Education

Following a successful inaugural Meeting of Young Minds in 2024, the Second annual Meeting of Young Minds on 17 – 19 February 2025 is geared to be an exciting and engaging gathering of future leaders in the field of economics.

Thirty Years of Indian Economic Reforms: Assessing the Growth and Development of Kerala

As young scholars we are confronted with many challenges: publishing, teaching, the job market, work-life balance and institutional barriers, often we face these demands alone and without much institutional or even moral support.

EEO-1 employment data document the vast over-representation of Asian Americans and vast under-representation of African Americans at tech companies in recent years. How did this happen?

EEO-1 employment data document the vast over-representation of Asian Americans and vast under-representation of African Americans at tech companies in recent years. How did this happen?

publishing • the job market • writing • teaching • mental health • work-life balance

On the occasion of the ASSA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting (Jan. 3-5), Peter Bofinger presents a “10 Best of” Mankiw list

Racial inequalities of wealth and income are pervasive. This episode of Debt Talks will feature a conversation with four prominent experts on the persistence of racial inequalities of wealth and income and the role of financial markets in shaping them.

Colleges and universities need to be saved, not only from financial ruin, but also, all too often, from themselves.

Economist Gordon Lafer describes a race against the education technology industry to do what’s right for America’s kids

The younger generation, already saddled with student debt and uncertain jobs, will pay a high price as the crisis unfolds.

Inequality, in many ways, may be the biggest question of our times. And yet it is a topic that is still underexplored in conventional economics curricula.

Stock buybacks are giveaways for greedy investors at the expense of everyone else.

Economists make what we do seem complicated, says Ha-Joon Chang. It’s not.

Hundreds of young scholars from all over Asia are coming together in Hanoi to discuss new economic thinking, present their research, and work with over 30 senior scholars. Join us there and become a part of YSI’s global community!

Economist Marie Mora discusses the deep economic crisis that has afflicted Puerto Rico for years

Andrea Gabor, author of “After the Education Wars,” discusses how California is pushing back on millionaire-driven charter schools. Will the rest of the America follow?

This year the YSI participation at the Trento Festival of Economics will be different. There will be no panels with talks that are too long, actually, there will be no talks at all… Welcome to The Trento Experiment!

Treating education like a market is all the rage. But it hurts students, and our society.

What is the relationship between pluralist economics and interdisciplinary socio-economics? How does pluralist academic teaching need to be structured in economics or business administration in order to be successful? What should interdisciplinary socio-economic study programs look like, and how should teacher training in the field be designed? What kinds of new study materials, textbooks, and teaching methods are required?

This paper examines the relationship between placement of publications in Top Five (T5) journals and receipt of tenure in academic economics departments.

Steve Keen: “What an education in economics does is make you into a zealot

Journal rankings are a rigged game. The blacklist of history of economic thought journals isn’t a fluke nor a conspiracy—it exposes how citation rankings really work

The Koch brothers scandal at George Mason University

The economist had to learn moral philosophy before anything else—an underpinning that’s still helpful for today’s students

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

The renowned feminist economist discusses the importance of heterodoxy, radicalism, and social justice to the discipline

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

Rob Johnson kicks off INET’s “Reawakening” conference with his take on how economists can win back the trust of a world that has rejected experts

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

The Festival for New Economic Thinking is a collaborative initiative of several organizations, and aims to bring together those who seek to improve how economics is taught, studied and practiced. 

The YSI Economics of Innovation Working Group in partnership with the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology is hosting a YSI Conference on “Innovation, Institutions and Governance”.

Mason doesn’t think teaching contending economic theories is effective, and sees the objective of introductory economics courses as teaching students basic tools to understand economic terminology and standard relationship between cause and effect.

McCloskey discusses her career, critiques of economics, and offers advice for young economists.

The Young Scholars Initiative and its working groups will be hosting meetings and discussions in and around the 2017 Trento Festival of Economics. 

Workshop of the YSI Africa Working Group 

“The humility to accept that economic propositions cannot be universal would save us from self-defeating arrogance.” Economist Amit Bhaduri adds his perspective to our Experts on Trial discussion.

In a recent interview at the INET offices in New York, Anwar Shaikh provided a background to the work and his life in this quest.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking, a global network of distinguished economists, is deeply concerned by the news of proposed legislation in Hungary’s National Assembly that would prevent the free functioning of the Central European University.

In the age of Adam Smith, an economics that masqueraded as natural science and excluded the human condition actually suited the interests of the landed and the wealthy

Explore your curiosity in economics in an open and critical community.

As part of our “Experts on Trial Series”, Antonella Palumbo argues for stripping away ‘scientific’ shibboleths that mask social and political choices

A reference guide to all Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) community presentations at the Eastern Economic Association’s (EEA) 2017 annual meeting

As part of our ongoing symposium “Experts on Trial”, Professor Sheila Dow argues that if voters have grown contemptuous of economists’ expertise, that’s because economics has been misrepresented as a technical subject separate from politics and moral judgments

From physicists to engineers to meds to plumbers: thoughts on Esther Duflo’s ASSA 2017 lecture on rediscovering the last art of economics

The prominence of the debate over ‘reswitching’ has obscured the importance of Piero Sraffa’s profound contribution to economics. It’s time to revisit and build on that body of work

Students in Europe have created an important resource for those seeking alternative curricular materials

Joe Earle, co-founder of The Post-Crash Economics Society, member of Rethinking Economics and co-author of the Econocracy, explains why his group is trying to democratize economics as a conversation and a policy–making process.

