The Economics of Worker Co-operatives: A Short Course Session 3

The Economics of Worker Co-operatives: A Short Course Session 3

Monday, March 24th 2025
6:00 pm
Free School Classroom
Are you interested in how worker cooperatives interact with a capitalist economy? Are you tired of people saying clearly false things and claiming “it’s Econ 101?” Do you love worker cooperatives and also often-oversimplified graphs? This class may be for you! In this short three-session class, we’ll apply some of the tools of economic theory to questions about worker cooperatives.

Participants are encouraged to attend all three sessions, but they’ll be designed to stand on their own for folks who want to or can attend only one or two.

Session 1  (January): Some Economics Basics

In this session, we will introduce some basic concepts from "economics 101" that will help set the foundations for a discussion of how economics applies to worker cooperatives. We plan to discuss demand-supply models, the economic concepts of surplus and efficiency, and standard assumptions about markets and market actors. For participants with a background in economics, this session is likely to be a review.

Session 2 (February): Workers in Cooperatives

This session will focus on what economics can (and can't) help us understand about how the experiences of workers in cooperatives are different from workers in standard capitalist firms. Topics will include wage and employment decisions, distributions of returns to capital, and questions about why cooperatives are not more prevalent.

Session 3 (March): Cooperatives in Society

In our final session, we’ll look at what impacts economic theories predict that the presence of worker cooperatives will or may have on the broader community and markets around them - in particular, in what ways they may be experienced differently than capitalist firms by workers in other firms or by consumers of their products.

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Location and hours

3128 Greenmount Avenue
Baltimore, MD

Tuesday-Saturday 9AM-9PM
Sunday 10AM-4PM

Get in touch

Email: info@redemmas.org

Phone: (410) 601-3072

If you'd like to propose an event, please fill out this form. If you have questions, email us at events@redemmas.org.

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