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Teaching

Presentations

PowerPoint presentations used in the Introduction to Economics course at the Autonomous University of Barcelona during the 2024-2025 academic year, with some additions. They are quite incomplete, and a thorough review beforehand would have been advisable, but this was not carried out. The course included more presentations, and some of those we added were optional. You can consult brief summaries of each file. They can also be downloaded as a ZIP file  (137 MB).

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Economic mechanisms as real algorithms

• • The economic problem; how capitalist systems solve it

  • The economic problem in detail

  • Scarcity, prices, profitability and regulation of the economy

  • Economic Calculation, Value and Accounting

  • Prices as signals

  • Mathematical algorithms and economic mechanisms (for advanced readers, under construction)

  • Socialism and Economic Calculation

Problems of Capitalisms

• • Problems of Capitalism. Introduction

  • Lack of attention to global objectives

  • Inequality, between people and between countries

  • Dehumanization

  • Dehumanization. Mechanization and Artificial Intelligence

Three centuries, three failures

• • Three centuries, three failures

  • Savage Capitalism

  • Utopian, Scientific, and Real Socialism

  • The Welfare State

  • Market and new alternatives

Growth

• • Growth

  • Economic Growth; A Modern Idea

  • Investment, consumption and growth

Economic Crises

• • Economic Cycles I

  • Economic Cycles II

Demography

• • Demography

  • Population Dynamics in One Step [Excel]

  • Population Dynamics with Variable Rates [Excel]

For a synthesis in economic theory

• • Crisis in economic theory

  • Classics I

  • Classics II

  • Neoclassics

  • General Equilibrium

  • Optimization

  • Reproduction

  • Notes for a synthesis

Lecture of Political Economy

Final lecture of the Political Economy course (May 25, 2023): Marx, Darwin, Von Neumann, and the Need to Act.

Marx is wrong when he thinks that human societies tend toward socialism. Biological societies have not evolved toward socialism but rather toward extreme productivism. If we don't use our intelligence we will move toward a Darwinian system, like a savage capitalism.

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