesian economics

Paul Davidson was a critical figure in the preservation of John Maynard Keynes’s ideas, sticking with them when they were out of fashion. He was also key to the survival of the Post Keynesian school. Davidson endorsed Keynes’s liquidity preference theory of interest, and he emphasized fundamental uncertainty as a central feature of economic reality, essential to making sense of a monetary economy. His greatest legacy is the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, the intellectual home for a generation of Post Keynesian economists. Without his efforts, the heterodox economics community would be significantly smaller than it is now.

Power of economics without power in economics?

Power relations dominate most social and economic processes. Despite its significance, however, the concept of structural power relations is often neglected in standard economics. Standard economics often confines itself to dissecting an idealised, abstract world, wherein power dynamics are abstracted from and seen as somewhat outside the economic realm. But, can economics be powerful in understanding, explaining and, ideally, tackling the multiple crises of our time without embedding the concept of power in its analysis? We suggest that the lack of consideration or insufficient engagement with power-related aspects in mostly standard approaches has far-reaching implications, as policies that neglect underlying power relations are not fit to address the crisis. This collection reopens the discussion of power in economics. Building on the talks and discussions at the 2023 EAEPE Pre-Conference that was held in Leeds, UK, this collection provides scholars an outlet to shed light on power structures within their field of research to highlight the complexity and interrelation of power and economics. We also conduct a literature analysis to identify different forms and categories of power used in the mainstream and heterodox economics literature with a particular focus on the different definitions and interpretations of the concept. We get our sample from the Web of Science (WoS) category ‘Economics’ in the WoS SSCI database, from 2010 to 2024. This approach provides a roadmap to better understand the different interpretations, definitions and conceptualisations of power within current literature.

From pursuit of self-interest to pursuit of happiness: Complementary or contradictory readings of “wealth of nations” and “theory of moral sentiments”?

In the face of global economic volatility and widening socioeconomic disparities, there is a growing call to reevaluate prevailing economic models. Heterodox economists and management scholars increasingly emphasise the significance of happiness and subjective well-being, advocating for a well-being economy that prioritises human welfare over traditional growth-centric approaches. This article contributes to this discourse by critically examining Adam Smith's seminal works, particularly "The Wealth; of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." It argues for a nuanced; understanding of economic growth and progress, integrating subjective well-being and ethical considerations into contemporary management frameworks. Despite limited attention in management literature, Smith's ideas about the relationship between wealth and happiness offer valuable insights for modern management and the emerging field of well-being economics. This article explores how the relationship between wealth and happiness in Smith's works holds promise for contemporary debates.

Health Economics in a World of Uneconomic Growth.

Multiple, accelerating and interacting ecological crises are increasingly understood as constituting a major threat to human health and well-being. Unconstrained economic growth is strongly implicated in these growing crises, and it has been argued that this growth has now become "uneconomic growth", which is a situation where the size of the economy is still expanding, but this expansion is causing more harm than benefit. This article summarises the multiple pathways by which uneconomic growth can be expected to harm human health. It describes how health care systems-especially through overuse, low value and poor quality care-can themselves drive uneconomic growth. Health economists need to understand not only the consequences of environmental impacts on health care, but also the significance of uneconomic growth, and pay closer attention to the growing body of work by heterodox economists, especially in the fields of ecological and feminist economics. This will involve paying closer heed to the existence and consequences of diminishing marginal returns to health care consumption at high levels; the central importance of inequalities and injustice in health; and the need to remedy health economists' currently limited ability to deal effectively with low value care, overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

Monetary sovereignty and the ‘Invisible Leviathan’: the politics of Marx’s theory of money

