Beyond Growth: Rethinking Europe’s Economic Model in an Age of Limits (HEN Editorial 353)

Why Europe must move bey­ond growth and rethink eco­no­mic policy around resi­li­ence, limits, and a sus­tainable corridor.

The bad news is that your work-life in 2026 starts pro­ba­bly right about now. The good news is that it does so with a fresh and crisp issue of the Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics Newsletter ;-)

Among other great things, this issue fea­tures a series of highly inte­res­t­ing con­fe­ren­ces and work­shops, inclu­ding both long-time clas­sics like the annual con­fe­ren­ces of the Asso­cia­tion for Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics (AHE) and the Inter­na­tio­nal Initia­tive for Pro­mo­ting Poli­ti­cal Eco­nomy (IIPPE) as well as more small-scale events try­ing to create a space of exch­ange on spe­cia­li­zed topics. The lat­ter group includes the Ergo­di­city Eco­no­mics con­fe­rence, a work­shop on infor­mal eco­no­mic prac­ti­ces in Africa, or a Phi­lo­so­phy & Eco­no­mics con­fe­rence on „Para­do­xes“. As someone who che­ris­hes twis­ted stuff, I recom­mend rea­ding the call of the lat­ter con­fe­rence (check it out here) as it fea­tures a truly nice coll­ec­tion of inte­res­t­ing para­do­xes across disci­pli­nes, inclu­ding some asso­cia­ted with hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics (like the Lau­derd­ale para­dox or the para­dox of caring labor).

In addi­tion, this issue is also strong on rea­ding mate­rial: out of the ple­thora of useful books we fea­ture below, I wan­ted to point you to the exten­sive and ulti­m­ately revi­sed and impro­ved second edi­tion of the „Hand­book of Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics“, edi­ted by Tae-Hee Jo, Lynne Ches­ter and Carlo D’Ippoliti, who mana­ged to assem­ble a fan­ta­stic coll­ec­tion of papers that cover large parts of Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics in a com­pre­hen­sive as well as acces­si­ble man­ner. On top of that, you will spot a series of recent jour­nal issues, inclu­ding a series of inte­res­t­ing spe­cial issues on the legacy of Paul David (for those of you focu­sing on the history of thought), on the rele­vance of MMT (to be on point in policy deba­tes ;-) as well as on more fun­da­men­tal ques­ti­ons of „mar­kets and/vs. demo­cracy“.

Finally, we recei­ved two book reviews these days, which you will find below. While we have recei­ved only a few reviews in the past months/years, we were very happy about these two sub­mis­si­ons. Howe­ver, I will also admit that we were thin­king about dis­con­ti­nuing this sec­tion as we feel that wri­ting book reviews for a news­let­ter (even if it is the Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics News­let­ter ;-)) does not align well with chan­ging career requi­re­ments in eco­no­mics and rela­ted fields. If you have any thoughts or comm­ents about that, let us know any­time by email.

When spea­king about inter­nal mat­ters, I also wan­ted to shout a warm wel­come to Peter Doh­men, the new head assistant of the newsletter’s edi­to­rial team. Peter is a highly ambi­tious MA-stu­dent in Socio-Eco­no­mics at the Uni­ver­sity of Duis­burg-Essen and will sup­port the pro­duc­tion and editing of the news­let­ter in the upco­ming month. Peter’s dili­gence and occa­sio­nal over­sight will be a per­fect com­ple­ment to my more ener­ge­tic-but-chao­tic approach to editing – many thanks, Peter, for your contribution.

All the best, happy new year, and keep up the good work!