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The Drivers of Post-Pandemic Inflation

Post-covid inflation was predominantly driven by unexpectedly strong demand forces, not only in the United States, but also in the Euro Area. In comparison, the inflationary impact of adverse supply shocks was less pronounced, even though these shocks significantly constrained economic activity. With output already weakened by these unfavourable supply conditions, any attempt by the European Central Bank to further mitigate the demand-driven inflationary pressures---to maintain inflation near its 2-percent target---would have severely hampered an already anaemic recovery.

We thank our discussant, Fernanda Nechio, an anonymous ECB referee, Philipp Hartmann, Jirka Slacalek, Carlo Altavilla, Giacomo Carboni, Jacopo Cimadomo, Chris Erceg, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Davide Furceri, Kamil Koval, Michele Lenza, Matteo Luciani, Alberto Musso, Mario Porqueddu, Massimo Rostagno and Antonio Spilimbergo for helpful comments and discussions. Domenico Giannone started working on this project before joining the IMF. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the National Bureau of Economic Research, IMF, its Management and Executive Board, IMF policy.

Non-teaching compensated activities, 2017-2020: American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, co-editor, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, consultant European Central Bank, consultant.

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The Case for a Clean Energy Marshall Plan

How the fight against climate change can renew american leadership, by brian deese.

For decades, global integration—of trade, of politics, of technology—was seen as a natural law. Today, integration has been replaced by fragmentation. The post–Cold War institutions are teetering, industrial strategies are back in vogue, and competition with China is growing. These dynamics are creating geopolitical friction across global supply chains, for vehicles, minerals, computer chips, and more.

Against this backdrop, the clean energy transition remains the most important planetary challenge. It also presents the greatest economic opportunity: it will be the largest capital formation event in human history. And it presents the United States with a chance to lead. Thanks to its still unparalleled power and influence, Washington maintains a unique capacity—and a strategic imperative—to shape world outcomes.

In 2022, the United States recognized these opportunities when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the world’s largest-ever investment in clean energy technologies. This transformative industrial strategy was a crucial first step for the United States in positioning its economy for success by accelerating the clean energy transition at home. Now is the time to take this leadership to the global stage, in a way that promotes U.S. interests and supports aligned countries. But the United States need not create a new model for doing so.

Seventy-six years ago, also facing a fractured world order and an emerging superpower competitor, U.S. President Harry Truman and U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall launched an ambitious effort to rebuild European societies and economies. Although often associated with free-market neoliberalism, the 1948 Marshall Plan was hardly laissez-faire. It was, in fact, an industrial strategy that established the United States as a generous partner to European allies while promoting U.S. industries and interests. Generations later, the Marshall Plan is rightly understood as one of the great successes of the postwar era.

Although today’s challenges are undoubtedly different, the United States should draw lessons from that postwar period and launch a new Marshall Plan, this time for the global transition to clean energy. Just as the Marshall Plan assisted those countries most ravaged by World War II, the new Marshall Plan should aim to help countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change: the United States’ partners in the developing world. Developing countries and emerging markets will need access to cheap capital and technology to transition away from fossil fuels quickly enough to halt global warming.

The United States again has the chance to help others while helping itself. Putting its own burgeoning industries front and center in the energy transition will generate further innovation and growth. Clean energy investment in the United States reached about 7.4 percent of private fixed investment in structures and equipment in the first quarter of this year, at $40 billion, up from $16 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Investment in emerging energy technologies—such as hydrogen power and carbon capture and storage—jumped by 1,000 percent from 2022 to 2023. Manufacturing investment in the battery supply chain went up nearly 200 percent over the same period. By creating global markets for its own clean energy industries and innovators, the United States can scale these economic gains and strengthen domestic support for an energy shift that has not always been an easy sell to voters.

The fracturing world order and the ominous climate crisis lead some observers to focus on the potential tensions between those two developments. But they also provide an opening for the United States to deploy its innovation and capital in a generous, pragmatic, and unapologetically pro-American way—by launching a Clean Energy Marshall Plan.

THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

Gauzy invocations of the Marshall Plan often induce eye rolling, and with good reason. In U.S. policy circles, commentators have called for a new Marshall Plan for everything from ending global poverty to rebuilding Ukraine. The term has become shorthand for a response to any problem that mobilizes public resources to achieve an ambitious end. But this overuse has blurred the substance of what the Marshall Plan really was—and was not.

The Marshall Plan was not, as many assume, born solely out of visionary ideals of international unity after the horrors of World War II. Instead, it reflected the pragmatic constraints of a fracturing, uncertain world order. In the spring of 1947, having returned from China after a failed attempt to head off a communist takeover there, Marshall was left to grapple with the newly emerged Iron Curtain in Europe. The shifting geopolitical reality forced Truman and Marshall to consider how to exert U.S. leadership to shape the world for good—to forge peace, rebuild cities, and promote American values in the face of communism. But they clearly recognized the limits of hard power and understood that economic stability could yield geopolitical stability.

Fundamentally, the Marshall Plan was an industrial strategy that deployed public dollars to advance U.S. manufacturing and industrial capabilities in service of reconstructing Europe. Washington spent $13 billion—equivalent to $200 billion today—over four years, mostly in the form of grants to discount the European purchase of goods and services. Because U.S. companies were at the center of the program, 70 percent of European expenditures of Marshall Plan funds were used to buy products made in the United States. Italy, for example, used Marshall Plan funds to buy American drilling technology, pipes, and other industrial equipment to rebuild its energy sector—including the equipment needed to restart Europe’s first commercial geothermal plant, powered by steam from lava beds in Tuscany. By 1950, that region had more than doubled its geothermal capacity and remained a major contributor to Italy’s total power demand.

The adoption of low-cost clean energy technologies is not self-executing.

The structure of the Marshall Plan allowed it to meet Europe’s pressing needs while winning over a skeptical and war-weary American public. Because there was little appetite for providing foreign aid following World War II, Marshall and Truman centered their plan on Americans’ economic interests. The country’s industrial capabilities had grown considerably during the war, but after the war, the task was to find new markets for them. As the plan’s chief administrator, Paul Hoffman, explained, the goal was to turn Europe into a “consumer of American goods” at a time when postwar U.S. GDP had fallen precipitously and exports were imperiled by a moribund European economy. The Marshall Plan would thus help American companies and save American jobs.

To sell the plan to the public, its architects and supporters launched a public relations campaign, squarely anchoring their case in these core U.S. economic interests. In the ten months after Marshall’s June 1947 speech introducing the plan, it gained traction, securing a 75 percent public approval rating and winning over a majority of the U.S. Congress—in an election year and with a divided government to boot.

Yet even though the Marshall Plan was attuned to U.S. economic interests, its architects recognized that it was important for the United States to be a generous, reliable partner to U.S. allies. The plan helped Europe rise from the rubble, pay off its debts, refill its foreign exchange reserves, recover its industrial production and agricultural output, adopt new technologies, and build goodwill for the United States, all while reducing the appeal of communism. By filling a financing gap that no other power could, the United States cemented its transatlantic partnerships. And by supporting its own economy, it became a capable and reliable global partner.

THE CHEAPER, THE BETTER

Like the original Marshall Plan, a Clean Energy Marshall Plan should meet other countries’ development needs while advancing U.S. interests. In this case, the goal is to speed the adoption of low-cost, zero-carbon solutions, such as the manufacture of batteries, the deployment of nuclear and geothermal energy, and the processing of critical minerals. This approach reflects the basic intuition that, as useful as it can be to make carbon pollution more expensive by putting a price on it, the most credible way to accelerate the adoption of zero-carbon technologies is to make that technology cheap and widely available.

The Inflation Reduction Act embodies this theory: it created long-term public incentives that promote the innovation and deployment of a variety of clean energy technologies. This public investment is already transforming the U.S. energy industry, and it holds even more potential for global energy markets. By driving down the cost of clean energy technologies—particularly innovative technologies such as nuclear power and carbon capture—the IRA could generate up to $120 billion in global savings by 2030. The resulting uptake of clean energy technologies in emerging markets could ultimately yield emission reductions in the rest of the world that would be two to four times as large as those achieved in the United States.

But the adoption of low-cost clean energy technologies is not self-executing. Without U.S. leadership, the world will simply not do enough fast enough to limit the worst effects of global warming. Unfortunately, the United States has yet to offer a full-throated answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the $1 trillion infrastructure project Beijing designed to expand its influence across the globe. And now, some leaders in China are calling for Beijing to go even further and develop a Marshall Plan–style approach to drive clean energy adoption in developing countries. Meanwhile, other players are also stepping up where the United States has not. For all the controversy about the United Arab Emirates—a fossil fuel nation—hosting last year’s UN climate conference, it is notable that it was the UAE, and not the United States, that proposed a large funding effort aimed at scaling zero-carbon technology to appropriate levels for emerging markets.

