In the series “Fremtidsøkonomien”, Rethinking Economics have interviewed a number of researchers about their vision for a sustainable economy based on heterodox economic schools of thought. In this meeting, we engage in a creative vision of degrowth finance with Assistant professor in Economics Louison Cahen-Fourot.

Degrowth/post-growth ideas are gaining traction across Europe amongst both with activists and researchers; a post-growth policy project recently received a 9,9 million Euro Synergy grant from the European Research Council. More and more people are questioning economic growth and asking what are the alternatives? Degrowth is one, and in this session, we discuss alternative ideas of finance.

In the recent book “Degrowth and Strategy”, it is stated that money is a public good and the financial system plays an instrumental role in the commodification of everything. Therefore, there is a need to democratise, definancialise, decommodify, and repurpose money with the aim of restructuring economic processes. This for example means democratising how money are created through public banking, the increased use of public banking for local community development, and to change how money are used through more direct citizens’ control over municipal budgets. As opposed to focusing on profit maximisation, public banks can be mandated to serve social and environmental goals and meeting the needs of marginalised groups, causing positive ripples across the economy and ultimately leading to a different path for the economy.

Louison Cahen-Fourot is an assistant professor in Economics at Roskilde University (Denmark) and a guest researcher at WU Vienna’s Institute for Ecological Economics (Austria). He works on ecological macroeconomics and the political economy of capitalism and the environment and recently co-authored a chapter in the book “Degrowth and Strategy” on finance for socio-ecological transformation.

Ellen Stenslie is a heterodox economist researching alternative business structures for sustainability and is Head of Fagrådet in Rethinking Economics Norge.