The Other Canon Foundation is a center and network for research of heterodox economics founded by Erik Reinert. The name refers to the founders' message of there being another economic canon, alternative to the ruling neoclassical economics. Their suggestions, they claim, are valid for and can be applicated in the first, second and third world. [1]
The Other Canon was founded in 2000 by Erik Reinert and 10 co-founders with different backgrounds in economics and social sciences. The founders also have distinct backgrounds coming from North America, Latin America, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe. Notable names among them are Wolfgang Drechsler, Carlota Perez and Geoffrey Hodgson. In addition to the executive chairman Erik Reinert and the earlier mentioned Drechsler, the current executive board also employs Rainer Kattel. [2]
The ideological foundation of The Other Canon is not defined in a left-right perspective, claiming both sides have fallen into the same traps failing to explain and develop valid theories for today's economics. [3] Central to the group is the Theory of Uneven Development, which aims to explain how and why the international economic landscape (of rich and poor nations) is as it is today. History of Economic Policy is used as an important tool in this process. [4]
The Other Canon is highly eclectic and gathers ideas from many authors of various epochs. Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Gunnar Myrdal, Gustav von Schmoller, Werner Sombart, Nicholas Kaldor, Max Weber and Adam Smith (for considerations of the primary sector) are among the theorists to have influenced The Other Canon.
In accordance with Schumpeter, The Other Canon emphasizes the role of "man the producer" over "man the consumer" and intends to seek the reasons for growth and innovation rather than seeing it as something innate to capital and a simple result of adding it to human labour. They argue that the state is needed to stimulate entrepreneurship to maximise growth. [5] The importance of role of the state is also underlined in development economics. In his book How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor (2007), Reinert criticises liberal economists for ignoring empirical evidence when they promote free-trade as the solution to third world countries. He claims poor countries should, and should be allowed to, use protectionism to build up their own industries until they can compete internationally and that the state should be involved in this process. [6]
Much of The Others Canon's criticism of the mainstream economics regards the focus on equilibrium and the static, as well as what the neoclassical models takes as given (perfect information, perfect foresight, constant returns to scale and no diversity/likeness of economic activity). Conforming with Schumpeterian theory The Other Canon emphasises the constant change in the economy and that entrepreneurs and capitalists all the time create temporary monopolies based on advantages of knowledge and/or uncertain assumptions about the future. The fact that mainstream economics sees innovation and novelty, and hence growth (of which capitalism is absolutely dependent), as exogenous phenomena does not fall lightly with The Other Canon who sees these factors as pivotal to the economy and something that is maximised through stimulation in the form of state policy. The Other Canon claims reintroducing increasing and diminishing (decreasing) returns to scale can help us understand the economic development and why neo-classical economy has failed to explain the uneven development of nations. Reinerts claims poor country's concentrating their production on industries with diminishing returns to scale will lead them to become more inefficient the more they invest while the opposite thing will happen to the rich countries with their primarily increasing returns to scale industries. This, he argues, is why following Ricardian Economics, mainly his theory of comparative advantage, will, instead of leading to the factor price equalisation neo-liberals profess, in fact usher poor countries into "specialising in being poor and inefficient". [7] Paul Krugman, however, takes use of increasing returns to scale in his New Trade Theory to explain the success of the industrialised countries, but leaves out diminishing returns to scale explaining the misery of the Third World. The view of the economy as largely independent from society and the financial sector not being distinct from the real economy are also disputed by The Other Canon claiming that the economy is indeed embedded into society and that conflicts between the financial sector are normal and hence must be regulated. [1]
Since 2009, The Other Canon has its own book publishing series with Anthem Press in London, [8] called TAOCS - The Anthem Other Canon Series. So far, publications include
and others.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University, where he remained until the end of his career, and in 1939 obtained American citizenship.
Creative destruction is a concept in economics that describes a process in which new innovations replace and make obsolete older innovations.
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The historical school of economics was an approach to academic economics and to public administration that emerged in the 19th century in Germany, and held sway there until well into the 20th century. The professors involved compiled massive economic histories of Germany and Europe. Numerous Americans were their students. The school was opposed by theoretical economists. Prominent leaders included Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917), and Max Weber (1864–1920) in Germany, and Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) in Austria and the United States.
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Wolfgang Drechsler is a Public Administration and Management, Innovation Policy and Political Philosophy scholar. He is Professor of Governance, and one of the founders and directors of the Technology Governance program, at the Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia, where between 2010 and 2016 he also served as Vice Dean for International Relations at its Faculty of Social Sciences. Since 2019, he is also affiliated with University College London, where he is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and Principal Investigator of the John Templeton Foundation "Islamic Public Value" project, and since 2023, with Universitas Indonesia as an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Administrative Sciences.
Erik Steenfeldt Reinert is a Norwegian economist, with development economics, economic history and history of economic policy as his specialties.
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Jan A. Kregel is an American post-Keynesian economist.
Carlota Perez is a British-Venezuelan scholar specialized in technology and socio-economic development. She researches the concept of Techno-Economic Paradigm Shifts and the theory of great surges, a further development of Schumpeter's work on Kondratieff waves. In 2012 she was awarded the Silver Kondratieff Medal by the International N. D. Kondratieff Foundation and in 2021 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Utrecht University.
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New trade theory (NTT) is a collection of economic models in international trade theory which focuses on the role of increasing returns to scale and network effects, which were originally developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The main motivation for the development of NTT was that, contrary to what traditional trade models would suggest, the majority of the world trade takes place between countries that are similar in terms of development, structure, and factor endowments.
The Solow–Swan model or exogenous growth model is an economic model of long-run economic growth. It attempts to explain long-run economic growth by looking at capital accumulation, labor or population growth, and increases in productivity largely driven by technological progress. At its core, it is an aggregate production function, often specified to be of Cobb–Douglas type, which enables the model "to make contact with microeconomics". The model was developed independently by Robert Solow and Trevor Swan in 1956, and superseded the Keynesian Harrod–Domar model.
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Ragnar Wilhelm Nurkse was an Estonian-American economist and policy maker mainly in the fields of international finance and economic development. He is considered the pioneer of Balanced Growth Theory.
Rainer Kattel is an Estonian academic and science administrator. He is professor of Innovation and Public Governance at Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, UCL, and Research Professor and Chair of Innovation Policy and Technology Governance at Tallinn University of Technology. In 2015-16, he was a visiting professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
Innovation economics is new, and growing field of economic theory and applied/experimental economics that emphasizes innovation and entrepreneurship. It comprises both the application of any type of innovations, especially technological, but not only, into economic use. In classical economics this is the application of customer new technology into economic use; but also it could refer to the field of innovation and experimental economics that refers the new economic science developments that may be considered innovative. In his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, economist Joseph Schumpeter introduced the notion of an innovation economy. He argued that evolving institutions, entrepreneurs and technological changes were at the heart of economic growth. However, it is only in recent years that "innovation economy," grounded in Schumpeter's ideas, has become a mainstream concept".
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