Ceding this space is a failure of American leadership and a missed economic opportunity. Skepticism of the United States, exacerbated by its handling of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, is already high in Southeast Asia and across the developing world, where Washington cannot afford to see alliances fray. And when countries there look to China or the UAE for capital and technology, American innovators and workers lose ground.

Implementing a Clean Energy Marshall Plan won’t be easy, but the process must begin now. As after World War II, the United States can be generous as well as pro-American in its approach. It can promote U.S. interests by scaling its industries to meet global needs while winning greater influence in this new geopolitical landscape. And it can meet developing countries where they are—supplying them with the energy they need to expand their economies and the innovation they need to decarbonize efficiently.

To accomplish these aims, however, Washington needs a clear mandate, adequate resources, and flexible tools. And it will need to enact a strategy that does three things: finances foreign deployment of U.S. clean energy technology, secures more resilient supply chains, and creates a new, more balanced trade regime that encourages the development and implementation of clean energy technology.

HOMEGROWN ADVANTAGES

The United States should begin with a focused investment and commercial diplomacy effort, akin to that of the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan had a straightforward aim: subsidize European demand for U.S. products and services needed to rebuild Europe. Today, the United States should establish a Clean Energy Finance Authority with an updated mission: subsidize foreign demand for clean energy technology and put American innovation and industry at the front of the line.

This new body would enable the United States to participate in foreign deals that promote U.S. innovation and production while reducing emissions. The purpose would be to reduce the premium that emerging-market economies must pay to meet their energy needs in a low-carbon way. To receive U.S. investments, governments and private sectors in these countries would themselves need to invest in clean energy. The promise of reliable U.S. support would prompt reform.

The good news is that most of the technologies necessary, from solar power to battery storage to wind turbines, are already commercially scalable. Other technologies are now scaling up rapidly, thanks to U.S. investment. For example, the United States has used its existing drilling capacity to become the world’s leading producer of advanced geothermal energy. It is well positioned to leverage its homegrown advantages to export geothermal components to geopolitically important markets in Southeast Asia and Africa and beyond, where sources of reliable power are needed. And the more these technologies are deployed, the more costs will come down, as processes become more efficient with scale. With patient capital, the dividends will be manifold: steady, clean power; faster-growing markets; diversified supply chains; and support for hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. Similar opportunities exist for advanced nuclear and hydrogen power and carbon capture.

The United States has yet to offer a full-throated answer to the Belt and Road Initiative.

To be effective, the Clean Energy Finance Authority would need to be big yet nimble. Not only has the United States lagged other countries in offering public capital to lead the energy transition, but its financial support is also unnecessarily inflexible. Officials in foreign capitals joke that the United States shows up with a 100-page list of conditions, whereas China shows up with a blank check. The United States’ current financing authorities are constrained by byzantine rules that block U.S. investment that could advance its national interests.

For example, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, which invests in projects in lower- and middle-income countries, cannot invest in lithium processing projects in Chile because it is considered a high-income country, yet companies in the low-income Democratic Republic of the Congo often find it impossible to meet the DFC’s stringent labor standards. Meanwhile, Chinese companies invested over $200 million in a Chilean lithium plant in 2023 and gained rights to explore Congolese lithium mines the same year. Of course, U.S. finance must continue to reflect American values, but there is still room for far greater flexibility in the name of national interest and the energy transition.

Promising models for a Clean Energy Finance Authority also exist. Domestically, the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office rapidly expanded its capabilities, approving 11 investment commitments to companies totaling $18 billion in the past two fiscal years (versus just two commitments in the three years before that). Internationally, the DFC expanded its climate lending from less than $500 million to nearly $4 billion over the last three years. And the United States has supported creative financial partnerships with several countries. In Egypt, for example, the United States and Germany committed $250 million to stimulate $10 billion of private capital to accelerate the Egyptian energy transition.

The most effective aspects of these examples should be harnessed together under the Clean Energy Finance Authority, which should have a versatile financial toolkit, including the ability to issue debt and equity. It should be able to deploy this capital in creative arrangements, such as by blending it with foreign capital and lowering risk premiums with insurance and guarantees. It should draw on, not re-create, the Department of Energy’s expertise in assessing the risks and benefits of emerging technologies, such as advanced nuclear energy, hydrogen power, and carbon capture and storage. The Clean Energy Finance Authority could be managed by the U.S. Treasury Department, in light of the latter’s experience in risk underwriting and financial diligence, and given the mandate to coordinate closely across agencies.

With nimble, market-oriented financing capacities, the Clean Energy Finance Authority would be able to accelerate and initiate, not impede, financial transactions. Whereas the Marshall Plan was 90 percent financed with U.S. grants, a Clean Energy Marshall Plan could easily be the inverse, with less than ten percent of its expenditures in the form of grants and the rest of the capital being deployed as equity, debt, export credit, and other forms of financing. And whereas the Chinese Belt and Road model relies on government-dominated financing, an American approach would be market-based and therefore more efficient because it enables competition and encourages large investments of private capital.

The Clean Energy Finance Authority should be capitalized with a significant upfront commitment of money—enough to generate market momentum that tips the balance of clean energy investment toward the private sector; ultimately the private sector, not the public sector, will need to provide the majority of the financing the energy transition needs over the coming decades. If this new authority is set up and deployed properly, U.S. companies and innovators would gain more foreign demand, on favorably negotiated terms, and new market share. Foreign consumers, for their part, would gain access to new channels of cheap clean energy technology. For emerging-market countries and major emitters—such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia—the United States could act with both generosity and its own interests in mind.

THE DANGER OF DEPENDENCE

The United States should also establish a Clean Energy Resilience Authority, whose goal would be to create more resilient supply chains for the clean energy transition. To support burgeoning manufacturing production in developing countries, and to expand that of the United States, the world needs diversified supply chains that are not dominated by individual states and do not have exploitable chokepoints. Today, China controls 60 percent of the world’s rare-earth mining production and approximately 90 percent of its processing and refining capability.

The United States should lead a coalition of partners to build access to processed critical minerals such that the energy transition does not substitute dependence on foreign oil for dependence on Chinese critical minerals. Thankfully, the term “rare-earth minerals” is a misnomer: these elements are abundant and geographically dispersed. Eighty percent of the world’s lithium reserves, 66 percent of its nickel reserves, and 50 percent of its copper reserves are in democracies. Eighty percent of oil reserves, by contrast, are in OPEC countries, nearly all of which are autocracies.

In today’s energy market, the most important tool the United States wields is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a stockpile of oil created 50 years ago as a response to the 1973 oil crisis. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine , in 2022, the U.S. government used this reserve to ensure adequate supply by selling 180 million barrels of oil. When prices fell, the administration began refilling the reserve, securing a profit for U.S. taxpayers of close to $600 million as of May 2024. This mechanism has reduced the volatility of oil prices while advancing U.S. strategic interests.

As part of the Clean Energy Marshall Plan, Washington must level the playing field through the use of trade tools.

The United States should create a strategic reserve capability for critical minerals, as well. A body similar to the U.S. Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, a reserve fund used to prevent fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar, but for critical minerals would enable the United States to stabilize the market for these resources. The Clean Energy Resilience Authority could offer various forms of financial insurance that would steady prices, protect consumers from price spikes, and generate stable revenue for producers during low-price periods. And it should have the ability to build up physical stockpiles of key minerals, such as graphite and cobalt, whether on U.S. soil or in allied territory.

Support for this type of reserve capability already exists. The bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recommended just such a body. The United States’ allies are also on board: in May, South Korea allocated an additional nearly $200 million to build up domestic lithium reserves. Indeed, the original Marshall Plan also recognized the need to improve access to strategically important materials, funding domestic stockpiles for goods such as industrial equipment and medical supplies.

With the Clean Energy Resilience Authority, the United States would be better able to craft multilateral agreements to diversify critical minerals processing. As part of that effort, it could organize a critical minerals club among leading producers and consumers, wherein members could offer and receive purchase commitments. Such an arrangement would give countries that produce and process minerals reliable access to the United States and other developed markets—assuming they meet high standards for sustainable and ethical mining practices. The outcome would be more minerals processed in a more diverse supply chain, sold into a more stable market.

