An economic counter-revolution begins… in Reykjavik

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In Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics, I argued that eco­nom­ic the­o­ry had done such dam­age to soci­ety that human­i­ty would be bet­ter off if every­thing ever writ­ten about eco­nom­ics by anyone–including yours truly–were oblit­er­at­ed, and the world had to start again from scratch.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly that can’t be done–everything, even eco­nom­ics, devel­ops in an evo­lu­tion­ary way–but the next best thing is to admit how wrong neo­clas­si­cal thought has been, and to start devel­op­ing alter­na­tives.

There are many such endeav­ours around the world, and one of them is tak­ing place in the very appo­site loca­tion of  Reyk­javik, Ice­land, in Sep­tem­ber this year.

Though I am on the sci­en­tif­ic com­mit­tee for Man­ag­ing finan­cial insta­bil­i­ty in cap­i­tal­is­tic economies, I won’t be able to attend for the usu­al rea­sons of not hav­ing a suf­fi­cient trav­el bud­get to over­come the dis­tance from Syd­ney to Ice­land. The rest of this post repli­cates the con­fer­ence’s descrip­tion and its call for papers.

Managing financial instability in capitalistic economies

Reykjavik, Iceland

September 3rd- 5th, 2009

Background

The finan­cial and cred­it sec­tors have a great impor­tance in our mod­ern ser­vice-ori­ent­ed economies. as the present cred­it crunch and finan­cial mar­ket crash and the sub­se­quent severe eco­nom­ic reces­sion have point­ed out. Accord­ing to present main­stream approach­es to eco­nom­ics, the finan­cial and lia­bil­i­ty struc­ture of the econ­o­my may influ­ence aggre­gate eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty and ampli­fy busi­ness cycles. How­ev­er, cap­i­tal­is­tic economies are viewed as essen­tial­ly sta­ble and tend­ing towards steady growth; and the invest­ment-finance link­age is con­sid­ered as an ampli­fy­ing mech­a­nism of shocks exoge­nous to the econ­o­my. A com­ple­men­tary strand of research empha­sizes the role of the invest­ment-finance link not just as a prop­a­ga­tor of exoge­nous shocks but as the main source of finan­cial insta­bil­i­ty and busi­ness cycles, i.e., dur­ing good times eco­nom­ic agents take exces­sive risks and lend and bor­row too much, gen­er­at­ing endoge­nous ruinous boom-and-bust cycles. Besides, recent devel­op­ments in sta­tis­ti­cal equi­lib­ri­um approach­es to eco­nom­ics, along­side with the emer­gence of behav­iour­al and agent-based mod­els, have indi­cat­ed the way to over­come the lim­i­ta­tion of tra­di­tion­al equi­lib­ri­um-based ana­lyt­i­cal mod­els char­ac­ter­ized by ful­ly ratio­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tive agents.

Aims and scope

The pur­pose of the work­shop is twofold: to dis­cuss new mod­el­ling par­a­digms in finan­cial eco­nom­ics and to design new pub­lic inter­ven­tion poli­cies aimed to recov­er a cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my from a deep reces­sion caused by a cred­it crunch or a col­lapse in assets val­ues. The Ice­landic econ­o­my will be dis­cussed as a case study.

Top­ics include, but are not lim­it­ed to, the fol­low­ing:

  • Agent-based com­pu­ta­tion­al eco­nom­ics
  • Behav­iour­al finance and eco­nom­ics
  • Eco­nom­ics of het­ero­ge­neous and inter­act­ing agents
  • Finan­cial Key­ne­sian­ism and finan­cial fragili­ty
  • Finan­cial engi­neer­ing
  • Econo­physics
  • Endoge­nous and sys­temic risk man­age­ment
  • Finan­cial econo­met­rics
  • Sta­tis­ti­cal equi­lib­ri­um in eco­nom­ics

A final round table is fore­seen in dis­cuss new pos­si­ble foun­da­tions to the sci­ence of eco­nom­ics. A relat­ed doc­u­ment, called Reyk­javik man­i­festo, will be released.

