I taught a graduate economics comparative economics class at UC Berkeley economics until my retirement in July 2025. The class was relatively well attended but nearly only with foreign students (Chinese , Asians and Europeans) . I taught about socialism, comparative institutions, culture and comparative economic history. In recent years, I found that comparative economics history was the most promising for the future.
Thanks, Gerard. My approach to income inequality class is basically historical. The socialism part is just two hours. I thought some students liked it b/c it was novel to them; others might have thought, Why do we have to listen to this?
As a layman, I would say if the idea is to merely equip students for work, then no.
But if the idea is to nurture critical thinking by showing how economics isn't value neutral (some Polanyi maybe?), I reckon this approach would be invaluable (and from a personal point of view, way more interesting).
A modified version of "varieties of capitalism" seems essential. I teach in a b-school, and much of what we do revolves around the structure of firms. Creating a firm entails participating in markets for capital, labor, supply, distribution, and legal forms, among others. Each of these markets is organized in ways that are fundamentally shaped by national economies, which can look radically different -- yielding wildly different firms, and surprising regularities. In 2020, the biggest business employer headquartered in Denmark (ISS, 486k) had more employees than the biggest in China (PetroChina, 476k) and India (Tata Consultancy Services, 450k). Wah??
Moreover, as Branko will appreciate, the relative size of a country's biggest employers is highly correlated with its Gini coefficient. Bigger firms, lower inequality.
Yes, when I first heard you speak of bigger firms => lower inequality, it did not seem right to me. But after a five-minute reflection & reading your paper, it made total sense. The ultimate objective of modern capitalism seems to off-load everything to contractors who are paid their reservation wage, and to maximize the difference & thus lead to very high inequality. I can imagine the world where workers are paid zero (look at service workers in restaurants), their wages are fully flexible and depend on consumer satisfaction while the organizers of production take all the profit. Labor costs are 0, capital/entrepreneurial income is 100%.
"Think of how your work life would change if every day you competed for a shift at your job in an online auction where the lowest bidder wins. Such a situation may not be far off, whether you are a teacher, a dishwasher, or an emergency room physician. Uber has the technology – It takes only the will, and some legal tweaking, to unleash an Ayn Rand worker’s utopia. Most everyone will be a self-employed entrepreneur running their own small (tiny, micro) business, and our yeoman dishwasher will create an LLC to receive their wage, which will vary from day-to-day according to market conditions."
I thought it was a dystopian Black Mirror-style speculation. But it actually exists -- in health care. See
"On-demand nursing companies such as Clipboard Health and ShiftKey encourage workers to join in on personalized pay schemes by bidding against each other. On ShiftKey, Ashley not only expresses her availability for a shift but bids for one against peers by indicating the lowest hourly rate for which she will work. To win the shift, she lowers and lowers her rate until it’s well below a living wage. Like other gig workers who spend a considerable amount of work time not being paid (see Attoh et al. 2024), Ashley is not paid for the time she spends each month updating her profile, reviewing available positions, bidding for shifts, and sending messages in the app about errors in her wages."
The transaction costs in the labor market have not disappeared -- they have just been offloaded to workers.
Speaking from my own educational and professional experience I would say, absolutely, economists-in-training should study the field of comparative economic systems. As far as I know, such courses are more likely than any other economics course to teach about economic institutions and how to study (systematically) economic institutions. I have in mind here the work of Elinor Ostrom, Oliver Williamson, Janos Kornai, and Douglas North. The courses are also more likely than any other econ course to teach how to do systematic comparative analysis of economic systems and subsystems (e.g. comparative social systems, comparative health systems, comparative regulatory systems). I have found that any economist working in public policy, especially social policy and health policy, will benefit greatly from having these tools/capabilities.
After studying mainstream economic for years. I have evolved to believe institutional design is the most important subject for understanding the real world.
I am in fact working on a substack article on comparative regulatory systems.
as someone who did undergrad economics, I'd say yes. the curriculum is already so narrow, anything that broadens the perspective of your students is valuable.
Hope I haven’t misunderstood you, but a lot of how Economics is taught in the West can’t give a satisfactory account of the state led industrialisation that goes on in China and that is missing quite a lot if our account of production is based largely on private firms making production decisions.
The conventional Western account of production treats labour as a factor input, whereas I think China’s socialist model places human development at the centre (which Amartya Sen’s capability approach also does), and production is secondary to human development.