TRADING PLACES

The Marshall Plan underscored the importance of using trade policy to advance U.S. interests: it required European countries to integrate their economies and to remove trade barriers as a means of expanding U.S. exports, promoting capitalism, and warding off communism. A Clean Energy Marshall Plan should help lead a coalition to elicit a more balanced global trading system.

Right now, China is the central actor in global supply chains for clean energy technologies. Facing a stalling domestic economy, China is pursuing a state-led strategy of investing in domestic manufacturing capacity rather than in greater domestic demand or a stronger social safety net. For some goods, such as electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels, China explicitly aims to dominate global manufacturing. That strategy is fundamentally unsustainable for the global economy. For one thing, it creates acute supply chain vulnerabilities; because the world relies so heavily on China for processing rare-earth minerals, a natural disaster or geopolitical tensions could threaten the entire global supply. For another thing, the strategy erodes industrial capacity across the world, including in the United States. By flooding global markets with artificially cheap goods without a commensurate increase in imports, China forces the cost of its subsidies onto its trade partners—undercutting employment, innovation, and industrial capacity elsewhere. Indeed, this strategy even harms China’s own industrial sector and fails to address the root causes of its domestic economic challenges.

As part of the Clean Energy Marshall Plan, Washington must level the global playing field through the active yet measured use of trade tools such as tariffs. Doing nothing and being resigned to China’s statist approach is neither economically nor politically sustainable. And using blunt tools to effectuate what amounts to a unilateral retreat is dangerous. Former U.S. President Donald Trump ’s call to essentially end all imports from China within four years is a cynical fantasy playing on populist fears. In 2022, U.S. goods and services trade with China amounted to over $750 billion. It is not practicable to decouple from any major economy, let alone the United States’ third-largest trading partner. Global trade delivers important benefits, whereas unilateral, asymmetric escalation would leave the United States isolated and vulnerable.

The right approach is to harmonize more active trade policies with like-minded countries. Indeed, Brazil, Chile, India, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, among others, are all investigating or imposing tariffs on Chinese dumping practices. China is now the object of twice as many retaliatory measures as it was four years ago. This growing pushback represents a chance for the United States to address the Chinese-driven global trade imbalance by crafting a global coalition to galvanize a coordinated response while creating more global trade in clean energy goods and services.

To accomplish this, the United States must use expanded, stronger, and smarter trade authorities. For example, Washington should build into its tariffs on imported goods an assessment of how much carbon was used to produce them. Tariffs should be determined by the emission intensity of the trading partner’s entire industry, rather than company by company, to avoid “resource reshuffling,” whereby countries try to dodge penalties by limiting their exports to only products manufactured with clean energy instead of reducing their emissions overall. These tariffs should be aimed at all countries, but given its current production practices, China would be hit the hardest.

This form of tariff regime could be coordinated with what other countries are doing on the same front. The effort should begin with the steel sector. Chinese-made steel is two to five times as carbon-intensive as U.S.-made steel and is being dumped in markets around the world. The United States has been working on an arrangement with the European Union to harmonize tariffs on steel and aluminum. But the EU need not be the United States’ first or only partner in this initiative. There is a global appetite to enact a common external tariff regime on China to respond to its overproduction and carbon-intensive practices. Washington should work to pull this group together through the G-7 and G-20.

There is also a domestic appetite for this approach, in both the U.S. Congress and the private sector. For example, Dow Chemical has advocated the use of carbon policies to favor environmentally responsible industries that make heavily traded goods. Several bipartisan bills now in Congress propose similar policies. The United States could develop an industrial competitiveness program for heavy industries, such as those producing cement, steel, and chemicals, that bolsters domestic industry and makes trade more fair by charging a carbon-based fee on both domestic industries and imports at the border. This program would incentivize domestic innovation and efficiency, and it would advantage environmentally responsible U.S. companies that compete with heavy-carbon-emitting foreign producers. The revenue from the fee could be rebated to the U.S. private sector by rewarding the cleanest domestic producers and investing in research and development.

Investing in the clean energy transition abroad will benefit businesses and workers at home.

A carbon-based tariff, or a carbon border adjustment, should further motivate climate action by exempting countries that are hitting their nationally determined goals under the 2016 Paris climate agreement or those that fall below certain income and emission thresholds. To complement the Clean Energy Finance Authority, the tariff could be lowered in exchange for foreign procurement of clean energy technologies or of clean products made in the United States. For many developing countries, the tariff would act as a powerful accelerant to their energy development plans.

This approach would allow the United States to transition from its current indiscriminate, broad-based tariff regime to a more comprehensive carbon-based system that more accurately targets Chinese overcapacity and trade imbalance concerns. And the United States should leave the door open to cooperating with China in this context, as well.

Policymakers will have to reimagine existing trade rules—and be willing to lead the World Trade Organization and other international institutions in thinking about how trade can accelerate the clean energy transition. The WTO’s objective was never just to promote free trade for free trade’s sake; its founding document includes a vision for sustainable development. The WTO must reform if it is to deliver on that vision, but in the meantime, the United States shouldn’t cling to old trade conventions when more targeted and effective approaches exist.

BANKING ON THE FUTURE

Finally, as the United States upgrades its tools of economic statecraft, it should also increase its expectations of the world’s multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank . Like its predecessor, the Clean Energy Marshall Plan would be temporary, designed to unlock a wave of innovation investment to address a global need. The multilateral development banks are a necessary complement to active U.S. leadership today, just as they were in the postwar era. But the banks need to deploy their capital with the urgency that the energy transition and economic development demand. Although there has been a welcome recent focus on this reform agenda—including by the Biden administration, the G-20, and even the banks themselves—progress has been tepid, and conventional proposals lack ambition and creativity. Incremental change is not enough.

Some avenues already exist to spur the proper level of ambition. For example, donor countries can increase the stakes for the banks by fostering competition among them to make tangible progress on reforms that increase lending for climate-related projects and leverage their investments more effectively. Washington can already provide capital in the form of guarantees to multilateral development banks; this authority could be expanded such that U.S. capital is allocated to these banks based on which ones deserve it most. This “play to get paid” structure would challenge the banks to come forward with legitimate plans to improve their lending practices for clean energy projects. And the guarantee structure offers a great bang for the buck: the World Bank can spend $6 for every $1 of guarantee provided.

The Green Climate Fund, the sole multilateral public financial institution devoted to addressing climate change, could follow this approach, too. Almost 15 years after it was founded, the GCF has disbursed only 20 percent of the funding it has received. To speed up its progress and increase its leverage, the GCF should allocate a portion of its funds to the multilateral development banks, building on its existing practice of lending to these institutions, based on a similar “play to get paid” principle. Instead of submitting individual project applications, the banks would submit proposals for leveraging hybrid capital to scale climate lending in support of the GCF’s mission, including the even split between those projects that prevent climate change and those that respond to its current impacts. In other words, the banks that can best attack the problem would receive flexible GCF capital to scale those efforts. Such a change would be merely one part of a multilateral system that maintains the momentum created by a Clean Energy Marshall Plan.

WIN-WIN-WIN

A Clean Energy Marshall Plan has the makings of a compelling pitch to U.S. domestic audiences: investing in the clean energy transition abroad will benefit businesses and workers at home. Evidence of that effect is already easy to find. The clean investment boom is turning novel technologies into market mainstays: emerging technologies such as hydrogen power and carbon capture now each receive more investment than wind. Billions of dollars are flowing to areas of the United States left behind by previous economic booms, bringing new jobs with them. But to further this momentum, the country needs to turn to foreign markets to boost demand for U.S. products.

The United States should seize the occasion to lead on its own terms. The Clean Energy Marshall Plan would be good for U.S. workers and businesses, unlocking billions of dollars of market opportunities; good for the United States’ developing country partners, by delivering low-cost decarbonization solutions; and good for the world order, by building more resilient supply chains and a more balanced and sustainable trading system.

Such a plan requires political focus and money, but it is not impossible. The United States can spend far less than it did on the Marshall Plan, thanks to the better financial tools available today and falling clean technology costs. And it could recycle the proceeds from a carbon-based border adjustment tariff into the finance and resilience authorities, thus setting up a system that pays for itself.

In this moment of domestic economic strength—stark against the backdrop of heightened competition, a fracturing world, and a raging climate crisis—the United States can do something generous for people across the globe in a way that benefits Americans. It should take that leap, not just because it is the morally right thing to do but also because it is the strategically necessary thing to do.

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• BRIAN DEESE is the Innovation Fellow at MIT. He served as Director of the White House National Economic Council from 2021 to 2023.
• More By Brian Deese

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Guest Essay

Kamala Harris Begins to Sketch a New Economic Vision

By Jen Harris

Ms. Harris served as the senior director of international economics on the National Security Council and National Economic Council.

