Our Work
The heart of the New Economics Institute’s strategy is collaboration. Presenting an academically and intellectually robust new economics will allow us to partner with mainstream businesses and financial services that are looking for ways to adapt to new economic mandates. It will allow us to bypass policy disputes between campaigning outsiders and innovative insiders by focusing on empirical solutions.
Our Massachusetts campus in the Berkshires includes an office, research library, and staff housing. It is the home of our educational programs and demonstration projects—the legacy of our predecessor, the E. F. Schumacher Society. Our close partnership with the new economics foundation of London has the advantage of combining the know-how and experience of both organizations and their networks around the world. In May of 2011 we opened a New York City office, permitting us to more easily exchange staff and expertise with nef. Our goal is to help create a cultural shift simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic through nonpartisan work with business, academics, and policy groups.
Our work includes:
- E. F. Schumacher Annual Lectures — highly regarded lecture and publication program founded in 1981;
- Conferences and Seminars — "Strategies for a New Economy" is scheduled for June 8-10, 2012;
- New Economics Library — research library including books and archives of Dr. Schumacher and other new economics thinkers as well as collections on worker ownership, community supported agriculture, local currencies, the commons, and appropriate technology, all with searchable online catalogue;
- The Global Transition to a New Economy — a mapping project developed for the UN conference on sustainable development and designed to display a compelling vision of a green and fair economy;
- Community Land Trusts — history, theory, and application of a new land tenure model;
- Local Currencies — history, theory, and application of this community financing tool;
- BerkShares Local Currency Program — best known contemporary example;
- Manas Journal — concerned with the study of the principles that move world society on its present course and with the search for contrasting principles that may be capable of supporting intelligent idealism (1948-1988);
- SHARE Micro-Credit Program — The Self-Help Association for a Regional Economy (SHARE), a model community-based nonprofit that offers a simple way for citizens to create a sustainable local economy by supporting businesses that provide products or services needed in the region (1981-1992);
- Working Paper: American Progress on Alternative Economic Indicators;
- Happy Americas.
Planned new projects include:
- Presenting the new economics. Research, draft, and publish a transatlantic Outline of a New Economics—including prominent names from business and economics—which we will use to draw in mainstream support.
- Building a theoretical model. Launch an ambitious project on both sides of the Atlantic to create a robust theoretical model for a sustainable new economics.
- Transition USA. Work with the Tellus Institute, using their Polestar model for scenario planning to set out a coherent and sustainable future for the USA and for the new economy that is at its core and drives its success.
- Health and education after growth. Address the difficult question: if environmental and other limits mean the end of economic growth as currently defined, how can we maintain health and well-being in the rich countries and support development in the poor ones?
- Toward a new enterprise economy. Draw in people from all sides of the political spectrum by focusing on how to rebuild local economies through using the skills, imagination, and enterprise of the people who live there. Find ways to make global interconnectedness a positive reality for all.
To enable these programs to develop fully, please add your financial support.
