Blogs

Imperfect knowledge economics, or IKE to their friends, is popular with all the popular kids. George Soros, Bill Janeway and Anatole Kaletsky were in attendance as Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg - or more properly, their students - showed the latest work in progress. Read more

Having lunch next to Edward Fullbrook he told me the story of how the post-autistic economic review got its start, leading to what we today know as the World Economic Association and all the great work coming from this community.

Back in 1999 Edward was at a conference in Cambridge and talked to attendees about the French movement to bring economics back to a more realistic starting point, and the great success the French students had in getting media attention. Attendees were not, as it turned out, convinced that this was even happening. Not to be dissuaded, Edward set up an anonymous e-mail address after the conference and wrote an anonymous e-mail to the 99 conference attendees informing them again about what had happened in France. Read more

INET Co-founder George Soros talks with CNBC about last night's groundbreaking keynote speech on Overt Monetary Financing by INET Senior Fellow Adair Turner and about why the Bank of Japan's move is risky.

Click here to watch the video

One of the new things at this year's INET is a way to look at the psychology of agents, namely Rene Girard's theory of 'mimetic' preferences, or rather that one consumer copies another's preferences in order to keep up socially. (I am grossly simplifying here, as a two hour panel on Girard will substantiate, but this seemed to me to be the gist). Read more

Originally posted on the Fung Global Institute's website Read more

some personal touches to hospitality at the INET conference, although I feel for the people who have been holding that sign all day.

with thanks to an anonymous commenter for pointing this out, although they might just have run out of poster stands.

In his opening remarks, Robert Johnson said that this "is not the institute of anything goes" with INET now getting to a point where it needs to stop criticising the mainstream and should instead "create a new vision."

Outside the main hall of the conference there is even a poster setting out the core institutions needed to affect change in economics. That poster, and indeed the 'old' approach of INET is very Lakatos. Accept the core and work to modify the periphery.

Read more

The INET conference in Hong Kong is serious business. Students will be wearing suits for the first time since their cousin's wedding only to bump into senior public servants with buffed cuff-links who in turn are mingling with billionaires and Nobel Prize winners. It's seriously adult stuff.

It's just a shame that I will probably be too giddy to notice. In fairness I will try not to gush at people; like I may have done with Axel Leijonhufvud last year, or Richard Koo, or Robert Skidelsky, or... well... that's not really the point. Read more

This column was originally published in Estadao Sao Paulo on March 31st.

All of a sudden, tiny Cyprus is making headlines. How could such a small country, with an economy approximately the size of the State of Maranhao, create such big problems?

The answer is that the crisis in Cyprus epitomizes everything that is wrong with the European Union. Read more

Just back from his three-year stint on the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, the new president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics Adam Posen sat down with The International Economy founder and editor David Smick. Read more