Is Market Capitalism simply an accident of certain factors that came together in the 19th and 20th centuries? Does the innovation of economics require a new economics of innovation? Is the study of economics deeply affected by the incentive structures faced by economists themselves, necessitating a study of the “economics of economics”?

There is a mix of common-sense opinions, political prejudices, conventional business practice, and pragmatic rules of thumb, supported in an ad hoc, opportunistic way by bits and pieces of economic theory.

On George Akerlof’s “The Market for Lemons”

Business school students are taught to extract resources instead of creating value.

New economic thinking has the potential to make political debates far more productive

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

A major shift is needed in the Econometrics curriculum for both graduate and undergraduate teaching to include modern topics.

Orthodox macroeconomics has become a place where visions die and hopes are banished, for both liberals and conservatives.

Join us for a reception at the ASSA conference in San Francisco

How much does the standard theory of externalities and public goods really say?

I describe the American economy in the twenty-first century as a dual economy in the spirit of W. Arthur Lewis.

This essay critically evaluates the benefits and costs of the dominant methodology in macroeconomics, the DSGE approach. Although the approach has led to great progress in some areas, it has also created biases and blind spots in the profession that hold back our understanding and our ability to govern the macroeconomy. There is great scope for progress in macroeconomics by judiciously pushing the boundaries of some of the methodological restrictions imposed by the DSGE approach.

Marc Lavoie discusses the methodological foundations of heterodox economics, and offers a very different model of money and credit, firms and pricing, consumer theory, effective demand and employment and growth theories.

Tania Singer on the key importance of understanding preferences and behavioral change.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has awarded $2 million in grants to fund 21 different projects as part of the latest round of its research grant program.

Good incentives are no substitute for good citizens.

The extremely wise Robert Skidelsky has an excellent rant against Anglo-Saxon economics departments

I first came across economics students’ campaigns to revolutionise their education in that bastion of radical thought: the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Among the areas left largely unscathed by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent never-­‐ending recession, the teaching of economics ranks high.

Hubris might well head the list

This panel covers the teaching of economics at the university level.

In the past three years, students around the world have turned the heat of scrutiny onto our economics departments. Our call is strikingly uniform across our diverse cultures and languages: we want critical debate back in the economics curriculum.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking held its sixth Annual Conference from April 8 to April 11, 2015, in collaboration with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

Do economists live in a world of their own?

Bill Mitchell presents a coherent analysis of how money is created, how it functions in global exchange rate regimes, and how the mystification of the nature of money has constrained governments, and prevented states from acting in the public interest.

Before reforming economics, we need to reform the discourse.

Can Economists Be Adequate Without Studying History?

Robert Skidelsky knocks the scientific halo off mainstream economists’ teaching and research

The financial crisis of 2008, and the subsequent worldwide economic depression and continuing dislocation, have made little to no impression on the way macroeconomics is taught at the university level, from Economics 101 through graduate school. It has been “business as usual’, which (it seems to me) means an almost studious avoidance of any attempt to acquire knowledge of how monetary economies actually work.

When the Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics (CORE) project launched on 11 November 2013 at Her Majesty’s Treasury in London, we promised that we would be ‘teaching economics as if the last three decades had happened’. The last six months have shown us that this is challenging but we are well on our way to doing it.

Economics has advanced an enormous distance from the Walrasian paradigm and the Neoclassical synthesis. However, undergraduate curriculums continue to heavily favour these views of what economics is and what tools it provides for understanding contemporarypublic problems.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking joined the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in holding its fifth Annual Conference from April 10 to April 12, 2014 in Toronto.

In response to widespread discontent among students, employers, and university teachers, a project to create a new core curriculum for economics was launched at a seminar hosted by HM Treasury today. The CORE curriculum project, funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, convened the meeting, which was attended by academics, policymakers, business leaders, and students from around the world.

“You are now leaving the world as you know it.”

The current economic and financial crisis has given rise to a vigorous debate about the state of economics, and the training which graduate and undergraduates economics students are receiving. Importantly, among those arguing most strongly for a change in the way that young economists are trained are the ultimate employers of these students, in both the private and the public sector. Employers are increasingly complaining that young economists don’t understand how the financial system actually works, and are ill-prepared to think about appropriate policies at a time of crisis.

Friedrich von Hayek described the economist’s task as demonstrating how little we really know about what we imagine we can design

What happens when professionals lose touch with the people they’re supposed to serve?

Ronald Coase, who passed away last week at age 102, spent his academic career swimming against the current.

The degree to which economics is isolated from the ordinary business of life is extraordinary and unfortunate.

Changing the incentives for how economists determine both the content of the subject and their approach to scientific research could increase the range of thinking in the profession

Economic theories are powerful things, to be used and misused. Those who write economic theory and do economic policy need to be aware of the consequences of what they are doing.

In this short interview, Institute co-founder George Soros tackles the question at the heart of the Institute’s mission: What’s wrong with economics and what can we do to change it?

“Four men sat at a table. Raised sixty floors above the city, they did not speak loudly as one speaks from a height in the freedom of air and space; they kept their voices low, as befitted a cellar.”

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many of our policy makers and top economists are still stumbling in the dark.

The recent debate about the reproducibility of the results published by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff offers a showcase for the importance of replication in empirical economics.

So why am I hopeful about the future?

At the heart of economics is a theory of action. It reflects views about how human beings make economic decisions and leads to an analysis of aggregate consequences.