Kamala Harris is beginning to offer the first definitive clues of a new economic vision — one with the potential not only to offer a unifying vision for the Democratic Party but also to serve as the foundation for a governing philosophy that crosses party lines.

In recent years, both parties have broken with a markets-know-best default setting. The question is, what comes next?

One influential school of thought , advanced by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, argues for increasing the supply of essentials such as housing, health care and clean energy, in part by using government to break the choke points that make these goods too scarce and costly in the first place. This has truth — the much-criticized million-dollar-toilet problem gets at something real.

But it doesn’t fully reflect the realities of how powerful interests hold captive parts of our economy, and then our political system. A second intellectual camp focuses on these forces, and its avatars include Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and the modern antitrust movement, and the U.A.W. leader Shawn Fain and re-energized labor unions. Yet it, too, is incomplete as a governing wisdom, as it lacks affirmative answers for our largest challenges, like how to decarbonize quickly and at scale, and how to contend with a rising geopolitical competitor in China.

Ms. Harris’s early proposals suggest she is drawing from both strands in telling a more holistic and entirely new story about how the economy works and the aims it should serve. Put differently, her slogan “We’re not going back” might well extend beyond political and social rights to include a different brand of economics.

This new story has two themes — call them “build” and “balance.” The first focuses on pointing and shaping markets toward worthy aims; the second corrects upstream power imbalances so that market outcomes are fairer and need less after-the-fact redistribution.

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The thinking behind feminist economics

ECONOMICS, a discipline beloved by policy wonks, talking heads and The Economist , is meant to offer an objective way of looking at the world. But some worry that it falls short. Proponents of feminist economics believe that, in terms of both methodology and focus, economics is too much of a man’s world. This is not just because women are under-represented in the science: in 2014, women constituted only 12% of American economics professors, and to date there has only been one female winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (Elinor Ostrom). They also, perhaps more importantly, worry that by asking the wrong questions, economics has cemented gender inequality rather than helping to solve it. How do feminist economists want to change it?

According to Alfred Marshall, a founding father of the science, economics is “the study of men as they live and think and move in the ordinary business of life”. Marshall’s casual allusion to “men” captures what feminist economists believe is the first big problem with economics: a habit of ignoring women. The economy, they argue, is often thought of as the world of money, machines and men. This is reflected in how GDP is measured. Wage labour is included; unpaid work at home is not. Feminist economists criticise this approach as being excessively narrow. In Marilyn Waring’s book If Women Counted , published in 1988, she argued that the system of measuring GDP was designed by men to keep women “in their place”. Not only is this way of measuring GDP arbitrary (care is included in “production” when paid for on the market, but not when supplied informally), but because women contribute the bulk of care around the world, it also systematically undervalues their contribution to society. Dr Waring thought unpaid care should be included in GDP to reflect the fact that “production” of well-cared-for children is just as important as that of cars or crops.

When it comes to public policy, feminist economists think gender equality is valuable in and of itself, not just as a means of promoting growth. They also consider the effects of public policy on women. When public services are cut, a simple analysis might summarise the change in, say, the amount spent on employing civil servants. A feminist economist's analysis would probably point out that if those most likely to plug the gap left by the state are women, then this distribution of cuts could worsen gender inequality. And feminist economics also criticises the methods used within the standard models taught to undergraduates for overlooking fundamental drivers of gender inequality. Take a simple economics model, which might explain a woman’s decision to take on the bulk of childcare responsibilities based on her preferences for “consumption” and “leisure”. Feminist economists might point out that if her preferences have been formed by a society with strong ideas about what women should do, then presenting her choice as a free one could be misleading. By ignoring potential discrimination against women, such a model could allow sexism to go unchallenged, they would argue.

Proponents of feminist economics have won many battles. GDP might still not include unpaid care, but international agencies like the United Nations increasingly rely on broader measures of progress than cash income, including health and wellbeing. Julie Nelson, a feminist economist, writes in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that “many readers may have discovered that they are already doing 'feminist economics' in some ways, although they have preferred to think of themselves as just doing 'good economics'”. Indeed, feminist economists wish they lived in a world where the label need not exist.

Update: This blog post has been amended to remove the news peg.

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Feminist Economics

Feminist Economics is a peer-reviewed journal, supported by Colorado State University and Rice University, that provides an open forum for dialogue and debate about feminist economic perspectives. By opening new areas of economic inquiry, welcoming diverse voices, and encouraging critical exchanges, the journal aims to enlarge and enrich economic discourse. Feminist Economics seeks to not just develop more illuminating theories, but also to improve the conditions of living for all children, women, and men.

The journal is sponsored by the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), an organization that has official NGO status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

CSU Editorial Team

Elissa Braunstein

• Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs
• Professor of Economics

Research Fellow

Débora Nunes

• PhD Student
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Milena Dehn

Feminist Economics was founded in 1994 by Diana Strassman (Rice University) on behalf of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE). The first issue was published in 1995, and in 1997, it was named Best New Journal by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) in the international awards competition. Since its founding, Feminist Economics has grown to reach a wide, international audience with individual subscribers in more than 50 countries and a distribution to more than 5,000 libraries worldwide.

Founding Editor Diana Strassman was joined by Editor Günseli Berik (University of Utah) in 2010, who served until 2017. Elissa Braunstein (Colorado State University) became Co-Editor of Feminist Economics in 2017, taking over as Editor in 2020.

To learn more about the journal and get involved, visit our website or contact the editorial team.

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Feminist Economics

Recommended content, the perspectives of pluralist economics, explore perspectives    compare perspectives, this text presents a perspective of pluralist economics. in the orientation section you can learn about and compare ten different perspectives of pluralist economics., authors: janina urban und andrea pürckhauer | 18th of december 2016, patron: prof. dr. christine bauhardt, thanks to phd alyssa schneebaum for her helpful comments, 1. core elements.

Feminist economics analyses the interrelationship between gender and the economy. Thereby, feminist economics also takes the unpaid, non-market intermediated part of the economy and society into account and examines the driving forces behind common dichotomies such as economic–social, productive–reproductive, masculine–feminine, paid–unpaid or public–private. Moreover, feminist economics analyses patriarchy and capitalism as interrelated forms of dominance. Against this background, questions arise about the distribution and disposal of property, income, power, knowledge and the own body.

Since liberal and constructivist research traditions exist alongside critical ones within feminist economics, it cannot be considered a coherent paradigm. Yet, all of these approaches deal with reproductive labour and care. Furthermore, feminist economics analyses the relationships between state policy, science, language, growth and gender relations. Feminist economics criticises that economics is blind with respect to women's experiences and highlights that women are hardly represented in the economic discipline, which in turn affects scientific findings. Hence, feminist economics point out the fact that scientific findings, common ideas, and society as a whole are all formed by power relations. For instance, the analysis of gender relations has only slowly entered the field of economics even though the women’s movement has been being active for centuries.

Central questions focused on by feminist economics are:

• Why have housework and care not been recognized as work in economics since the 19th century and why are they not dealt with in economic theories?
• Which dynamics drive and emerge from the widespread dichotomies economic–social, productive–reproductive, male–female, paid–unpaid, public–private?
• What is women’s current situation with respect to labour-market participation and wage income and what are the social processes behind this situation?
• Why does the image of a rational, egoistic, objective, utility maximizing homo economicus rather correspond to a masculine stereotype and what does this mean for scientific findings?
• What are the gender specific effects of macroeconomic policies and how would discussions on macroeconomic aspects, such as public spending, growth or international trade look if economics was not blind with respect to gender relations?

2. Terminology, analysis and conception of the economy

For feminist economics, the understanding of labour, which does not only comprise wage labour but also housework and Care, as well as the the (non) payment of work and their distribution among genders are central elements.

For feminist economics, the economy is the way in which humans collectively organize in order to guarantee their survival (cf. Power 2004, 7). By working and using natural resources, humans reproduce their livelihood, through the production of goods as well as through individual, social and generative reproduction. Reproductive labour comprises market- and non-market-intermediated, paid and unpaid work. Reproductive labour includes for instance raising children, caring for the elderly, purchasing and preparing meals, cleaning, whereas generative reproduction denotes the bearing of children (cf. Bauhardt 2012, 5, 6). Caring activities are just named ‘care’ and have different dynamics than industrial production. The ‘product’ only comes into being if its recipient is present. Moreover, its quality is heavily impacted by rationalization, for example, if machines are used to save time, since the quality of caring activities emerges from human contact (Madörin 2010, 87; Bauhardt 2012, 5-6). Even if the productive sphere always requires a reproductive one, since it is based on the availability of Care (and natural resources), up to now, economics has primarily analysed the market-intermediated and paid part of the economy. However, reproductive labour is increasingly visible, partly because this type of labour is now increasingly marketized and partly because women participate more often in the labour market. Due to this ‘feminization’ of labour, the feminist research tradition has increasingly gained attention in economics.