A debate has recently emerged in Heterodox Economics and Political Economy on the nature of monetary sovereignty, and whether it can be democratised and wielded to address the social and environmental catastrophes of our age. While Modern Monetary Theory understands monetary sovereignty to be relatively unconstrained, post-Keynesian, Structuralist and Critical Macro-Finance approaches point to various external limits on states’ abilities to govern money – from the international currency hierarchy to the offshore nature of money creation. This article evaluates this debate in light of Marx’s monetary theory. Under capitalism, money constitutes the social adhesive of a world of privatised production and mass dispossession, which conjures an anonymous, competitive logic that Marx terms the ‘law of value’. To function in this way, money must be underpinned by an historically novel form of state sovereignty. The state must both back money with its coercive powers and insulate monetary governance from popular forces, or else risk losing the confidence of the profit-driven private actors upon which money relies. Yet in exercising its sovereign capacity to govern domestic and international money relations, the state inadvertently reproduces the law of value on a global scale – an ‘Invisible Leviathan’ that subordinates states to its dictates. Contra the Heterodox literature, then, monetary sovereignty is not a vehicle for radical democracy or social/environmental justice, nor is it simply constrained by external limits. Instead, monetary sovereignty is innately a practice of depoliticisation that unwittingly produces a global logic of economic domination that binds states’ hands.

Exploring the neuropsychological basis of behavioral contagion during learning about another agent's social preferences: Evidence from an ERP study.

Social contagion is a pervasive phenomenon and an important social influence that involves the rapid dissemination (propagation) of behaviors, attitudes, emotions, or ideas from one person to another, often without conscious reflection or rational thought. This phenomenon is closely related to conformity, by which a person changes his/her original ideas and attitude and imitates certain behavior of others. Although some behavioral research has been carried out on contagion and conformity, there is very little neuropsychological understanding of these phenomena. Existing research on social influence and conformity has predominantly focused on tasks like mental rotation or rating tasks involving facial expressions, with fewer studies exploring risk preferences and temporal discounting. However, there is a notable gap in the literature when it comes to examining social influence and conformity using other‑regarding preference models derived from heterodox economics. To address this research gap, the present study investigates the neuropsychological underpinnings of social contagion by utilizing event‑related potentials (ERPs) recorded while subjects engage in mini‑dictator games. The behavioral analysis revealed that contagion had an impact on the participants' preferences, leading to a change in their choices. We observed a P300 component in the midline and right posterior during the time window of 200‑350 ms after stimulus onset, which showed a significant increase in mean amplitude when participants observed others' behavior, compared to when they made decisions based on their own preferences. Moreover, the lack of late positive potential in the time window of 500‑650 ms suggests that the presence of P300 may indicate difficulty in making decisions. In summary, by analyzing both behavioral and ERP data, this study may provide a more comprehensive understanding of the cognitive and neural processes that drive conformity and contagion behavior. Our analysis has the potential to inform policymakers in developing effective interventions for promoting positive social behaviors and reducing negative ones.

Reflections Upon Heterodox Economics: Legacy and Prospects

Abstract In this review article, I take three themes from Lynne Chester and Tae-Hee Jo’s edited collection Heterodox Economics: Legacy and Prospects. The first is Geoff Hodgson’s critique which I summarise thus: heterodox economics lacks consensus, coordination, and organizational coherence because it lacks a definition of heterodoxy. The second and third themes are pluralism and interdisciplinarity. But pluralism has a shortcoming: even a sophisticated structured pluralism would remain within the disciplinary boundary of (heterodox) economics and, therefore, lack valuable insights found in other social science disciplines. Whilst interdisciplinarity appears to offer a solution, it too has a shortcoming: it connects disciplines, whilst leaving the boundaries between them in place. Moreover, the majority of heterodox economists know that economic phenomena are not separate from, but are entangled with, myriad social phenomena, and if so, investigation might require going beyond interdisciplinarity, perhaps to transdisciplinarity. The conclusion draws all these strands together, to consider their implications for the future prospect of heterodox economics.

Where do the Pasinetti Rule and the Pasinetti Index Come from?

