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Workgroup for Marxist Macroeconomic Modelling Call for Papers for the 17th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy ‘Political Economy vs Economics in a turbulent multipolar world 2-4 August 2024, Panteion University, Athens, Greece Macroeconomic modelling plays an important role for both socialist and capitalist economies. Particularly for the former macroeconomic modelling is crucial for economic planning. Macroeconomic modelling – geared especially towards...

from Giandomenico Scarpelli and current issue of RWER As documented in the previous paragraph, in recent years it finally seems that most orthodox economists have become more aware of the catastrophic outcomes of climatic disturbances; but at this point the traditional policy they recommend could be insufficient to meet the goals set at international level. In fact, that policy consists mainly of pollution permits and carbon taxes, but if the permits are offered with great generosity and...

My latest in The Guardian Supermarkets are the public face of inflation. Every time we go shopping, we are reminded that just about everything costs more than it did before Covid. And shrinkflation, once subtle and insidious, has become blatant. A standard chocolate bar is now what used to be called “fun size”. A natural response, particularly for politicians seeking to divert attention from themselves, is to blame greed and monopoly power. Explanations based on greed are rather...

That’s what the Bible (or at least, the preacher in Ecclesiastes) says, and sometimes I feel as if that’s right. But right now, I’m basking in the glow of having returned final proofs for Public Policy and Climate Change: Politics, Philosophy and Economics, a text to appear in the Lecture Notes in Economics and Policy series put out by World Scientific Publishers. As well as approving the proofs, I produced an index, using a program with the self-explanatory title PDF Index...

from Asad Zaman Introduction At first glance, it appears that industrialization, with its rampant overproduction and overconsumption, stands as the primary antagonist in our climate crisis narrative. However, this surface-level perception overlooks a more profound shift that lies beneath: an epistemological revolution birthed in the European Enlightenment. This era marked a pivotal transition in our relationship with the planet, from Mother Earth to a dead machine. Turbayne (1962)...

I will present, as an invited speaker, a paper at the IX ST. PETERSBURG INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC CONGRESS (SPEC), 4-5/4/2024. The theme of my presentation is ‘IS THERE A RETURN OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY WITHIN MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS?’ The conference is organised by the S.Y. WITTE INSTITUTE FOR NEW INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT, the FREE ECONOMIC SOCIETY OF RUSSIA and the INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ECONOMISTS

from Dean Baker David Wallace-Wells had a column discussing the trip by Javier Milei, Argentina’s new president, to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is an annual gathering of many of the world’s richest people, where they also invite politicians, academics, and others who they think may amuse them. According to Wallace-Wells, Mr. Milei definitely fits into that category. The piece talked about how Milei calls himself as an anarchist, with the government just...

from Lars Syll The simple question that was raised during a recent conference … was to what extent has — or should — the teaching of economics be modified … The simple answer is that the economics profession is unlikely to change. Why would economists be willing to give up much of their human capital, painstakingly nurtured for over two centuries? For macroeconomists in particular, the reaction has been to suggest that modifications of existing models to take account of ‘frictions’ or...

Graph 1. The increasingly inefficient use of carsSummary: parking places are a woefully inefficient use of space. And ugly. Cars are a woefully inefficient use of machinery. Using them, in combination with bi-directional charging of cars, to produce solar can amend this. Doing this the right way, parking places can be beautified, costs will go down and life will be more pleasant. A typical car is, like a washing machine, a household appliance. As such, they are woefully...

Daniel Kahneman, who was, along with Elinor Ostrom, one of the very few non-economists to win the Economics Nobel award, has died aged 90. There are lots of obituaries out there, so I won’t try to summarise his work. Rather, I’ll talk about how it influenced my own academic career. When I was an undergraduate, in the late 1970s, economic analysis of decisions under uncertainty was dominated by the expected utility (EU) theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern. The mean-variance...