Expanding Economics

Claudia Goldin is a labor economist at Harvard who is the most recent Nobel Laureate in economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”. Among her many accolades and contributions, she has made history becoming the first woman to get tenure in Harvard's economics department as well as the first woman to receive the Nobel prize in economics

In this episode, Sofia shares some of her previous work in Economic Sociology, a subfield that often clashes with Neoclassical economics in its analysis of various economic phenomena. Within it, the study of money and its social meanings is a central topic and subject to widespread debate. After outlining the various perspectives and theories posed by scholars in the field, Sofia s

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Expanding Economics! To follow up on our last episode on Degrowth Economics, we invited Jade to discuss the attempts to implement green growth policies and how effective they are at achieving C02 reduction targets. After talking a bit about her own experience at McGill and some of the pros and shortcomings of studying economics and political science

As we all grapple with the threats posed by the climate crisis, economists, politicians, and everyday people outside the ivory tower are searching for a way forward. The Degrowth movement offers a solution that challenges the traditional pursuit of perpetual economic growth as the ultimate goal for society. Instead, it proposes a steady state economy that prioritizes social and eco

Professor Kristen Ghodsee teaches Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is known for her ethnographic work in post-soviet countries where she studies gender relations and other legacies of 20th century communism. In her book, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, she argues that when the state steps in to support families with reproductive la

In this episode we are joined by Michael Babcock; Ph.D. candidate at McGill University where he studies natural resource development and teaches Ecological Economics. After taking Michael's class myself, I felt that the way I viewed the discipline of economics and the world more broadly had been drastically changed. Economists of the future must be thinking about how we will go on

For the last few episodes the Expanding Economics team has been discussing inflation, crashing markets, and whatever other economic problems we uncovered along the way. This time, we wanted to hear from someone outside of the group and see how their economic perspective differs from ours. On this episode, we are joined by fellow economics undergrad Georges Rigas to see how well our

In this episode Sofia and Andrew discuss NIMBYism and why it is pervasive and harmful to the Canadian housing market. After months of consecutive record breaking highs, Canadian housing prices have finally begun to show signs of decline in response to rising interest rates, but what caused this boom in the first place? Has housing just become another speculative asset or do prices

Welcome back to the Expanding Economics podcast, in part three of our series on inflation, we delve into the economic history of inflation to better understand why it is a problem and how we keep getting ourselves into this situation. We discuss post-WW1 Germany, the 1970s oil crisis, and how the low inflation in the decades since led us to where we are today. Finally, we ask ourse

Welcome back to the Expanding Economics Podcast! This episode is part one of a three-part series on inflation. As inflationary pressures continue to rise throughout the world, we look at how we got here, what it signals for future economic outcomes and what economic theory does or does not have to say about it. In part one we start with the impact of the pandemic and government fis