ABSTRACT The article describes the origins of the Pasinetti index and Pasinetti rule and links both notions to debates over concerns regarding which socio-economic income group in a modern capitalist economy was being hurt and which broad income class was benefiting from the high interest rate policy, especially during the Volcker era of the 1980s. These were statistical constructs as well as distinct normative concepts that resulted from a close reading of Pasinetti’s original writings published in 1980–81. The purpose of the Pasinetti index was to measure and monitor the actual transfer between the rentier and non-rentier sectors of an economy both cyclically and over the long term. As discussed in some detail, both authors of this article had directly participated in those debates and had basically initiated the early discussions around these concepts among post-Keynesians and other heterodox economists. The first part of our article, after the introduction, is primarily focused on what came to be called the Pasinetti rule, while the following section of the article recounts how the different variants of the Pasinetti index came to be constructed and used. We conclude with a discussion of the possible continued relevance of the Pasinetti norm in today’s world.

Finance, Financial Adjustments and Alternative Closures in Neo-Kaleckian Models: The Paradoxes of Thrift and Costs in the Long-Run

ABSTRACT Heterodox economists debate if Keynesian/Kaleckian or Marxian/Harrodian results apply in the long-run. This paper explores different financial mechanisms in neo-Kaleckian models with the: (1) traditional closure of an endogenous utilisation rate; and, (2) supermultiplier closure where the utilisation rate is restored to its normal degree in the long-run. Keynesian/Kaleckian results are obtained regardless of the assumptions on the utilisation rate. Attention is also given to circuitist intra-period endogenous money financing relations, and to financial adjustments that increase the elasticity of household portfolio adjustments and firm liability-side management.

Telling It Like It Is: Reflections of a Maverick Economist

Following the advice of institutionalist Wendell Gordon, the author aims to “tell it like it is” by reflecting on his own path to institutionalism, the economic contributions of post-Keynesian institutionalism, and some of the major issues that deserve institutionalists’ further attention. Several heterodox economists are identified as influences contributing to the making of this economic maverick, but so too are Barbara Jordan and Michael Harrington. Then attention is given to the institutionally focused pre-analytic vision of post-Keynesian institutionalism, the inescapable reality of business cycles in market-oriented economies, and the institutionalized myopia of money-manager capitalism. Some key issues warranting our further attention include the expansion of economic insecurity, the threat of authoritarianism, and the climate crisis.

Artificial Intelligence and the Productivity-Pay Gap in the USA: Industrial Insights and the Revival of Heterodox Ideas

This article aims to offer a heterodox perspective on the productivity-pay gap in the United States in light of the ongoing disruptive changes within leading industries driven by the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). We present robust arguments that the application of AI-type technologies across various industries and domains is likely to not only exacerbate the existing productivity-pay gap but also change the way this gap is generated. We suggest that deploying decision-making AI algorithms in economic processes could empower capital-technology owners at the expense of the traditional managerial technostructure, potentially re-establishing the possession of capital as the main driver of income inequality. In addressing the potential economic and social costs of the current trajectory of AI technologies, some of the major concepts in heterodox economics may prove useful.

A photographic essay on socio-economic organisation – temporary shelters in Kelowna, British Columbia (Canada)

The essay considers socio-economic organisation from the perspective of monopoly capitalism analysis, a strand of heterodox economics. The centre-piece of the essay is a photographic study of two temporary overnight shelters in Kelowna, one of the principal cities in British Columbia, Canada. Monopoly capitalism analysis has not previously drawn on photographic practices as an approach to inquiry. A characteristic of monopoly capitalist economies is that market-oriented, large corporations influence socio-economic organisation more generally. The essential practices of those corporations thereby penetrate the nooks and crannies of market economies. The essay is especially concerned with practices such as control, constraints on freedom, exercise of voice, and dehumanisation. The photographs and accompanying text – contextual discussions of monopoly capitalism and temporary shelters, and a caption for each image in the sequence – work together to show that traits of temporary overnight shelters in Kelowna are consistent with monopoly capitalist practices. It is suggested that such traits will be fossilised in the forever future of socio-economic systems, unless people’s awareness and challenge lead to choice of a different development path. The case-study demonstrates how photographs may enrich analysis of socio-economic organisation more widely, beyond the particular circumstances that it addresses.

