Picture your favorite doughnut. Whether it’s chocolate glazed with sprinkles, vanilla pastry cream, red velvet, you’re inadvertently invoking one of the most important reimaginings of our economy of the last 20 years: Doughnut Economics. It posits that our economy should remain in balance with our communities and the planet, and visualizes that balance in the shape of the much beloved pastry. This theory is the brainchild of Abby’s guest this week, the brilliant, renegade economist, Professor Kate Raworth. Raworth initially set out to study economics because it is “the mother tongue of public policy.” But over time she became disillusioned with the field and its inability to see beyond markets and growth. It was working on projects to alleviate problems like poverty and climate change and also becoming a mother, that led her to find a new way to frame ideas about the very purpose of the economy and who it is meant to serve. That was 11 years ago. While Raworth has been dismissed outright by some of her more conservative colleagues, the ideas in her book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, are not only shaking up conventional economic thought, they’re being put into practice. These days, communities and cities across the world—including Amsterdam, Brussels, Melbourne and Berlin—are trying to make their local economies look like a doughnut. 

You can see the Doughnut here, check out Kate’s fun economic animations here, and learn more about her work at the Doughnut Economics Action Lab. Follow Kate on Twitter @KateRaworth.

EPISODE LINKS
Kate Raworth: A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow (TED Ideas)
Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps etymology
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (NOAA)
Rational Economic Man (Investopedia)
The Economist by Xenophon (Gutenberg Project)
International Student Movement: Rethinking Economics
Exploring Economics
Amsterdam’s ‘doughnut economy’ puts climate ahead of GDP (PBS News Weekend)