Anwar Shaikh, Professor of Economics, investigates how capitalism, like the humans who drive it, has innate tendencies that must be regulated.
The Department of Economics at The New School for Social Research offers a broad and critical approach to the study of economics, covering a wide range of schools of thought, including Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics; the classical political economy of
Smith, Ricardo, and Marx; structuralist and institutionalist approaches to economics; and neoclassical economics. To survey the range of student and
faculty work, consult the updated record of recent working papers posted to
RePec.
The department’s
courses of study emphasize the historical roots of economic ideas, their application to contemporary economic policy debates, and conflicting explanations and interpretations of economic phenomena, within the context of a rigorous training in the conceptual, mathematical, and statistical
modeling techniques that are the common methodological basis of contemporary economic research. The department's work centers on the changing shape of the world economy, its financial markets and institutions, problems of regulating and guiding economic development in the advanced industrial world and in emerging
markets, complexity in economic systems, labor markets, and the economic aspects of class, gender, and ethnic divisions.
Faculty and students regularly participate in the research activities of The New School’s vibrant interdisciplinary
institutes and centers, like the
Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies. The Economics Department houses the
Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), to which economics faculty and students also contribute.
The aim of the Department of Economics is to put what Robert Heilbroner called "the worldly philosophy" — informed, critical, and passionate investigation of the economic foundations of contemporary society — at the heart of the educational and research enterprise. This engagement with the central unresolved dilemmas
of modern society motivates the detailed analysis of concrete problems of economic policy and the explanations of economic phenomena that are the substance of the department's degree programs.