Pengaruh ROA dan ROE Terhadap Harga Saham

This study aims to systematically review the future of economic education and identify the trends and implications for policy and practice. This study adopted bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software. The findings indicate that there has been a substantial movement over the last two decades regarding the theme of economic education. The top three countries—United States, Germany, and Indonesia contribute to this theme, whilst Universitas Negeri Malang, the University of Nebraska, and the University of Richmond are the three highest organizations that contributed to this scope during this period. The visualization from VOSviewer illustrates that the theme of economic education is linked with various dimensions. The frequency occurrence of this theme is often associated with financial literacy, pedagogy, pluralism, higher education, active learning, financial education, home economics education, teaching economics, economic literacy, heterodox economics, and entrepreneurship. The findings provide implications for concerning studies in this theme with a focus in shaping graduate students.

On the survival of a flawed theory of capital: mainstream economics and the Cambridge capital controversies

Abstract The Cambridge controversies on capital theory opposed heterodox economists, mainly from the University of Cambridge, UK, to mainstream economists, mostly based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. The controversies started in the 1950s and occupied the pages of some of the most influential journals. Their primary outcome was the broad acknowledgement of flaws, which we retrieve, in the concept of aggregate capital. Despite that acknowledgement, aggregate, homogeneous capital remains a staple of contemporary macroeconomics, as if the Cambridge controversies had never existed. To account for this apparent paradox is the aim of this article. We examine the arguments seeking to justify the enduring commitment to the aggregate capital approach and argue that they indicate an implicit commitment to instrumentalism. The indifference to the results of the Cambridge controversies is a consequence of methodological conformism and has shaky foundations.

Economics in Germany: About the Unequal Distribution of Power

This article analyzes the power relations in the field of German economics. By incorporating the capital and field theory of Pierre Bourdieu, the study investigates the distribution of economic, social, and symbolic capital on economists in Germany. In a first step, the three forms of capital have been defined and operationalized on publicly available information. This leads to eight main samples of economists. In a second step, information on these economists have been collected to derive indicators regarding their paradigmatic stance and institutional background. The findings indicate a monopolization of mainstream economics and concentration of resources on the large economic departments. Furthermore, these characteristics relate to an increased importance of Colander’s Edge, an almost complete marginalization of heterodox economics and a significant center-periphery disparity. Thus, in the field of economics in Germany, a social structural verticalization and elitism of universities as well as a paradigm monism can be observed.

Brevíssima história da teoria do desenvolvimento. De Schumpeter e Prebisch ao novo desenvolvimentismo

ABSTRACT Classical developmentalism was heterodox economics that showed countries require a moderate intervention of the state in the economy to industrialize and catch up. Growth depends on investments and on a satisfying expected rate of profit, which import tariffs legitimized by the infant industry argument assure. Latin American countries adopted this industrial policy from the 1950s and experienced high growth rates. But the infant argument loses validity with time. In the 1980s, under the pressure of the Global North, Latin American countries adopted the neoliberal reforms, and are quasi-stagnant since then. New developmentalism emerged in the 2000s, made the critique of conventional economics, proposed a new growth strategy focused on a competitive exchange rate, and legitimized the use of import tariffs with the Dutch disease argument.

Perdus dans l’espace : l’urgence pour les travaux sur la décroissance d’embarquer sur le « vaisseau Terre »

The proliferation of academic work on degrowth over the last twenty years has contributed to the creation of an increasingly robust body of knowledge. Heterodox economics has long been reluctant to address the issue, and now there are countless articles and books that deal with degrowth from solid theoretical references. Surprisingly, however, Kenneth Boulding’s contribution to the spaceship Earth remains insufficiently known and little used by researchers working on degrowth. This article will briefly review the value of this major contribution and then suggest how it could shed light on certain deleterious issues of infinite growth in a finite world.