At his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Trump affirmed his desire to recreate a “new American Gilded Age.” A few days later, he made this unexpected reference to the period from the 1870s to the 1890s, known as the Gilded Age  : “The United States was at its richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were […] … learn more→

A widely used principle in economics to understand how people make decisions is that of rationality : people behave in ways that achieve the greatest possible benefit. This benefit, mathematically represented by a utility function , is typically the economic gain we receive from our actions (in the context of those of others). However, the emergence of experimental economics , which […] … learn more→

The US president “had no plan, no scheme, no constructive ideas whatever”, according to one of the world’s most influential economists. He was “in many respects, perhaps inevitably, ill-informed”. He was “slow-minded and bewildered”, and failed to remedy these defects by seeking advice. He gathered around him businessmen, “inexperienced in public affairs” and “only called […] … learn more→

Economic thinking governs much of our world. But the discipline’s teaching is stuck in the past. Centred around antiquated 19th-century models built on Newtonian physics, economics treats humans as atomic particles, rather than as social beings. While academic research often manages to transcend this simplicity, undergraduate education does not – and the influence of these simplified ideas is […] … learn more→

Faced with the challenges of ecological transition, social inequality or tax justice, there are many debates about the urgency of integrating these issues in training in finance and economics. Many academics today are protesting against the model of financialization, the obsolescence of theories implying a rationality of the “homo economicus”, while insisting on the role of […] … learn more→

The economy, a matter too abstract? If it permeates their daily lives, from the evolution of prices at the local supermarket to the opening of a bank account, through the search for a summer job, the economy raises many a priori in students. Even in business schools, though frequented by young people interested in principle by the […] … learn more→

I know I pick on Women’s Studies often; I have many issues with this particular field of “study,” namely that it isn’t one. There’s another field that sure looks like it should be a legitimate academic topic, which nevertheless bears even more claim to absolute scorn: economics. It isn’t simply because economics departments succumb to […] … learn more→