Archive

That’s the question that Adair Turner, Chair of the UK Financial Services Authority, was addressing in his lecture to Cass Business School this week.

Turner’s speech at the UK Financial Services Authority

ft. INET’s Perry Mehrling

The notion of “field” is so pervasive that economists hardly pay conscious attention to it.

Although the objectivity-Grail Quest has ended with total success decades ago (so economists say), the question of the possibility and consequences of economists’ values smuggling into their daily practice still periodically surfaces, and crises make good times for such debates.

Piero Sraffa’s classic work Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities has been variously interpreted as a special case of modern neoclassical general equilibrium or a foundation stone for the revival of the classical tradition of Smith and Ricardo.

What is the purpose of markets?

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and the World Economic Forum today announced plans for closer collaboration to foster new approaches to economic thinking.

Paul Samuelson is well-known to have been a compulsive citer and for having a particular Whig program for the history of economics

Economists and historians of economics have related differently over time, and the past of the discipline has then served for varied purposes.

On January 24 2013, the Workers’ Rights Student Coalition at Columbia Law School will host an INET-sponsored evening with top political leadership from SYRIZA, Greece’s dominant opposition party and anticipated next government, to discuss the challenges facing Greece and the euro zone and SYRIZA’s plans for reform.

INET is pleased to announce that Roman Frydman, Chair of INET’s Program on Imperfect Knowledge Economics, has published a book with Edmund Phelps, 2006 Nobel laureate and Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University, Rethinking Expectations: The Way Forward for Macroeconomics (Princeton University Press).

One of the fundamental ideas of modern economics — that people have rational expectations, an unbiased, statistically correct view of the future — is, in reality, a simple hypothesis.

Eric Beinhocker and Tony Dolphin argue that lasting reform to the financial sector will not be achieved without tackling the price rigging and anti-competitive behaviour that is rife in the industry.

The History of Economics Society (HES) held four sessions at the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) 2013 meeting, in San Diego, Jan. 4-6: “Keynes and the International Monetary System” (co-organized by Robert Dimand and Rebeca Gomez Betancourt), “Writing MIT’s History” (organized by E. Roy Weintraub and having our blog fellow Yann Giraud presenting), “Looking for Best Practices in Economic Journalism: Past and Present” (organized by our blog fellow Tiago Mata), and “Real Business Cycle after Three Decades: Past, Present and Future” (a panel discussion co-organized by Warren L. Young and Sumru Altug).