Theory & Education Program
Spring 2016 Newsletter

GDAE offers teaching modules for undergraduate and graduate level economics courses in English, French and Spanish. New or recently updated modules include:

• Water: Economics and Policy
• The Economics of Global Climate Change
• Economics of Renewable Energy
• Microeconomics and the Environment

Access all modules

GDAE has published two Climate Policy Briefs for students, researchers, and policy makers seeking resources that summarize the results of the Paris Agreement on Climate, and analyze the potential and limitations of the agreement. The first brief, a report on the Paris climate talks, can be found here. The second policy brief, After Paris: The New Landscape for Climate Policy, highlights country commitments to action, development issues, and the role of civil society in the implementation of the agreement.

Principles of Economics in Context offers an innovative, modern approach to teaching economics. This principles-level text takes a broad "contextual" approach to economics, including serious consideration of ecological, feminist, and social concerns while also covering standard economic concepts and models.  Microeconomics in Context and Macroeconomics in Context provide one-semester versions of the text for introductory micro and macro courses. GDAE also provides a series of short updates on contemporary economics issues to serve as extensions to the material covered within GDAE’s textbooks.

GDAE is updating the widely used text Environmental and Natural Resources Economics: A Contemporary Approach. Please send your suggestions for improvements to gdae@tufts.edu.

We will be making individual chapters available for classroom use in advance of publication in early 2017.

In her commentary on Peter Sterling’s “Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability”, GDAE Co-Director Neva Goodwin relates and analyzes the views of two other theorists, Tibor Scitovsky and Mikhaly Csikszentmihalyi to the topic of the neurology of consumerism. (Great Transition Initiative, February 2016.)

In this commentary, GDAE Theory and Education Program Director Jonathan Harris responds to Richard Norgaard’s “The Church of Economism and Its Discontents,” discussing efforts to develop a broader and more environmentally-oriented economics (Great Transition Initiative, December 2015).
 
Neva Goodwin made a contribution to the book The Big Questions of Our Time: The World Speaks. See page 68 for her discussion of the future of the world economy (Strategic Foresight Group, 2016).

In “New macroeconomics teaching for a new era: instability, inequality, and environment,” Jonathan Harris provides an analysis of how teaching in macroeconomics should respond to current crises and issues of inequality and environmental degradation. (European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies, September 2015).

On March 10, GDAE awarded its 2016 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Amit Bhaduri and Diane Elson for their contributions to our economic understandings of development, power, gender, and human rights. Watch a recording of the lectures on “Development and Equity” and interviews with the awardees.

In February, GDAE cosponsored a panel organized by the Tufts New Economy” that featured representatives from GDAE, Schumacher Center For New Economics, and JPNET. The panelists discussed of the need for radical change in economic perspectives and on the ground initiatives, such as the Berkshares local currency and the Boston Food Forest Coalition. Watch a recording of the event.