Call for Papers:

Researchers are invit­ed to sub­mit a paper to the First Inter­na­tion­al Work­shop on Man­ag­ing Finan­cial Insta­bil­i­ty in Cap­i­tal­is­tic Economies (MAFIN 09), to be held in Reyk­javik (Ice­land), Sep­tem­ber 3rd — 5th, 2009.

Aims and scope:

This three-day event will offer pre­sen­ta­tions of papers select­ed by the Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mit­tee after a blind­ly dou­ble review, as well as keynote ses­sions by Invit­ed Speak­ers. Dis­cus­sions will have a large space in the final pro­gram.

The pur­pose of the work­shop is twofold: to dis­cuss new mod­el­ling par­a­digms in finan­cial eco­nom­ics and to design new pub­lic inter­ven­tion poli­cies aimed to recov­er a cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my from a deep reces­sion caused by a cred­it crunch or a col­lapse in assets val­ues. The Ice­landic econ­o­my will be dis­cussed as a case study.

Top­ics include, but are not lim­it­ed to, the fol­low­ing:

• Agent-based com­pu­ta­tion­al eco­nom­ics

• Behav­iour­al finance and eco­nom­ics

• Eco­nom­ics of het­ero­ge­neous and inter­act­ing agents

• Finan­cial Key­ne­sian­ism and finan­cial fragili­ty

• Finan­cial engi­neer­ing

• Econo­physics

• Endoge­nous and sys­temic risk man­age­ment

• Finan­cial econo­met­rics

• Sta­tis­ti­cal equi­lib­ri­um in eco­nom­ics

A final round table is fore­seen in dis­cuss new pos­si­ble foun­da­tions to the sci­ence of eco­nom­ics. A relat­ed doc­u­ment, called Reyk­javik man­i­festo, will be released.

Venue:

The work­shop will be held at Reyk­javik Uni­ver­si­ty in the Ofan­leiti build­ing, 103 Reyk­javik, Ice­land.

Sub­mis­sions:

An extend­ed abstract or a short paper should be sub­mit­ted in PDF for­mat by send­ing an email to:   mafin09@ru.is

The dead­line for the sub­mis­sion of extend­ed abstracts or short papers is July 19th, 2009.

The max­i­mum length of con­tri­bu­tions should be 6 pages.

Please send an anony­mous ver­sion with­out any author infor­ma­tion to guar­an­tee a dou­ble-blind review. Author(s) infor­ma­tion must be includ­ed in the body of the email.

Work­shop Pro­ceed­ings:

After the event, we plan to pub­lish in a spe­cial issue of a Jour­nal with a JCR impact fac­tor, the extend­ed and revised ver­sions of some select­ed papers mod­i­fied after the remarks and dis­cus­sions that will take place dur­ing the Work­shop.

Impor­tant dates:

July 19th, 2009                     Sub­mis­sion of extend­ed abstracts or short papers

August 15th,  2009               Noti­fi­ca­tion of accep­tance

August 25th,  2009               Work­shop reg­is­tra­tion dead­line

Sep­tem­ber 3rd – 5th, 2009    Work­shop

Octo­ber 31st, 2009               Sub­mis­sion of final papers

Orga­niz­ing Com­mitte:

Mar­co Raber­to (Chair), Reyk­javik Uni­ver­si­ty, Ice­land

Hlynur Ste­fáns­son (Co-Chair), Reyk­javik Uni­ver­si­ty, Ice­land

Har­al­dur Óskar Har­alds­son, Reyk­javik Uni­ver­si­ty, Ice­land

Invit­ed speak­ers:

Sil­vano Cin­cot­ti, Uni­ver­si­ty of Gen­o­va, Italy

Cees Dicks, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam, Nether­lands

Mau­ro Gal­le­gati, Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Marche, Ancona, Italy

Thomas Lux, Uni­ver­si­ty of Kiel, Ger­many

Enri­co Scalas, Uni­ver­si­ty of East Pied­mont, Alessan­dria, Italy

Willi Semm­ler, New School, New York, USA

Leanne Ussh­er*, City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York , USA

(*to be con­firmed)

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