Feminist revisions of Marxist theories, amongst others developed within the feminist movements, worked intensively on the concept of labour and the role of the reproductive sphere in the production process. They take labour , including reproductive labour, as the source of value. Accordingly, labour creates not only material but also use value. In industrial production, which is primarily carried out by men, the owners of the means of production appropriate the profit. This profit represents the difference between the wage, which the workers are paid for their reproduction, and real value of the products they produced. The wage covers expenses for, for example, the food and rent of the whole family, but does not remunerate the reproductive labour mostly done by women (Federici 2012, 25ff.).

During the transition from fordism to post-fordism, the ‘ division of labour ’ between men and women was broken up and since then has been permanently changing (Bauhardt, 2012, 5–7). Despite those economic and social changes, feminist economists emphasize that power relations remain in place. First, power relations articulate themselves in the form of low payment – buzzword gender pay gap – or the double burden of women, who apart from wage labour carry out most of the reproductive labour. Second, they have expanded extensively, both internationally –, for example, via global care chains – and intensively – via the marketization of activities that formerly have not been executed on the market. Moreover, many feminist economists highlight that capitalist production is not only based on the exploitation of women but also on the exploitation of nature . Consequently, women’s contribution to the economy (reproductive labour) and that of nature (resources and sinks) are systematically undervalued (cf. Biesecker et al., 2012, 4).

Beyond the Marxist analysis, neoclassical feminist theories mainly deal with questions of women’s labour-market participation and their wage income . Neoclassical economics focuses on the results of individual maximization decisions and evaluations carried out according to the marginal principle as well as criteria of efficiency (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 55–57). In such a framework, the exclusion of women from the labour market could be regarded as inefficient and as reducing welfare, since not all persons capable of working participate in the labour market (e.g. Harriet Taylor Mill already in 1851, in Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 18–21 or currently Maier 2004, 33). Explanations of the increased labour-market participation of women point to better education , higher productivity in households due to machines, lower birth rates and higher labour demand especially in the service sector (Knapp, 2002). The lower wages that women receive on the labour market are explained in terms of their concentration in certain sectors, for example, in the service sector, and their lower investment in human capital because of potentially taking care of the children. While neoclassical economics developed those explanations, feminist economists emphasise that the described patterns heavily depend on the institutional framework , for example, social role models of families and women, which are socially negotiated rather than a result of a market process (Maier 2004, 29).

Many feminist economics base their work on feminist constructivism and its description of the image of women and gender (Maier 2004, 46). They assume that in particular ideas and institutions determine how people live together, since knowledge claims and conceptions are (pre)determined by language and perception. With respect to gender relations, a differentiation is made between sex as biological gender and gender as socially constructed gender. Persons with female (reproductive) body parts are considered to be ‘feminine’, i.e. emotional, altruistic and dependent. Persons with male (reproductive) body parts are considered to be ‘masculine’, i.e. rational, egoistic and independent. Such socially constructed characteristics can be more stable than material relations in the economy and society if, for example, conceptions of the working father and the caring mother are maintained in language and imagination even if other family constellations are possible (Haidinger & Knittler, 2014, 43–45).

The ways in which the economic, political, cultural and scientific spheres are entangled can be shown with an interdisciplinary approach, taking the example of how modernity emerged. Friederike Habermann explains that until the 17 th century, women, without the status symbol of a penis, counted as second-class men, but participated in the economic and political sphere. With the witch-hunts (amongst other events), femininity was constructed as being related to nature, emotion, and wickedness, whereas masculinity was supposed to be civil, rational, and driven by reason and morality. Different spheres, such as public and private, were created. Limited participation in those spheres was justified by alleged biological dispositions. For instance, in the period of the French revolution, women were no longer allowed to participate in the political and economic public. Instead, they were assigned to the (also constructed) sphere of the private, social and domestic. During this time, the political and economic order based on estates came to an end and the field of economics emerged. The latter was based on the theoretical constructs of markets and the ideal of the male citizen: the homo economicus (Habermann 2010, 157ff.).

3. Ontology

Gender relations are the key question of feminist economics and can be identified as the common point of departure for different analyses (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 43). Gender relations become apparent in power imbalances within families and in the distribution of resources such as money, time or mobility; and they have an impact not only on women's employment but also on macroeconomic relations (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 127f.). While feminist economists who are working in the neoclassical tradition would describe the scarcity of resources as central economic problem, most feminist economists see power relations as central force driving social and economic dynamics. Besides gender inequalities, other power relations are also analysed: for example, those that relate to ethnic or social backgrounds. The common analysis of different forms of inequality (race, class, gender) and their interrelatedness is called intersectionality (cf.. Vinz 2011). In this context, it needs to be emphasised that the category women is not  homogeneous, since women have different backgrounds and different experiences. This means that, for instance, class or other forms of discrimination need to be taken into account as well (Mader und Schultheiss 2011, 411).

In order to analyse gender hierarchies, feminist economics considers it as equally relevant to scrutinize the economics of households as well as economic policies or macroeconomic aggregates (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 43). First, feminist economics analyses how gender hierarchies influence household structures and (resulting from the aforementioned) employment opportunities or decisions, payment or the access to credits. Second, the interrelation between households and the state is also under scrutiny. Feminist economists point out that economic policies such as redistribution are shaped by gender norms and at the same time have an impact on gender relations.

Therefore, the analyses of feminist economics primarily take place at the meso level. Nevertheless, feminist economics highlights the central role of gender relations for the analysis of macroeconomic relations by, for example, pointing to the gender blindness of macroeconomic aggregates such as national accounting and GDP, in particular. However, research at the macro level often takes place with reference to the meso level, for instance, for the analysis of the impact of unemployment, growth and income distribution on social inequalities (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 126ff.). Those interactions – as well as the assumption that social processes are subject to changes – demonstrate the dynamic conception of time of feminist economics:

‘A central point of reference for feminist economics was [and still is] the process which established the gendered division of labour and women's oppression in the public and the private sphere by laws, social norms, education or violence’ (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 36 own translation ).

Feminist economics particularly points to the relevance of care and the (non-market-intermediated) sphere of reproduction, which is neglected especially in macroeconomic contexts (Bauhardt and Çağlar 2010, 9). This focus was set by Marxist feminists in the 1970s who started the wages-for-housework debate. Their demand was to take the value of unpaid reproductive activities into account. Despite economic changes since the 1970s, such as the marketization of reproductive labour, several arguments of the debate are still relevant for feminist economics: first, that capitalist production is based on unpaid or undervalued care and second, that care is paramount for economic analyses (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 85f.). This shows the relevance of contexts for feminist economics' analyses: it is argued that economic phenomena cannot be considered as isolated entities. Instead, spheres that are often considered as separated, such as public and private, reproductive and productive, social and economic are logically connected. For instance, economic production strongly depends on caring activities such as cooking or affection.

Constructivist feminist economists emphasize the social construction of gender attributes and consequently question those attributes. This does not mean that the latter do not have any material consequences: gender is a central regulating principle of the economy and society. Hence, socially produced gender notions significantly shape behaviour, role models, decisions and economic inequalities. This is also related to feminist economics' critique of the neoclassical concept of the homo economicus according to which humans are rational, independent individuals with fixed preferences (compare Habermann 2008). Even if some feminist economists who work in the neoclassical tradition use the construct of a rational, utility maximizing individual with fixed preferences, most feminist economists expose the problems with the concept. They argue that individuals cannot be considered as detached from the social context, which significantly influences their identity. Decisions depend on the household structure, the economic background, social expectations as well as on the care work, that is carried out besides the wage labour.

Furthermore, the meaning of gender relations in the social discourse changes permanently (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 51). In contrast to the utility maximizing, self-referential homo economicus , in particular, critical feminist economics highlights the possibility of collaboration. An example of this is the concept of the Commons, which describes the common organization and use of goods and resources (Federici 2011).

4. Epistemology

For feminist epistemology the following question is central: whose findings are we discussing and more concretely: ‘is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant?’ (Code 1981). Thereby, the situatedness of knowledge as well as power relations in science production are highlighted (Singer 2010). The term situated knowledge was coined by Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway (Haraway 1988, Harding 1991). Situated knowledge means that the researcher is always embedded in a certain historical, cultural, social and economic context. This impacts the research interest and the perspective as well as scientific findings. Furthermore, knowledge is always produced out of a certain position of power. Consequently, the questions arise: which topics are considered as relevant or which inquiry as scientific; and whose interests do they serve. Hence, the gender of the researcher influences research questions, methods and results. This is manifested in the double blindness of economics concerning women, their non-representation in economics as a discipline as well as the ignorance of women’s situations and contribution to the economy.

