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 which 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 close partnership with the New Economics Foundation of London has the advantage of using the know-how and experience of both organizations and their networks around the world. We will open an office in New York City while maintaining the existing Berkshires (MA) campus with research library, staff housing, and current programs in operation. We will swap staff and expertise across the Atlantic so that, where appropriate, we can operate simultaneously in New York and London.  We will help create a cultural shift simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic through non-partisan work with business, academics, and policy groups, rather than launching a new political lobby group based in Washington. 

Our work includes:

The work of our predecessor, the E. F. Schumacher Society, will continue as programs of the New Economics Institute, including the respected lectures program and their publication; the Library, which houses Fritz Schumacher's personal books and papers and those of other new economic thinkers; and the BerkShares local currency program. In addition, key specific first-year projects will 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 the new economy that is at its core and which drives its success.
  • Happy America Index. Work with U. S. organizations to develop some of the themes that have been so successful for our partners at the New Economics Foundation of London and translate that work into American terms—including the economics of well-being, new economic indicators of success, sustainable regeneration, and new forms of measurement. 
  • Health and education after growth. Address the most difficult questions: 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 by using the skills, imagination, and enterprise of the people who live there. Find ways to make global interconnectedness a positive reality for all. 

To help these programs succeed, please consider supporting us.