Study Plan

Core Readings:

• The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking public versus private sector myths (Mariana Mazzucato 2018)

• Doughnut Economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st century economist (Kate Raworth 2017)

Additional:

• This changes everything: capitalism vs climate change (Naomi Klein 2014)

• the spirit level (Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket 2009)

• the creation of inequality: how our prehistoric ancestors set the stage for monarchy, slavery and empire (Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus 2012)

Week outlines

14) How we learnt to be economists. The rise of economic thought

• pre-history and the need for economics

• the role played by labour in the transition to the modern world

15) The role of economic exchange in shaping the world. The rise of capitalism and firms

• what are firms for: surplus value

• property rights: institutions and the market

16) environment, institutions and the rules of the game

• GATT, the IMF and the world bank

• slavery, colonialism and the origins of capitalism

• purchasing power parity

• TUTORIAL: The nature of the firm

17) Development of wage labour in the modern economy

• long run change in economics. Waves or equilibrium?

• gender and discrimination

• feudalism, agricultural development and the rise of wage labour

• TUTORIAL: Why does coffee cost a different price in different countries

18) Economic development and the development of competitive advantage

• competition and market regulation

• the rise of Keynesianism and the managed economy

• path dependency and relative economic decline

20) Economic history in the twentieth century

• the British economy 1950-2023

• crisis of supply-side economics 1980-2023

• Dundee’s Jute industry: managing decline

• TUTORIAL: Dundee University’s Founders report: de-colonisation past and present

21) Contemporary debates in economics

• Liz Truss and British institutional sclerosis

• food: famine and underdevelopment

• the re-making of class: the gig economy

• TUTORIAL: CMA report on funeral market

22) Technology and progress: from industrialisation to AI

• AI and technological change

• globalisation: it’s birth and death

• TUTORIAL: Mariana Mazzucato: what is the role of government in the modern economy?

23) Sustainability, economic growth and climate change

• what is econometrics?

• too much economic growth?

• sustainability, climate change: technology and population

• TUTORIAL: How can labour respond to climate change?

24) We’re all economists now: questions for economists

• to model or not to model: that is the question

• the importance of heterodox ideas

• summary