From wage-led growth to feminist macro and institutional struggles: how shared heterodox ideas, debates, and spaces continue to shape economics.
One of the most time-consuming tasks when editing the Newsletter is surely to review the entries in our journals section as screening so many different and inspiring contributions will typically lead to repeated distractions in the editing process ;-) For instance, I lost some time with this neat paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics that summarizes how high real wages might lead to beneficial growth path – not (only) because high wages boost demand, but also because they pose continuous incentives for investment and technological upgrading that will put countries on a more advantageous developmental trajectory. This self-reinforcing effect – sometimes labeled a „Kaldor-Verdoorn“ dynamic – in my view is a key force shaping economic development, although its practical relevance has been undermined in recent decades as the outsourcing of production offered an outside option to corporations facing wage pressure.
Heterodox Economics Newsletter
Der Heterodox Economics Newsletter wird herausgegeben von Jakob Kapeller und erscheint im dreiwöchentlichen Rhythmus mit Neuigkeiten aus der wissenschaftlichen Community multiparadigmatischer ökonomischer Ansätze. Der Newsletter richtet sich an einen Kreis von mehr als 7.000 Empfänger*innen und zählt schon weit mehr als 250 Ausgaben.
Nonetheless, the key idea that high real wages can boost innovation also resonates well with a radical view on economic history, which similarly emphasizes how cheap labor has stifled innovation – for instance in antique empires. It is thereby worth noting that this shared intuition of different heterodox approaches has also been taken up prominently by economic historians, who now identify that high real wages in Britain in conjunction with its imperial advantage should be seen as an essential trigger causing industrialization in Britain and, in turn, the Great Divergence between Global South and Global North (see, e.g., here).
Similarly, I also lost some time on contributions relating to internal controversies among Post-Keynesians (see here or check the full issue of the PSL Quarterly Review) and options for more routinely integrating feminist insights into heterodox macroeconomics (see here or have a look at the recent issue of Metroeconomica) – also because those papers resonate well with the main theme of the Newsletter’s last editorial, which put some emphasis on the importance of synthesizing insights from different traditions to build more explicit shared foundations (that are sometimes left implicit due to distinctive terminologies, discursive impatience, different research foci and, sometimes, within-tradition group-think leading to an over-emphasis on points of contention ;-)).
Aside from shared foundations, the heterodox community requires shared institutional spaces and histories, which repeatedly emerge when economic departments with a heterodox orientation emerge or evolve. In this spirit, I wanted to point to this Special Issue call that puts this question to the forefront by inviting contributions on the history of economics departments as well as this petition that collects voices opposing a further narrowing of the economic curriculum at Cambridge University.
By the way, if you’d like to support an inclusive approach to heterodox community building, consider joining or donating to the Newsletter. IAPHE (International Association for Political Economy and Heterodox Economics) serves as our institutional backbone, and your support would directly fund the community care work of our researchers, students, and volunteers.
Many thanks and best,
