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📖 Check out our Shared Library: Literature is organized by Module and Topic in the Zotero Library.

📌 This library is publicly visible. To join the group to have editing privileges and access to files: contact Lenore @ [email protected]

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The “Political Economy of Corporations” curriculum offers modules on several key questions: how economic innovation occurs (i.e., what are the social conditions for innovation) and how production processes change over time; to whom do the benefits of innovation go; and how decision-making is structured, in terms of how power is exercised and what the policies and jurisprudence are that govern corporate action. We aim to use this curriculum to train a new generation of economists.

The goal of the Political Economy of Corporations Curriculum is to share a modular curriculum on the political economy of corporations that can be taught at a wide range of institutions. The focus is on graduate training in economics, though companion materials can be adapted for upper-level undergraduate courses.

Moving beyond neoliberalism requires recognizing corporations as social institutions and re-shaping the rules of corporate governance and finance. Economics departments do not teach the theory of corporations as innovative enterprises today—the neoliberal theory of the corporation pretends that enriching shareholders is the most efficient use of corporate resources. Even economics programs outside the mainstream stay away from the “black box” of the corporation. Along with reforming corporate law and policy, training in economics must change to reflect the actual processes at work with respect to corporations and markets. Neoliberal economists have promoted a theory of shareholder primacy in research and graduate training on the corporation that does not recognize the process of innovation and the societal harms from concentrated corporate power.

Our aim is to move the economics profession away from shareholder primacy and towards a useful theory on the role of large corporations in production and resilience. We need to build on the vibrant community working on these issues across disciplines and extend our work within economics on how power works within corporations and how we can best reorient corporations towards innovative production of the goods and services that we need and away from value extraction by a small financial elite cadre of shareholders.

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If you plan to teach a course using these materials, let us know! Email me at [email protected] for guidance on the materials we’ve developed and to share your suggestions and approach to teaching.

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Organization of Curriculum

The curriculum is organized into Modules, each of which contains Topics. Each module contains: Learning Goals; Teaching Agendas; & Recommended Key Literature.