Post the Crash, we seemed set for a revolution in economics. Even The Economist magazine, defender of free markets, concluded that a new economics was needed. Yet we are still waiting! We think the answer is to legitimise the innovators outside the mainstream rather than expect change to come from within. Following revelations of the … Continued
Interdisciplinarity is seen as a means of gaining new insight by some. But everyone agrees it is not easy. So how can you build the necessary respect, trust and understanding? We started the process with a panel discussion and then a more radical open space session. People seemed to enjoy it. Lets see where we can … Continued
After a few days spent visiting the OECD to mark 10 years after the failure of Lehman Brothers, the task of reforming economic teaching could seem even more daunting. You hear for yourself how this teaching has hardwired neo-classical economics into heads of policy makers. Some have even lost their ability to converse in normal … Continued
Professor Sugden, a renowned and celebrated pioneer of behavioural economics, has written an important book. In it he skewers the “nudge economics” fudge that maintains the illusion of the possibility of economic rationality and reframes how we should judge markets. They are just one form of social collaboration for mutual benefit…. or not. It is … Continued
So what does an economics look like that is fit for the 21st century? The mainstream environmental economics framework of labelling the environment as an ‘externality’ clearly doesn’t fit the bill. We are now dominating global ecosystems so they should hardly an add on in our thinking and models. So what does an economics look … Continued
Larry Elliot in his piece ‘Heretics welcome! Economics needs a new Reformation’ reported on Steve Keen and other leading economists ‘nailing’ 33 theses on ‘economic reformation’ to the door of a top university. This was designed to echo the apocryphal story of Luther nailing up his 95 theses 500 years ago. Clearly we do need … Continued
I have a problem. I don’t really understand it. This sort of problem has never been solved before. Yet I want you to tell me how you are going to go about solving it and at what cost. That seems like madness but it is every day life. It is called competitive tendering. It is … Continued
It might be thought that anyone who criticises the prevailing economic orthodoxy and calls for other approaches to understanding economics must be left wing. They might also be supposed to be anti-markets. However, neither of these suppositions are necessarily true. One of the most famous cases in point is Margaret Thatcher’ favourite economist, Friedrich Hayek. … Continued
At last it is official after weeks when everyone ‘in the know’ knew but were bound to secrecy. This week to almost no fanfare the Government’s economics research funding body, the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC), announced that a consortium led by NIESR (the National Institute of Economic and Social Research) had won their … Continued