Robert Skidelsky

Following Robert Skidelsky’s lecture “Economic History” he leads a discussion with students. INET sincerely thanks the Julis-Rabinowitz Family for their generous support, who named this series to honor the spirit of a great educator and economic thinker, Uwe Reinhardt. For nearly 50 years, the late Uwe Reinhardt was a beloved economist and professor at Princeton University. Known best for helping to shape critical discourse around healthcare markets, his biting wit and intellect...

Following Robert Skidelsky’s lecture “Unlimited Wants, Limited Resources,” he leads a discussion with students. INET sincerely thanks the Julis-Rabinowitz Family for their generous support, who named this series to honor the spirit of a great educator and economic thinker, Uwe Reinhardt. For nearly 50 years, the late Uwe Reinhardt was a beloved economist and professor at Princeton University. Known best for helping to shape critical discourse around healthcare markets, his biting wit and...

Where—if anywhere—is power is located in economic life? How economists do deal with it? And to what extent is economics itself part of the power structure? In this eighth lecture in INET’s “How and How Not to Do Economics,” Robert Skidelsky looks at economics’ relationship with power. INET sincerely thanks the Julis-Rabinowitz Family for their generous support, who named this series to honor the spirit of a great educator and economic thinker, Uwe Reinhardt. For nearly 50 years, the...

Following Robert Skidelsky’s lecture “Psychology and Economics,” he leads a discussion with students. INET sincerely thanks the Julis-Rabinowitz Family for their generous support, who named this series to honor the spirit of a great educator and economic thinker, Uwe Reinhardt. For nearly 50 years, the late Uwe Reinhardt was a beloved economist and professor at Princeton University. Known best for helping to shape critical discourse around healthcare markets, his biting wit and intellect...

Lionel Robbins defined economics as: “the science which studies behaviour as a relationship between unlimited wants and limited resources which have alternative uses.” How do we understand this tension between unlimited wants and limited resources? That’s what Robert Skidelsky examines in this second lecture of his INET series, “How and How Not to do Economics.” INET sincerely thanks the Julis-Rabinowitz Family for their generous support, who named this series to honor the spirit of a...

Below is the text of a letter to the editor of the Financial Times, signed by Lord Skidelsky alongside 81 other signatories, and published on 6th September 2019. Your series of articles exploring the Labour party’s economic agenda fails to appreciate the severity of the UK’s current economic condition, and reproduces a number of misconceptions. There is growing political consensus that the UK’s economic model is failing. The economy has been performing badly for more than a decade....

If we’re headed for a recession, blame the economists who flunked history class. History has long been downplayed by economists, even though it holds the keys to answering some of the most important questions today. Why did the stock market crash in 1929? Should the 2008 bank bailout been handled differently? Is there any way to stop this endless cycle of booms and busts? Economic historian Robert Skidelsky explains why the past is vital to making sense of the present.

If we’re headed for a recession, blame the economists who flunked history class. History has long been downplayed by economists, even though it holds the keys to answering some of the most important questions today. Why did the stock market crash in 1929? Should the 2008 bank bailout been handled differently? Is there any way to stop this endless cycle of booms and busts? Economic historian Robert Skidelsky explains why the past is vital to making sense of the present.

Recently I watched The Man Who Was Too Free, a moving documentary about the Russian dissident politician Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in front of the Kremlin in 2015. A young, handsome rising political star in the 1990s, Nemtsov later refused to bend to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism and went into opposition, where he was harassed, imprisoned, and finally killed. The film left me thinking about the diminished role of heroism and courage in modern life, and also...

“Any government,” writes the economist and hedge fund manager Warren Mosler, “can achieve full employment by offering a public service job to anyone who wants one at a fixed wage.” Versions of this idea have received powerful endorsements from prominent Democratic politicians in the US, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has linked a government job guarantee to a Green New Deal. Moreover, versions of a job-guarantee program (JGP), more or...