Our definition of Heterodox Economics: The need for plural/diverse economic approaches to understand, analyze and address the social and ecological crises of socio-economic systems embedded in the biophysical world of pluriversal realities encompassing people and the rest of nature.

Rethinking Economics

“Rethinking Economics is an international network of students, academics and professionals building a better economics in society and the classroom. By organising campaigns, events and engaging projects, Rethinking Economics connects people globally to bring about economics education that is pluralist, realistic, diverse and decolonized.” Learn More.

Exploring Economics

Exploring economics provides a neat overview of heterodox schools of economics that can be useful to learn and understand what are the academic perspectives of the diverse pluralist economic perspectives that exist.

Our goal at Ecological Economics for All is to synthesize these resources and work with the rethinking economics movement to understand how heterodox economic schools can inform a genuine and equitable sustainability transition to a right-sized economy that enables wellbeing within planetary boundaries for all.

The following list of pluralist and heterodox schools of economics aims to jumpstart this synthesis grounded in ecological economics to provide more critical and diversified approaches to economic thinking. These approaches also provide ecological economics with useful perspectives and tools to ground economics in the social and biophysical foundation in which the political economy is embedded.

Ecological economics is grounded in the recognition of planetary biophysical limits and the need for systems thinking, which helps us to explain how the many parts of complex socio-economic systems operate to create an emergent greater whole within the biophysical world of energy and materials and the social realities of human systems that transform the environment. Ultimately, what differentiates EE from all other heterodox economics and conventional neoclassical economics is its understanding of the biophyisical foundation of the economy and the fact that the planet is finite, which has been informed by ecology and the understanding that humans are part of the ecology of the world.

After having a solid understating of the biophysical foundation of socio-economic systems, other heterodox schools of economics can help us to explain how we can understand and change our society and its institutions to provide and improve wellbeing for humans and the rest of nature. For example:

Behavioral Economics: How we can study human behavior to help us develop incentives to nudge human behavior to minimize wasteful consumption and achieve real sustainability?

Feminist Economics: How woking less hours and days improves well-being, and how taking into consideration gender disparities is essential to address inequities and cultivate a mindset of real sustainability?

Institutional Economics: How we can understand and improve the role of institutions to redirect the goals of the economy towards real sustainability?

Post-Keynesian Economics: How we can understand the role of finance and money in our ecological macroeconomy to invest in people and environment for regeneration and resilience?;

Evolutionary Economics: How we can explain the co-evolution of our economy with its socio-ecological realties to learn from history and implement a precautionary principle for future generations?;

Complexity Economics: How we can make sense of the complexity of the nexus between the biophysical and social realities driving our economies?

Marxian Economics: How power dynamics in a political economy dominated by capitalism influence the crises of inequality and unsustainbility?