According to Mona Singer (2010), situated knowledge is a common point of departure from which different epistemological conclusions are drawn. Singer presents the following three different approaches.

1. Feminist standpoint theory assumes women, due to their situation, can analyse reality more adequately. Similar to the ability of the working class to comprehend and free themselves from their suppression that featured in Marx’ analysis, women and other discriminated groups are better equipped to comprehend the suppressive structures and their implications than the ruling class (Bar On 1993 in Code 2013 [author: 2014 in refs; which is correct?], 13). Yet, it is emphasized that the positions of the suppressed do not have an exclusive claim to the truth. Hence, standpoint theory does not plead for relativism but enhances a ‘strong objectivism’ which can be reached by including diverse forms of knowledge.

2. Feminist empiricism highlights the importance of empirical research in order to better describe inequalities. Representatives emphasize that empirical analyses are neither objective nor contextually independent and do not present unequivocal findings and often present causalities in simplified form. Moreover, the approach questions current scientific criteria and highlights the importance of empiric adequacy, innovation, complexity, applicability to human needs and decentralization of power as feminist values in science (Longino & Lennon 1997, 21–27).

3. Postmodern epistemology is more sceptical towards the possibility of changing the discourse or institutions and gaining emancipation by science. According to this approach, knowledge is connected to power and the production of knowledge has to be critically scrutinized. An objective perspective on the world is not possible; instead there are always constructions of reality, which are determined by power relations. Accordingly, also adherents of feminist standpoint theory represent certain interests, for example, the ones of US-American or European women. Standpoint feminism responded to this critique and started to include, as mentioned above, discussions on the perspectives of marginalized persons hand in hand with claims for the democratization of knowledge (Singer, 296–298).

Moreover, feminist economic is often seen as an object-driven perspective, since it analyses the role of gender relations in the economy and includes different perspectives on this object of research. Even if those approaches adhere to different perspectives, besides relativist thought, constructivist approaches gained in importance in feminist economics throughout the past decades. Due to the common point of departure – situated knowledge (described above) – feminist economics can be increasingly described as perspective-driven since it recognizes the relevance of different forms of knowledge.

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5. methodology.

Feminist economics' methodology is quite diverse and includes deductive but also inductive theory building as well as dialectics. Both deductive and inductive methodology are based on an empiricist and positivist world views, where situations can be captured by observations and hypotheses can be falsified (fallibilism). In deductive methodology, concrete statements are logically derived from general premises. In the inductive procedure, general theses are derived from observations. In the end, both approaches determine each other mutually. Many feminist economists work formally and empirically in the deductive tradition (van Staveren 2010, 27). However, inductive research was identified as particularly fruitful for the young field of feminist economics since it offers the possibility to create new categories and hypotheses (Krüger 1994, 78 in Mader and Schultheiss 2011, 415).

In her article Feminism and Economics , Julie Nelson (1995) described that mathematical models are associated with masculinity and hardness while qualitative methods are assigned female characteristics and are related to (scientific) weakness. She argued that science has not to be reinvented, but that feminist analyses should involve a broad variety of models and methods which are suited best for the respective research question. Accordingly, feminist economists use both qualitative and quantitative methods. For instance, qualitative methods can be used to show multiple structures of inequality whereas quantitative methods enable a revision of statistics with regards to gender relations (Mader and Schultheiss 2011). Often, a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods is used, employing a broad variety of methods, from econometrics to discourse analysis.

Following Marxist analyses, authors like Gillian Howie (2010) attempted to dialectically develop terms of feminist theory, since this approach is considered especially helpful for the analysis of social relations and knowledge creation (Hartsock 1998). A dialectical approach does not assume linear causalities, but has a dynamic conception of possibly contradicting processes. Economics and social developments emerge from a tension of different processes.

A special method of feminist economics, called ‘consciousness raising,’ was established during the second wave of feminism. The method consists of people from different socio-economic backgrounds – mostly women – meeting in safe spaces. Then, their different experiences are reflected and in the end systematized in the common dialogue (MacKinnon 1989, 87 ff.).

6. Ideology and political goals

Feminist Economics has always been intertwined with political and social movements, especially the women's movement, advocating the right to vote, access to the labour market, financial independence, participation in unions, sexual and physical self-determination and recognition (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 8, 15ff., 75f.). Furthermore, they advocated for the extension of the concept work, which should not only comprise paid, but also unpaid activities (Mader und Schultheiss 2011, 416). The aim of theorizing and analyses is to point out gender hierarchies and other inequalities, to criticize economic or social structures, institutions or laws and to present alternatives that enable the emancipation of women and people of colour (compare Haidinger and Knittler, 38). Thereby, emancipation is not perceived uniformly and policy advice differs among different perspectives of feminist economics. For example, liberal feminist economics demands gender equality concerning wages, vocational choice (equality of opportunities) or the representation in political bodies and economic departments, for example, via quotas. A further demand is to take the gender dimension in political and economic decisions into account (i.e. gender mainstreaming).

On the other hand, critical feminist economists request a transformation of the economy up to the (revolutionary) reorganization of the society. Integrating women and care into the labour market is considered to be an important emancipatory step. Yet, they point out the consequent double burden of women, who continue to do the unpaid care, and the rationalization of the market which does not comply with the requirements of care. Hence, critical feminist economics instead focuses on the underlying structures of inequalities (Haidinger and Knittler 75ff.).

Political demands of feminist economists include: the reduction of working hours, a basic income or more radical concepts such as the four-in-one perspective developed by Frigga Haug. This perspectives argues for the distribution of available time to four equal spheres: besides wage and reproductive labour, this includes volunteering and leisure (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 150ff., Haug 2008). Moreover, critical feminist economics also has common positions with ecological movements. They point to the interconnectedness of the ecological crisis and the crisis of social reproduction (see below: multiple crises). This includes a critique of capitalist growth – with reference to the degrowth debate – or (sustainable) development. Proposed alternatives are: the concept of the commons (e.g. Federici 2011), which entails the communal usage and organization of goods and resources; and so-called sustainable livelihoods, which aims at auto-determined use of resources and ways of living (Bauhardt 2012, 14).

Moreover, the question of how women are represented in the economics discipline and how this impacts knowledge creation and policy recommendations, is a political one. For instance, social and economic experiences of women and unpaid labour are hardly considered in economic and political analyses. Thus, it is an importantaim of feminist economics to point to the fact that economics is not gender neutral and that women's experiences should be accounted for or even be at the center of  economic analyses (cf. Mader und Schultheiss 2011, 405 ff.).

7. Current debates and analyses

Current debates in feminist economics are presented in this section; the examples comprise contributions from different perspectives of feminist economics.

1. Time budget studies and gender budgeting

Time budget studies and gender budgeting are two central instruments of analysis in feminist economics.

In the debate on unpaid labour, time budget studies provide an insight into how people allocate their time between employment, unpaid reproductive labour, leisure etc. Those studies are relevant from a gender perspective since they do not measure monetary flows, but the time spent, as an indicator of economic wealth (Bauhardt 2012, 4); they enable the calculation of the share of unpaid labour in GDP (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 134f.). For instance, a study by the German Statistical Agency (Statistisches Bundesamt 2015) presents the time spent on these different categories of activities by women and men in Germany during 2012 and 2013. In comparison with the data for 2001 and 2002, both genders spent less time on unpaid labour. Yet, women still spent two thirds of their time on unpaid labour, while men spent less than a half.

Gender budgeting analyses the gender-specific impacts of public income and spending. An example would be to study the impact of taxes or public spending on childcare on the economic situation of women. Haidinger and Knittler call gender budgeting the currently most-influential concept and instrument of feminist economics (Haidinger und Knittler 2014, 139). Gender budgeting is a commonly known and accepted concept, which for instance is part of Austria's constitution.