So I would not call China’s production system “capitalist”; it’s socialist at the core. Human development comes first, then production follows.
I don't know why you say there is no demand for it. There are plenty of institutions and universities still teaching it and they are now teaching alternatives to capitalism (normative economics).
Any one interested in these schools and projects I can provide a list.
I would be extremely skeptical of your presentation of socialism. I would imagine it would be the same as one presented by the Hoover Institution. Totally biased.
I believe that part of the duties of university education is to present students with as broad spectrum of ideas as possible, and to give them tool to critically assess these ideas. When students do not know en mass about something, they cannot create a demand for it
I'm an IT engineer. I was so incredibly pissed off when I found out about Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Pissed off because that wasn't in the university curriculum.
The math is very complicated, but it's not about the math. The theorems have profound philosophical implications and I thought it had been gross neglect to leave them out.
That is similar, in a way, to your dilemma. The demand will be small, that's almost certain. But I'm not sure this should be viewed as a question of demand. There can't be demand if people don't know something exists. In these cases, a certain kind of knowledge.
You could approach the question from an archetypal position: The philosopher, as an archetype, protects truth, wisdom, and the integrity of the inner self.
From this perspective, which kind of curriculum develops those values better? You know the answer. :-)
I think the "benefits" of broadening students' horizons in this (and many other cases) is well worth the rather small "costs". As a philosophy teacher responsible for an "Ethics and Business" course for economics/business students, I find it useful (if not essential, for my purposes) to have them realize that the state of the present is not fixed, that it has developed out of (e.g. feudalist) and in tension with (e.g. socialist) other economic arrangements along with the spectrums of ethical attitudes they each engender.
The ethics of business (capitalism) - the permissions and obligations that shape the system - need to be understood in relation to those of comparative systems, not simply for reasons of theoretical completeness, but because of practical relevance. For example, the ethical appetite for greater equality is irrepressible and is, I believe, a more significant in the explanation of the sustained appeal of (democratic, etc.) socialism than that people like free stuff. Similarly, the growing inequality that results capital income/assortative mating/inheritance practices (as you note in Capitalism, Alone) raises legitimate concerns of a backslide into (neo) feudalism. The broader understanding is crucial for helping our students become more ethically sophisticated as they act and make choices in the present that cannot but shape the future. Providing them with an understanding of the economic "logic" of these different systems should only deepen that sophistication.
I have seen studies in healthcare that compare health outcomes based on different polities health insurance & delivery systems. And it shows the difference... You can figure out who wins...
As a political economy student I would argue that this approach is sorely missing and needed. Although we might not need more heterodox economics imposed on history (tracking GDP over centuries) but a rich reservoir of knowledge about economic policies in many different times and places. This could drive creativity towards possibilities of something new. To understand that there is not only the textbook way of "governing the economy" and instead economic policies can be creative or bolt decisions deeply embedded in the local and historical context. If one wants to have a professional managerial class that is not only cementing the status quo, a comparative historical approach is key.
From my economics degree many decades ago, the ideas and concepts in comparative economics and political economy subjects have been most useful in understanding the world around me.
Whereas I remember the concepts of IS/LM curves (showing my age) and the combinatorial topology of general equilibrium as artefacts that were only ever dusted off with colleagues to reminisce about the “bad old days “
Sometimes we don’t know the worth of what we learn until we experience more of the world. So if you consider the time spent on learning about socialist economics useful to their understanding of the world you are the best person to make that decision.
Branko, you -- and most neoclassical economists -- have a very narrow view of what alternative economic systems are. Today, there are many alternatives to capitalism, mostly on a small scale, but not always – like the Zapatistas in Mexico or the women-led governance in Rojava. There is a large literature on alternatives. For example, check out Ashish Kothari’s article in Scientific American or my blog in Evonomics or the work of organizations like the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. Margaret Thatcher’s TINA is belied by David Bollier’s TAPAS (There are Plenty of Alternatives)! (oops, the links don't work but you get the idea!)
I taught a graduate economics comparative economics class at UC Berkeley economics until my retirement in July 2025. The class was relatively well attended but nearly only with foreign students (Chinese , Asians and Europeans) . I taught about socialism, comparative institutions, culture and comparative economic history. In recent years, I found that comparative economics history was the most promising for the future.
Thanks, Gerard. My approach to income inequality class is basically historical. The socialism part is just two hours. I thought some students liked it b/c it was novel to them; others might have thought, Why do we have to listen to this?
As a layman, I would say if the idea is to merely equip students for work, then no.
