Category: Heterodox Economics

New blog post: Why so Hostile? Busting Myths about Heterodox Economics

Carolina Alves and I unpack misunderstandings about Heterodox Economics in our recent blog post on Developing Economics:

Call-for-Application-Pluralist-Economics

By Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven and Carolina Alves

“Economics is unique among the social sciences in having a single monolithic mainstream, which is either unaware of or actively hostile to alternative approaches.” (John King 2013: 17)

What does heterodox economics mean? Is the label helpful or harmful? Being outside of the mainstream of the Economics discipline, the way we position ourselves may be particularly important. For this reason, many around us shun the use of the term “heterodox” and advise against using it. However, we believe the reluctance to use the term stems in part from misunderstandings of (and sometimes disagreement over) what the term means and perhaps disagreements over strategies for how to change the discipline.

In other words, this is an important debate about both identification and strategy. In this blog, we wish to raise the issue in heterodox and mainstream circles, by busting a few common myths about Heterodox Economics – mostly stemming from the orthodoxy. This is a small part of a larger project on defining heterodox economics.

Read more here.

The post has also been re-published by Union for Radical Political Economics and the Monthly Review. It has also been translated to Spanish (see here).

Launch of IGDC and the Heterodox Development Economics Project

In June 2018, the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre was launched (my new employer). During the launch, I held a presentation of my project “Heterodox Development Economics” and gave some remarks. See the promo video from the event below.

You can read more about the launch here and about the Heterodox Development Economics project here. Continue reading “Launch of IGDC and the Heterodox Development Economics Project”

Rethinking Economics Norway Takes Off

Rethinking Economics Norway, an organization I co-founded and am a board member of, officially became an organization this August. The network now consists of more than 60 Norwegian economists, including professors, professionals, and students at all levels (BA, MA, PhD).

We have received a lot of media attention so far (see the website), including this piece by the whole board in Aftenposten and this piece by Ebba Boye and I in Dagens Næringsliv (Norway’s largest business newspaper). There was also a 6 page piece in Klassekampen on our movement, also citing my book review of Anwar Shaikh’s Capitalism.

Several Economics professors have responded to our critique of the Economics discipline, as they do not agree that there is a need for a wider variety of theories to be taught at Norwegian Economics departments. As the Norwegian Economics departments are thoroughly mainstream, we clearly still have a lot of work to do.

Debate with Norwegian Marxist

Following my book review of Anwar Shaikh’s Capitalism – Competition, Conflict, Crises, I ended up in a debate with a Norwegian philosopher (and Marxist) about Shaikh’s labor theory of value. The debate took place in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen.

Here is the exchange:
Anwar Shaikh versus seriøs teori (Jørgen Sandemose, May 30th 2016)
Seriøs teori (Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, June 1st 2016)
Om en uholdbar «verditeori» (Jørgen Sandemose, June 8th, 2016)
På tide å lese boka? (Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, June 14th 2016)
Den siste replikken (Jørgen Sandemose, June 15th, 2016)

Continue reading “Debate with Norwegian Marxist”

Review of Anwar Shaikh’s New Book

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Last week New School Professor Anwar Shaikh was in Norway to launch his new book Capitalism – Competition, Conflict, Crises. For the occasion, I was asked by the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen to write an essay about his book. You can read the full text here.

The Norwegian Debate on Neoclassical Economics

In the wake of the release of a critical book on Neoclassical Economics in Norway, a heated debate on the state of the field of Economics has unfolded in Norwegian media. Norwegian Economics Professors argue that they are not Neoclassical (although they use Neoclassical methods such as general equilibrium analysis), that it’s impossible to do Economics outside of an equilibrium framework, and that alternative theories are so small that they are not worth teaching. My Norwegian colleague at The New School, Ebba Boye, and I entered the debate last week, by pointing out that Economics has not always been synonymous to Neoclassical Economics, that there are non-Neoclassical theories that have strong explanatory power, and that it is  possible – and desirable! – to learn a variety of Economic theories in one degree program. Here’s our Op-ed in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen: Økonomisk innsikt utenfor mainstream.

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