This year, the topic of the course is "Market Economies and Ecological Issues".
We will start from the unprecedented ecological (and related social) crises humanity is currently experiencing. We will question the place and/or the role of the market within these crises, both as a key institution of contemporary economies and as the normative horizon of mainstream economic analysis.
Are markets liable to contribute to climate change mitigation? Is economics, whose main normative horizon is market, adequately tooled to tackle ecological problems? Do the ecological crises question economics as a discipline? When Nicholas Stern states that "Climate change is the greatest market failure that the world has ever seen" (Stern Review 2006), what does it mean in terms of analysis and action?
Our aim, in this course, is to systematically assess the scope and limits of the market, both as a tool and as an analytical framework, to cope with current ecological challenges. To which extent is the market relevant to harness ecological problems?
- Professor: Roman Philippe