Tag: 2022

COP27 and Climate Policy: the Role of Agriculture, Forests and Ecosystems

By Jonathan Harris and  Anne-Marie Codur The United Nations Climate Change Conference known as COP27 took place in Sharm-El-Sheik, Egypt, this November. Opinions differ on whether the conference should be rated a success or a failure, but there were both some clear accomplishments and some important tasks for the future.   The urgency of effective action on […]

Revised Economic Thinking for a New World: New Editions of the “In Context” Textbooks

By Pratistha Joshi Rajkarnikar As the world has undergone seismic shifts over the last few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rising social and economic inequality and the escalating climate crisis, new approaches to economics are needed to reflect the complexities of this rapidly evolving world.  The latest editions of Microeconomics in Context and Macroeconomics […]

Putting Modern Economics in Context: Lessons from a Soviet Curriculum Reform Project

By Stacey Yuen Editor’s note: This blog post is based on an interview with Dr. Neva Goodwin conducted in May 2021. In 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Academy of Sciences began sourcing for an American economics textbook for translation and use in the Soviet Union. They requested help from […]

Mad Money: The Financialization and Rising Inequality of the US Economy

By Pratistha Joshi Rajkarnikar A recent UN news story blames the excessive speculation in the financial markets for impeding basic human rights. The 2022 World Development Report highlights the need to address fragilities within the financial sector for a sustainable recovery from the pandemic, and several studies have linked the rise of finance to lower […]

The Gendered Impacts of Climate Change

By Ellie Hu Climate change has already had an observable and adverse impact on the global environment, with rising sea levels, increased incidence of droughts, storms and wildfires, and declining water supplies and agricultural production. These impacts have fallen heavily on groups that face greater vulnerabilities from natural disasters. Among the groups most affected are […]

After COP26: Why Forests and Soils will be Crucial to Climate Policy

By Anne-Marie Codur and Jonathan Harris The latest stage in global efforts to respond to climate change was the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Glasgow in November 2021. The conference brought together delegations from 197 countries with the goal of achieving major progress […]

How COVID-19 Has Magnified Pre-existing Inequalities in the US

By Ellie Hu The distribution of wealth and resources in the United States has been extremely unequal in recent decades, as the share of national wealth owned by the top 1 percent has increased from less than 25 percent in the late 1970s to around 45 percent more recently. In 2022, the top 1 percent […]

Teaching Modules Roundup: Incorporating Social Issues into Introductory Economics

By Stacey Yuen The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic remains deeply felt in the classroom as a new year has arrived. Beyond the possibility of switching to remote teaching, educators and students alike are contending with questions about whether their curriculum materials effectively reflect the changing realities in their society and the socioeconomic challenges that […]