2. Gender and austerity

In the wake of the financial and economic crisis, which started in the late 2000s and is still present in many parts of the world, a broad research field gained the attention of feminist economics. A central research question developed in this context: what impact did the recession, rescue measures, austerity and their economic and social consequences have on women and gender relations? Although occupations in which men are over-represented were affected more severely by the recession, austerity programmes during the second wave of the crisis had a greater negative impact on women. Public institutions and government assistance faced cuts and thereby relied on the compensation of caring activities in the private sphere, which means that care is again increasingly carried out at home. Moreover, a conservative roll-back can be observed in several EU-member states. Consequently achievements in gender equality are at issue. At the same time, critical feminist economics have questioned whether the crisis has opened the door for anti-capitalist interventions (compare Karamessini and Rubery 2013). In this context, the term multiple crisis illustrates that the financial and economic crisis, the environmental crisis and the crisis of social reproduction are not separate phenomena but different faces of capitalism in crisis (cf. Brand 2009)

3. Women and ‘development’

This is a broad field of research in feminist economics. The role of women in and repercussions on women of globalization and economic development are analysed as well as the marketization of the subsistence economy. Often, micro credits or women in rural areas are the central object of analysis. A further important aspect is women's rights and the consideration of gender in the context of development strategies – currently with regards to the new UN sustainable development goals (see gender budgeting). The field also includes critique of the term development (cf.. Bauhardt 2012). See, for example, the special issue of Feminist Economics on Land, Gender, and Food Security 2014, 20(1); and the special issue of Gender & Development 2016 24(1) on the Sustainable Development Goals.

4. Care economy and the global care chain

The term global care chain was first used by Arlie Hochschild (2000). It describes complex processes which, generally speaking, emerge from the entrance of women in western industrial countries into the labour market. This development results in the employment of female migrants as domestic workers or caregivers, while their children are then taken care of by the family (Haidinger and Knittler 2014, 120ff.). These dynamics prompt questions about the marketization of reproductive activities, working hours, division of labour between genders, employment decisions or the public provision of care. Time budget studies are often used for the analysis of the care economy. There are also analyses on global inequalities, sex work, the feminization of migration or the role of remittances to countries of origin (e.g. the special issue of Feminist Economics on Gender and International Migration 2012, 18(2), forthcoming 2016 special issue of Feminist Economics on sex work and trafficking).

8. Delineation: sub-schools, other economic paradigms, and other disciplines

This section provides a brief overview of historical developments pertaining to feminist economics. It then differentiates different theories within feminist economics, as despite having the common goal of analysing the gender dimensions of economics and the interaction of economics and gender inequalities, there is no common theoretical frame (e.g. see Knittler and Haidinger 2014, Mader and Schultheiss 2011).

To this day, women are hardly visible in economics. In the history of economic thought, women are scarcely mentioned, even though during the 19 th century female theorists were already writing on economic topics. For instance, Jane Marcet (1769–1858) and Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) authored important standard works on political economy. Women did not, however, always publish using their own name; for example, Hariett Taylor Mill – who, according to Haindinger & Knittler (2014, 18), is one of the outstanding intellectual and guiding writers of the first women's movement in England during the 19 th century – authored many works together with her husband, John Stuart Mill, while using his name. In terms of content, Mill advocated women's employment. With ‘The Accumulation of Capital’, Rosa Luxemburg wrote one of the central works of Marxist theory. Many female theorists were closely linked to the women's movement or advocated women's employment or their participation in unions in the labour movement (e.g. Clara Zetkin, August Bebel).

Also, the emergence of feminist economics as a discipline was closely connected to social, political and economic processes, amongst others the political claims of the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. ‘Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics’ by Marianne A. Ferber and Julie Nelson (1993) as well as ‘If Women Counted’ by Marilyn Waring (1988) are considered milestones of feminist economics. Those works raised issues such as unpaid labour, a critique of national accounting as well as the insufficient presence of women in science. With the foundation of the International Association for Feminist Economics in 1992 and the Journal Feminist Economics in 1995 , feminist economics got an institutionalized platform for exchange. Since increasing numbers of women participated in the labour market, demands and analyses have changed since the 1970s to include differences on the labour market, macroeconomics, care, knowledge production and identities.

Feminist Economics in itself is very diverse, but in particular three perspectives can be highlighted which are similar to currents in feminist theory:

• liberal feminist economics : this perspective strives for gender equality which can be reached by equal access to the labour market and institutions. Structures enable individuals to realize their individual potentials. Liberal feminist economics analyses barriers to access for women, wage differentials or the effects of political and economic instruments on women and their economic decisions.
• Constructivist feminist economics : this perspective questions attributions of gender identities and perceives the latter as modifiable. Those identities influence economic decisions, structures and processes. At the same time processes and structures have repercussions on identities and other spheres. A central role is assigned to gender performativity. For instance, the question arises whether women reproduce gender inequalities and stereotypes if they exercise a labour perceived as ‘female’ and thereby meet social expectations.
• Critical feminist economics: this perspective refers to the material foundations, rather than to identities, to analyse inequalities. Marxists connected to Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa started a discussion on unpaid reproductive labour and its role in the production process by the wages-for-housework debate in the 1970s. A central aspect of the debate was the critique of the Marxist labour theory of value, which does not account for the reproductive labour carried out by women. Like wage labour, housework is considered to be an exploitative relation. Up to the present day, critical feminist economists expound the problems of the interdependency of capitalism and gender inequalities as well as the necessity of reproductive labour for the capitalist production process.   

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9. Delineation form the Mainstream  

‘ Women have been largely absent not only as economic researchers but also as the subjects of economic study’ (Ferber and Nelson 1993, 4)

In 1993, Ferber and Nelson highlighted the double gender blindness of economics in their publication ‘Beyond Economic Man’. First, women's reality is not represented in economic theories and analysis and second, women are hardly represented in economic science. This in turn affects economic theorizing: it reinforces the androgynous conception of persons and the neglect of the gender dimension in economics. Hence, it is a major concern of feminist economics to include gendered social processes, such as the division of labour, in economic analyses. If power relations and dominance are taken into account, many assumptions and explanations of mainstream economics – for example, how wages are determined – have to be rethought. A prominent example for the gender blindness of economic theory is Gary Becker's approach New Home Economics, one of the few neoclassic analysis which accounts for housework. In his analysis, decisions in a family on who works are taken on a rational basis (e.g. on who has the higher income). The theory biologically attributes ‘comparative reproductive advantages’ (Çağlar 2009, 224, own translation) to women, according to which women tend to do the domestic and men the wage labour. Also, decisions are taken by an altruistic (male) head of the family, while diverging preferences or repercussions are not analysed (Ferber 2003). Pujol argues that the image of women of neoclassical economics is similar to the one of the founding fathers, like Pigou, Jevons, Edgeworth or Marshall, which describes women as housewives, mothers, married, dependent on the husband, and as being irrational and unproducitve (Pujol 1995, 17f.)

A further central criticism of feminist economics addresses the neoclassical conception of the individual, the homo economicus (compare Habermann 2008), who acts rationally and is utility maximizing on the market and represents a male, white subject. In contrast, feminist economic sees individuals as embedded in social and economic structures, which determine their (im)possibility for action. Furthermore, the concept of the homo economicus assumes the existence of an irrational, female and emotional (among other characteristics) other, who is assigned to the ‘female’, or the so-called ‘private’ sphere. A further point of departure for critique by feminist economics is the division between the spheres of the market and the household. On the market, productive (male) actions take place; in the ‘private’ sphere, unproductive (female) activities occur. First, this perspective marks unpaid activities as unproductive and as not generating value. Second, it neglects the role of reproductive activities in the production process. This also has consequences for macroeconomic aggregates, since those activities are not accounted for in national accounts. This is the reason why, for feminist economics, indicators such as the GDP are not suited for measuring wealth.

10. Institutions

Feminist Economics: http://www.feministeconomics.org/

Many feminist economists publish in journals of ecnomics, political science or sociology: Femina Politica; Gender & Development; Feminist Review; Feminist Studies; Gender, Work & Organization; International Feminist Journal of Politics; Feminist Theory; Politics & Gender; Gender & Society;

Institutions, Think Tanks:

International Association for Feminist Economics: http://feministeconomicsposts.iaffe.org/ ; Feministisches Institut Hamburg ( http://www.feministisches-institut.de/ ), Economy, Feminism and Science (efas) ( http://efas.htw-berlin.de/ ), Netzwerk Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften ( http://www.vorsorgendeswirtschaften.de/ )

Bauhardt, C. (2012) : Feministische Ökonomie, Ökofeminismus und Queer Ecologies – feministisch-materialistische Perspektiven auf gesellschaftliche Naturverhältnisse. Gender.. Politik.. Online- sozialwissenschaftliches Gender-Portal der Freien Universität Berlin.

Bauhardt, C., and G. Çağlar (2010) : Gender and Economics. Feministische Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Biesecker, A., C. Wichterich, and U. von Winterfeld (2012): Feministische Perspektiven zum Themenbereich Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität. Kommissionsmaterialie M-17(26)23.

