The twenty-first-century context demands that we make those assumptions explicit and those blind spots visible so that we can, once again, rethink economics.

That’s what researchers in the US discovered when they set out to explore how to prompt pro-environmental behaviour. They set up signs at a petrol station inviting passing motorists to have a free tyre check, offering either financial, safety or environmental reasons for doing so. The forecourt sign saying ‘Care about your finances? Get a free tire

That calls for a profound shift in our metaphors: from ‘good is forward-and-up’ to ‘good is in-balance’. And it shifts the image of economic progress from endless GDP growth to thriving-in-balance in the Doughnut.

Far from being a necessary phase in every nation’s progress, rising inequality is a policy choice.

they declared in an open letter in 2014: The teaching of economics is in crisis too, and this crisis has consequences far beyond the university walls. What is taught shapes the minds of the next generation of policymakers, and therefore shapes the societies we live in … We are dissatisfied with the dramatic narrowing of the curriculum that has

By revealing the old ideas that have entrapped us and replacing them with new ones to inspire us, it proposes a new economic story that is told in pictures as much as in words.

Three images keep cropping up time and again: humanity as a community, as sowers and reapers, and as acrobats. The image of community reminds us that we are the most social of species, dependent upon each other throughout the cycles of our lives. The sower-reaper embeds us within the web of life, making clear that our societies co-evolve with the

here are four ethical principles for the twenty-first-century economist to consider. First, act in service to human prosperity in a flourishing web of life, recognising all that it depends upon. Second, respect autonomy in the communities that you serve by ensuring their engagement and consent, while remaining ever aware of the inequalities and

Simply thinking like a consumer, it seems, triggers self-regarding behaviour, and divides rather than unites groups who are facing a common scarcity. In the context of twenty-first-century pressures on Earth’s sources and sinks – from fresh water and fish to the oceans and atmosphere – that insight could turn out to have pivotally important