But if the idea is to nurture critical thinking by showing how economics isn't value neutral (some Polanyi maybe?), I reckon this approach would be invaluable (and from a personal point of view, way more interesting).
A modified version of "varieties of capitalism" seems essential. I teach in a b-school, and much of what we do revolves around the structure of firms. Creating a firm entails participating in markets for capital, labor, supply, distribution, and legal forms, among others. Each of these markets is organized in ways that are fundamentally shaped by national economies, which can look radically different -- yielding wildly different firms, and surprising regularities. In 2020, the biggest business employer headquartered in Denmark (ISS, 486k) had more employees than the biggest in China (PetroChina, 476k) and India (Tata Consultancy Services, 450k). Wah??
Moreover, as Branko will appreciate, the relative size of a country's biggest employers is highly correlated with its Gini coefficient. Bigger firms, lower inequality.
So: keep teaching comparative. And if you want a fun read, try "Varieties of Uberization" (https://doi.org/10.1177/2631787721995198)
Yes, when I first heard you speak of bigger firms => lower inequality, it did not seem right to me. But after a five-minute reflection & reading your paper, it made total sense. The ultimate objective of modern capitalism seems to off-load everything to contractors who are paid their reservation wage, and to maximize the difference & thus lead to very high inequality. I can imagine the world where workers are paid zero (look at service workers in restaurants), their wages are fully flexible and depend on consumer satisfaction while the organizers of production take all the profit. Labor costs are 0, capital/entrepreneurial income is 100%.
In my last book I speculated:
"Think of how your work life would change if every day you competed for a shift at your job in an online auction where the lowest bidder wins. Such a situation may not be far off, whether you are a teacher, a dishwasher, or an emergency room physician. Uber has the technology – It takes only the will, and some legal tweaking, to unleash an Ayn Rand worker’s utopia. Most everyone will be a self-employed entrepreneur running their own small (tiny, micro) business, and our yeoman dishwasher will create an LLC to receive their wage, which will vary from day-to-day according to market conditions."
I thought it was a dystopian Black Mirror-style speculation. But it actually exists -- in health care. See
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing/
"On-demand nursing companies such as Clipboard Health and ShiftKey encourage workers to join in on personalized pay schemes by bidding against each other. On ShiftKey, Ashley not only expresses her availability for a shift but bids for one against peers by indicating the lowest hourly rate for which she will work. To win the shift, she lowers and lowers her rate until it’s well below a living wage. Like other gig workers who spend a considerable amount of work time not being paid (see Attoh et al. 2024), Ashley is not paid for the time she spends each month updating her profile, reviewing available positions, bidding for shifts, and sending messages in the app about errors in her wages."
The transaction costs in the labor market have not disappeared -- they have just been offloaded to workers.
Cory Doctorw called it the enshitification... I academia should adopt the term.
Speaking from my own educational and professional experience I would say, absolutely, economists-in-training should study the field of comparative economic systems. As far as I know, such courses are more likely than any other economics course to teach about economic institutions and how to study (systematically) economic institutions. I have in mind here the work of Elinor Ostrom, Oliver Williamson, Janos Kornai, and Douglas North. The courses are also more likely than any other econ course to teach how to do systematic comparative analysis of economic systems and subsystems (e.g. comparative social systems, comparative health systems, comparative regulatory systems). I have found that any economist working in public policy, especially social policy and health policy, will benefit greatly from having these tools/capabilities.
After studying mainstream economic for years. I have evolved to believe institutional design is the most important subject for understanding the real world.
I am in fact working on a substack article on comparative regulatory systems.
One can see very well the impact of income differentials on health outcomes.
Yes, supply creates demand rather than vice versa.
as someone who did undergrad economics, I'd say yes. the curriculum is already so narrow, anything that broadens the perspective of your students is valuable.
If they would have a couple of survey of economics classes that would have saved me years of worthless studies.
Hope I haven’t misunderstood you, but a lot of how Economics is taught in the West can’t give a satisfactory account of the state led industrialisation that goes on in China and that is missing quite a lot if our account of production is based largely on private firms making production decisions.
The conventional Western account of production treats labour as a factor input, whereas I think China’s socialist model places human development at the centre (which Amartya Sen’s capability approach also does), and production is secondary to human development.
So I would not call China’s production system “capitalist”; it’s socialist at the core. Human development comes first, then production follows.
