Heterodox Economics 2026-2027

This course presents a range of “heterodox” approaches to economic analysis. The financial crisis of 2008, and the recession that followed, raised serious questions about the self-professed superiority of standard economic analysis. It stimulated criticism of the uniformity of views that characterises mainstream economics and prompted a renewal of interest in alternative economic perspectives and analyses that had been marginalised in the economics discipline. The objective of this course is to introduce students to these alternative perspectives on political economy.

One part of the course, taught by Professor O’Sullivan, will focus on debates about fundamental aspects of economic activity that emerged early in the development of political economy as a discipline. We will see that many of the “big” questions -- such as “what is economic value?” and “who gets what?” or “what are the limits of growth” -- remain the focus of significant debate today. The course will show how the marginalisation of thorny issues that these debates raised, with respect to the distribution of income between profits and wages, the ecological impact of economic activity, or the inherent instability of capitalism, allowed for the creation of an economic canon or orthodoxy. We will emphasise that other traditions, now cast as heterodox approaches, continue to offer a different approach to understanding important aspects of the functioning of the economic system and offer inspiration for innovative ways of analysing it.

The other part of the course, taught by Professor Amable, proposes an overview of the main heterodox approaches in macroeconomics.

Lectures will be complemented by a 4-session tutorial, which will be offered by Mr Guillaume Dreyer. The tutorial sessions will offer additional insights into the different approaches and analyses presented in the lectures.

Attendance at all lectures in the course, as well as at all four sessions of the tutorial, is mandatory. All registered students will be given access to the readings required for the lectures and tutorials through the Moodle site above. These readings must be prepared by students before the session for which they are assigned, and students should expect to be called upon in class to explain what they have read and answer questions about it.