• Basic economics of firms owned or controlled by their workers
• The main issues relating to the long-term viability of cooperatives
• Policies to promote a cooperative sector in a market economy

"The form of association ... which if mankind continue to improve, must be expect­ed in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist with capitalist as chief, and workpeople without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.”
- John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy , 1848

• Block 1. The internal impact of employee ownership: productivity, governance and management.
• Block 2. The external impact of employee ownership: spillovers for health, democracy, and the local economy.
• Block 3. Simple economic theory of the labour-managed firm. The “Pangloss Theorem” (if cooperatives are so wonderful, why aren’t there more of them?). Internal v. external financing.
• Block 4. Long-term viability. Degeneration thesis and policies to counter it. Kibbutzim, Pacific plywood cooperatives, Mondragon. Performance bonds and wage-earner investment funds.
• Block 5. Cooperativism in the finance sector (with a comparative international focus): building societies, credit unions, etc.
• Block 6. Community renewables: economic democracy in action.