Financial exclusion, while producing greater social exclusion and poverty, is contributing to the emergence of new types of organization in finance, banking and non-banking. Based on ethics and solidarity, such organizations favour the inclusion of the most marginalized groups. Ethical banking and community banking (including credit unions) offer an alternative to conventional banking and are increasingly being accepted. Moreover, civil society itself is leading a movement through which new non-banking ethical and solidarity finance initiatives are also emerging. Examples include financial services cooperatives, integrated cooperatives, collaborative finance, self-financed communities, time banks, social currencies and community development banks, among others. This paper analyses the main aspects arising globally from these processes of change, and highlights potential risks where these initiatives are used by large financial and non-financial corporations through new finance technologies (FinTech). Ethical and solidarity finance have become an appropriate instrument for inclusion, but certain risks remain that must be taken into account.

Social entrepreneurship has existed for as long as there have been social problems needing responses and solutions. In recent years, new forms of business have been developed that respond to social and environmental challenges, and which combine aspects of non-profit organizations with others of for-profit companies. In this article we start by defining social entrepreneurship, which has specific characteristics and needs that are distinct from those of conventional entrepreneurship. This difference has enabled the development of a financing market specific to this field, which attempts to provide suitable responses to the different types of organizations operating therein. We then go on to look at the financing models available to social initiatives and the cases and situations that make some more appropriate than others.

All forms of social organization that have existed throughout human history have satisfied human needs in diferent ways. That is, they have given different answers to the three basic questions considered by Economics: "what to produce?", "how to produce it?" and "for whom to produce it?" The only trait that all forms of social organization have in common is their consideration of enterprises as the basic unit of production for goods and services.

Therefore, the way decisions are made in firms – the power game forever determining which interests are given priority over others – is key to understanding how the three above-mentioned questions are resolved. As such, faced with various proposals calling for an enconomy that prioritizes people over capital, we need to consider alternative ways in which business can operate.

In light of the above, this paper reviews the wide range of business models that criticize or question the principal of investor-owned firms, ie organizations whose main goal is not to make a profit whatever the cost. The paper provides an overview and comparison detailing the origins of such business models, which include co-operatives, labour-managed firms, B Corps, and Economy for the common good.

In recent decades, different manifestations of Social and Complementary Currencies (SCCs) have emerged. SCCs are exchange mechanisms that offer an alernative to legal tender, aiming to stimulate trade within a circle. Their use is justified by the very definition of money as an agreement or law made by the community. Such currencies can be divided into six categories: currencies backed by official currencies to optimize the circulation of the legal tender by retaining it; currencies backed by other goods and/or services to inject liquidity into the community; currencies issued by the public authority that are circulated extensively because of their usefulness for paying taxes; mutual credit systems where members' positive or negative balances equate to the right to ask for the equivalent value of goods and/or services or the duty to provide them, respectively; SCCs issued as bank credit, with counter-cyclical effects to stabilize economic activities; and Fiat SCCs, which come into being without collateral, and need to be carefully managed to avoid accumulations in some businesses or overissue leading to hyperinflation. Each model's advantages and disadvantages must be studied carefully to decide which is most appropriate.

This article explains my final project for a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Management from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). It consists of a business plan and has been carried out in accordance with the course plan.

Ei! (Estem aquí) is a real estate marketplace where entrepreneurs and landlords share commercial estate to test a business idea or exhibit a product during a short period of time. The period can vary, from just a few hours for a brand or a product presentation, to months or even a year, depending on the company’s strategy. This project goes to market to meet the business community’s needs. It is for entrepreneurs who want to exhibit new products or promote a new business idea, but don’t have enough funds to acquire or rent a retail space for an indeterminate length of time.

To attend to these needs, the company offers competitive prices compared to its competitors, helped by the improved productivity achieved with its online platform and the outsourcing of all processes that are not core business. The company can provide an innovative and high quality service that puts the client at the centre of the business. Also of much importance is the consultancy service that provides legal, administrative, marketing and IT advice to entrepreneurs who want to develop a business but don’t know how to get started.

Economics as it is currently taught in the majority of universities worldwide is the object of controversy. Various groups of students and lecturers are questioning the economics education being given by universities and colleges. The criticism being made has intensified in the wake of the crisis, but a number of different protests were also springing up earlier to this. The system is cyclical and crises are inevitable, not a thing of the past as per the belief spread by the dominant school of thought in economics. Because of its inexstricable attachment to equilibrium models, neoclassical economics is incapable of understanding the dynamic processes in the economy, making it insufficient not only because of its inability to predict crises, but also because of its inability to provide the tools needed to understand the workings of the economy.

Neoclassical economics should not be the only theory currently in force. This does not mean the IS–LM model should not be studied, but its limitations and restrictions must be highlighted; as an equilibrium model it does not correspond to what happens in reality, which is disequilibrium and vulnerability. It is thus necessary to take into account other ideas, such as Marxist, Keynesian, Schumpeterian, institutional and post-Keynesian theories.

In this interview Elisenda Paluzie analyses the origins of the so-called Post Crash movement in Catalonia and the effects on a renowned institution such as the one she heads: the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Barcelona (UB). Paluzie believes this critical movement, which began following the recent economic crisis, is principally rooted in a lack of plurality in teaching, which can be based on three elements: theory, methodology and interdisciplinarity. She comments on how these three factors are treated in her faculty and ends on the need for the teaching of economics to evolve. In this regard she highlights ‘The core Project’, an initiative with a goal to reset the approach to economics teaching with new coursebooks, in the belief that the materials currently holding sway continue to approach matters as if during the last 20 years nothing had occurred.

Economics as an academic discipline is unique inasmuch as ever-increasing numbers of students are rebelling against the content offered by universities. Our intention with this paper is to expose the scope of the problem lying behind this discontent, addressing some of its aspects in close detail. First, the economics discipline is defined in its current state as a monoculture based on the three axiomatic principles of neoclassical economics, and through epistemic discourse, the monoculture problem is discussed in depth. Second, the lack of pluralism in current study programmes is highlighted, with the results from analyses conducted by a variety of groups focusing on universities in the United Kingdom, France and Spain. Third, the pluralism of theories, disciplines and methodologies is presented as a strategy to break with the neoclassical monoculture and to improve the education of students of economics. The paper concludes by bringing into sharp focus how pluralism in the teaching of economics is necessary not only for economics students, but for the academic world, the business world and society in general.

This article examines how the advent of the third industrial revolution (the knowledge economy) transforms the scientific paradigm of the economy and, therefore, purposes new challenges for the economic analysis and teaching. Linking to the history of economic thought, the paper obtains two main conclusions. First, there is a need to articulate new behavior and new performance metrics of the economy. In particular, it suggests the need to move from individual behavior towards the collective behavior, from the monetary transaction towards the knowledge exchange, from oligopolistic competition to the business networks, from the economic firm towards the social firm, and from the national, international and world economy to the global economy. Secondly, it also suggests new approaches for teaching economics. In particular, recover all branches of economic thought (beyond neoclassical economics), and reconfigure the organization of teaching towards an interdisciplinary and transversal knowledge network to solve economic and social problems.