I don't know why you say there is no demand for it. There are plenty of institutions and universities still teaching it and they are now teaching alternatives to capitalism (normative economics).
Any one interested in these schools and projects I can provide a list.
I would be extremely skeptical of your presentation of socialism. I would imagine it would be the same as one presented by the Hoover Institution. Totally biased.
I believe that part of the duties of university education is to present students with as broad spectrum of ideas as possible, and to give them tool to critically assess these ideas. When students do not know en mass about something, they cannot create a demand for it
This is our Overtone Window...
I'm an IT engineer. I was so incredibly pissed off when I found out about Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Pissed off because that wasn't in the university curriculum.
The math is very complicated, but it's not about the math. The theorems have profound philosophical implications and I thought it had been gross neglect to leave them out.
That is similar, in a way, to your dilemma. The demand will be small, that's almost certain. But I'm not sure this should be viewed as a question of demand. There can't be demand if people don't know something exists. In these cases, a certain kind of knowledge.
You could approach the question from an archetypal position: The philosopher, as an archetype, protects truth, wisdom, and the integrity of the inner self.
From this perspective, which kind of curriculum develops those values better? You know the answer. :-)
I think the "benefits" of broadening students' horizons in this (and many other cases) is well worth the rather small "costs". As a philosophy teacher responsible for an "Ethics and Business" course for economics/business students, I find it useful (if not essential, for my purposes) to have them realize that the state of the present is not fixed, that it has developed out of (e.g. feudalist) and in tension with (e.g. socialist) other economic arrangements along with the spectrums of ethical attitudes they each engender.
The ethics of business (capitalism) - the permissions and obligations that shape the system - need to be understood in relation to those of comparative systems, not simply for reasons of theoretical completeness, but because of practical relevance. For example, the ethical appetite for greater equality is irrepressible and is, I believe, a more significant in the explanation of the sustained appeal of (democratic, etc.) socialism than that people like free stuff. Similarly, the growing inequality that results capital income/assortative mating/inheritance practices (as you note in Capitalism, Alone) raises legitimate concerns of a backslide into (neo) feudalism. The broader understanding is crucial for helping our students become more ethically sophisticated as they act and make choices in the present that cannot but shape the future. Providing them with an understanding of the economic "logic" of these different systems should only deepen that sophistication.
I have seen studies in healthcare that compare health outcomes based on different polities health insurance & delivery systems. And it shows the difference... You can figure out who wins...
As a political economy student I would argue that this approach is sorely missing and needed. Although we might not need more heterodox economics imposed on history (tracking GDP over centuries) but a rich reservoir of knowledge about economic policies in many different times and places. This could drive creativity towards possibilities of something new. To understand that there is not only the textbook way of "governing the economy" and instead economic policies can be creative or bolt decisions deeply embedded in the local and historical context. If one wants to have a professional managerial class that is not only cementing the status quo, a comparative historical approach is key.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333176017_Mixing_Capitalism_and_Socialism_in_the_US_Political_Economy_-_Copyright_Karl_Polzer_-Center_on_Capital_Social_Equity_-_wwwinequalityinkorg
From my economics degree many decades ago, the ideas and concepts in comparative economics and political economy subjects have been most useful in understanding the world around me.
Whereas I remember the concepts of IS/LM curves (showing my age) and the combinatorial topology of general equilibrium as artefacts that were only ever dusted off with colleagues to reminisce about the “bad old days “
Sometimes we don’t know the worth of what we learn until we experience more of the world. So if you consider the time spent on learning about socialist economics useful to their understanding of the world you are the best person to make that decision.
Branko, you -- and most neoclassical economists -- have a very narrow view of what alternative economic systems are. Today, there are many alternatives to capitalism, mostly on a small scale, but not always – like the Zapatistas in Mexico or the women-led governance in Rojava. There is a large literature on alternatives. For example, check out Ashish Kothari’s article in Scientific American or my blog in Evonomics or the work of organizations like the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. Margaret Thatcher’s TINA is belied by David Bollier’s TAPAS (There are Plenty of Alternatives)! (oops, the links don't work but you get the idea!)
Steven Klees, University of Maryland
There are a lot more I can cite if you want.
Please do! (Can links work in these comments?)
https://politicaleconomy101.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/alternative-economics-systems-and-comparative-economics/
Also, here is a brief sketch for socialism
https://politicaleconomy101.substack.com/p/what-is-socialism
Here's one link that offers others:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/these-alternative-economies-are-inspirations-for-a-sustainable-world/