Çağlar, G. (Hrsg) (2009) : Gender and Economics. Feministische Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 18-48.

Code, L. (2014): Feminist Epistemology and the Poitics of Knowledge: Questions of Marginality. The SAGE Handbook of Feminist Theory, 9-25.

Code, L. (1981): Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant?. Metaphilosophy , 12 (3‐4), 267-276.

Federici, S. (2012) : Aufstand aus der Küche. Reproduktiosarbeit im globalen Kapitalismus und die unvollendete feministische Revolution, Reihe: Kitchen Politics, Band 1, Münster: Edition Assemblage.

Federici, S. (2011) : Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Veröffentlicht in The Commoner, 24.01.2011. http://www.commoner.org.uk/?p=113

Ferber, M. A. (2003) : A feminist critique of the neoclassical theory of the family. Women, family, and work: writings on the economics of gender: 9-24.

Ferber, M. A. und Nelson, Julie A. (Hrsg.) (1993) : Beyond Economic Man. Feminist Theory and Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Habermann (2010): Hegemonie, Identität und der homo oeconomicus. Oder: Warum feministische Ökonomie nicht ausreicht. In: Bauhardt, C. und G. Çağlar (Hrsg.): Gender and Economics. Feministische Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 151-173.

Habermann, F. (2008) : Der homo oeconomicus und das Andere. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Haidinger, B. und Knittler, K. (2014) : Feministische Ökonomie: Intro. Mandelbaum.

Haraway, D. (1988) : Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist studies 14(3), 575-599.

Harding, S. (1991) : Whose Science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women's lives . Itaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Hartsock, N (1998) : Marxist Feminist Dialectics for the 21st Century. Science & Society , 62(3), 400–413.

Haug, F. (2008) . Die Vier-in-einem-Perspektive: Politik von Frauen für eine neue Linke . Argument-Verlag.

Hochschild, A. R. (2000): Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value', in Hutton, W. and Giddens, A. (eds): On The Edge: Living with Global Capitalism. London: Jonathan Cape.

Howie, G. (2010) : Between Feminism and Materialism - A Question of Method. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Karamessini, M., and J. Rubery (2013) : Women and austerity: The economic crisis and the future for gender equality. Vol. 11. Routledge.

Knapp, U. (2002) : Beschäftigung und Geschlechterverhältnis. In: Maier, F./Fiedler, A. (Hrsg.): Gender Matters – Feministische Analysen zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik, fhw- Forschung 42/ 43, Berlin, S. 11-60.

Haug, F. (2011): Arbeit jenseits vom Wachstum - die Vier-in-Einem Perspektive. In: Rätz, W., von Egan-Krieger, T. Passadakis, A, Schmelzer, M. und Vetter, A. (Hrsg.): Ausgewachsen! Ökologische Gerechtigkeit. Soziale Rechte. Gutes Leben, 121-129, Hamburg: VSA.

Longino, H. E., und K. Lennon (1997) : Feminist epistemology as a local epistemology. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 71: 19-54.

Mader, K. (2013) : Feministische Ökonomie – die »Krisengewinnerin«? Oder : »Beyond the Economic Man« in der Krise?. Kuswechsel 4/13: 6-16.

Mader, K. und J. Schultheiss (2011): Feministische Ökonomie – Antworten auf die herrschenden Wirtschaftswissenschaften? In: “Kritik der Wirtschaftswissenschaften”, PROKLA 164, 41(3). Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, 405-421.

Madörin, M. (2010): Care Ökonomie – eine Herausforderung für die Wirtschaftswissenschaften. In: Bauhardt, C., and G. Çağlar (Hrsg.): Gender and Economics. Feministische Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 81-104.

Nelson, J. A. (1995) : Feminism and economics. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 9(2): 131-148.

Power, M. (2004): Social provisioning as a starting point for feminist economics. Feminist Economics 10(3), 3-19.

Pujol, M. (1995): Into the Margin! In Edith Kuiper and Jolande Sap (eds.), Out of the Margin: Feminist Perspectives on Economics. Routledge 17-34.

Singer, M. (2010) : Feministische Wissenschaftskritik und Epistemologie. In: Becker, R. und B. Kortendiek (eds.): Handbuch Frauen-und Geschlechterforschung: Theorie, Methoden, Empirie , 292-301, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozalwissenschaften.

Statistisches Bundesamt (2015): Arbeitszeit von Frauen: ein Drittel Erwerbsarbeit, zwei Drittel unbezahlte Arbei. Pressemittleiung vom 18.05.2015 – 179/15. Wiesbaden.

Staveren, Irene van (2010) : Feminist Economics: Setting out Parameters. In: Bauhardt, C., and G.

Waring, M. und G. Steinem (1988) : If women counted: A new feminist economics. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Vinz, D. (2011) : "Klasse und Geschlecht-eine umkämpfte Verbindung in Theorien zu Intersektionalität und Diversity." Sandra Smykalla und Dagmar Vinz (Hg.): Intersektionalität zwischen Gender und Diversity. Theorien, Methoden und Politiken der Chancengleichheit. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.

Assigned course modules

Organisations and links

International Association for Feminist Economics http://feministeconomicsposts.iaffe.org/

Beyond Economic Man. Feminist Theory and Economics Ferber, M. A.; Nelson, J. A. (Eds.) Year of publication: 1993 University of Chicago Press

The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics Peterson, J.; Lewis, M. (Eds.) Year of publication: 2001 Edward Elgar Publishing

Additional content

This project is brought to you by the Network for Pluralist Economics ( Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik e.V. ).  It is committed to diversity and independence and is dependent on donations from people like you. Regular or one-off donations would be greatly appreciated.

Why Do We Need Feminist Economics? (March 2023)

By: Giandomenica Becchio , Mikayla Novak , Arnold Kling , and Jayme Lemke February 7, 2023

• Lead Essay Why Do We Need Feminist Economics? (March 2023)
• Response Essay We do need feminist economics, one that engages with Austrian economics
• Response Essay The Road to Sociology has Promises and Pitfalls
• Response Essay Yes, the Feminist Perspective is Still Undervalued in Economics
• Conversation Comments Rejoinder to comments by Jayme Lemke, Mikayla Novak, and Arnold Kling
• Conversation Comments Response
• Conversation Comments Are there better ways to understand gender norms?
• Conversation Comments Final Response: Do we need feminist economics?

Attachments:

• LM March 2023 Newsletter FINAL.pdf

Mikayla Novak March 8, 2023

Arnold Kling March 9, 2023

There are many reasons we need feminist economics. First, we need to understand why economics per se, i.e. standard economics, was unable to provide a complete and realistic explanation of the phenomenon of gender inequality. Second, we need feminist economics in order to better know the origin and the nature of gender inequality within the economy and how to possibly overcome it. Furthermore, we need feminist economics in order to better comprehend feminism as well as economics and the way they have been interconnected at a certain point, roughly forty years ago. We need feminist economics to solve the present gender economic inequality.

According to standard economics the gap is the effect of women’s free choice. Conversely, feminist economics claims that the gap is the effect of gender discrimination....They are two opposite ways of considering this specific kind of gender inequality. Any social phenomenon has many possible causes and correlations...

Jayme Lemke March 9, 2023

Giandomenica Becchio March 21, 2023

Mikayla Novak March 23, 2023

Arnold Kling March 28, 2023

Jayme Lemke March 30, 2023

Giandomenica Becchio April 4, 2023

Copyright and Fair Use Statement

“Liberty Matters” is the copyright of Liberty Fund, Inc . This material is put on line to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. These essays and responses may be quoted and otherwise used under “fair use” provisions for educational and academic purposes. To reprint these essays in course booklets requires the prior permission of Liberty Fund, Inc. Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions.

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• Giandomenica Becchio
• Mikayla Novak
• Arnold Kling
• Jayme Lemke

Feminist Economics

• Reference work entry
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• Julie A. Nelson 1  

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Feminist economics is a field that includes both studies of gender roles in the economy from a liberatory perspective and critical work directed at biases in the economics discipline. It challenges economic analyses that treat women as invisible, or that serve to reinforce situations oppressive to women, and develops innovative research designed to overcome these failings. Feminist economics points out how subjective biases concerning acceptable topics and methods have compromised the reliability of economics research. Topics addressed include the economics of households, labour markets, care, development, the macroeconomy, national budgets, and the history, philosophy, methodology, and teaching of economics.

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Epistemology of Feminist Economics

From Neoclassicism to Heterodoxy: The Making of a Feminist Economist

Feminist Development Economics: An Institutional Approach to Household Analysis

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