What is the World Economics Association?

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For par­tic­i­pants of the Hong Kong INET Con­fer­ence

What is the
World Eco­nom­ics Asso­ci­a­tion?

The World Eco­nom­ics Asso­ci­a­tion (WEA) was launched in May 2011. The WEA seeks to increase the rel­e­vance, breadth and depth of eco­nom­ic thought. Its key qual­i­ties are world­wide mem­ber­ship and gov­er­nance, and inclu­sive­ness with respect to: (a) the vari­ety of the­o­ret­i­cal per­spec­tives; (b) the range of human activ­i­ties and issues which fall with­in the broad domain of eco­nom­ics; and © the study of the world’s diverse economies.

 Already over 11,000 econ­o­mists and relat­ed schol­ars have joined, includ­ing some of today’s most respect­ed thinkers. (See page 3 for a geo­graph­i­cal list of the WEA’s found­ing mem­bers.) The geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the WEA’s mem­ber­ship is approx­i­mate­ly as fol­lows: Africa 9%, Asia 18%, Europe 33%, Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean 12%, Ocea­nia 8%, and US and Cana­da 20%.

This phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess has come about because the WEA fills a huge gap in the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of econ­o­mists — the absence of a pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion which is both broad­ly inter­na­tion­al and plu­ral­ist.

Con­tact: supportWEA@worldeconomicsassociation.org

What does the WEA do already?

http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/

The WEA facil­i­tates the devel­op­ment of eco­nom­ic think­ing and debate through:

• 3 on-line jour­nals (high down­load rates of papers):
  
  • World Eco­nom­ics Review (with open on-line peer review)
    
  • Eco­nom­ic Thought (with open on-line peer review)
    
  • Real-World Eco­nom­ics Review (See page 4 for the con­tents page of cur­rent issue.)
    
• Online Con­fer­ences
  
  • Recent­ly held:
    
    • Eco­nom­ics in Soci­ety: The Eth­i­cal Dimen­sion
      
    • Sus­tain­abil­i­ty – Miss­ing points in the devel­op­ment dia­logue
      
    • Rethink­ing finan­cial mar­kets
      
    • The polit­i­cal econ­o­my of eco­nom­ic met­rics
      
  • Forth­com­ing:
    
    • The eco­nom­ics cur­ricu­lum: towards a rad­i­cal ref­or­ma­tion (spring)
      
    • Inequal­i­ties in Asia (Spring)
      
    • Neo-lib­er­al­ism in Turkey (Autumn)
      
• Bi-month­ly 12-page newslet­ter: 8 issues have already been pub­lished

All of the above are freely avail­able to audi­ences across the globe: aca­d­e­mics, stu­dents, lay peo­ple, and those in gov­ern­ment and busi­ness.

What new things does the WEA plan to intro­duce this year?

• Its web­site is in the process of being com­plete­ly redesigned and upgrad­ed.

• A Net­work of 50+ Nation­al Chap­ters
  Our pro­to­type nation­al net­work is Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al’s. One or more peo­ple will be recruit­ed to start up a nation­al chap­ter and man­age its web­site. The idea is for them to pro­mote WEA net­work groups for schol­ars and stu­dents in the indi­vid­ual coun­tries, and for their web­sites to dis­play results of their activ­i­ties in terms of mem­o­ran­da, con­fer­ences, spe­cial ses­sions there­in, reports, and dis­cus­sions of both pub­li­ca­tions and their nation­al eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. The IT sys­tem for the net­work is already in place, and the orga­niz­ing cam­paign will be launched in May. We expect this grass­roots net­work to lead to a large increase in WEA mem­ber­ship, enough to make the WEA the world’s largest pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion for econ­o­mists.
• Blog and Notice Boards
  The WEA Ped­a­gogy Blog will soon be oper­a­tional, man­aged by an Amer­i­can, a Pak­istani and a Brazil­ian. A set of sev­en region­al WEB blog-type notice boards for jobs and events are planned, includ­ing one for the world as a whole, with the Latin Amer­i­can one (in Span­ish and Por­tuguese) to lead off.
• WEA Press
  Plans are under­way for estab­lish­ing a WEA Press to pub­lish e- and paper­back books, ini­tial­ly of best papers from WEA con­fer­ences, lat­er prob­a­bly more wide rang­ing.
  

What are the WEA’s long term ambi­tions?

• To cre­ate a glob­al grass­roots move­ment in the eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sion that will real­ize the WEA’s aims of plu­ral­ism, glob­al inclu­sive­ness and real-world rel­e­vance.

• To make its web­site a pri­ma­ry focus point for the eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sion world­wide.
  
• To estab­lish more jour­nals using the strate­gic com­bi­na­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and the mem­ber­ship email list.
  
• To make the WEA the dis­ci­pline’s pri­ma­ry pro­fes­sion­al ref­er­ence point, rather than the Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ic Asso­ci­a­tion.
  
• To cre­ate dig­i­tal plat­forms for the glob­al based pro­fes­sion­al dis­cus­sion of eco­nom­ics and eco­nom­ic issues.
  

What is the WEA’s legal sta­tus?

 World Eco­nom­ics Asso­ci­a­tion is reg­is­tered under Unit­ed King­dom law as a non-prof­it Com­mu­ni­ty Inter­est Com­pa­ny. Com­pa­ny num­ber: 07507045. Address: 12 Mau­rice Road, St. Andrews, Bris­tol BS6 5BZ, UK. Email: info@worldeconomicsassociation.org. It has a board of direc­tors and is a com­pa­ny lim­it­ed by guar­an­tee.

 What is the WEA’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion?

 The WEA is now at a point of tran­si­tion from “start-up”, based entire­ly on vol­un­teers, to a more estab­lished and per­ma­nent orga­ni­za­tion, still vol­un­teer based, but with a need for self-sus­tain­ing financ­ing to sup­port our web and pub­li­ca­tions infra­struc­ture.

 So far the WEA has been financed entire­ly by small dona­tions ($50 is about aver­age) from its mem­bers. In total about $45,000 has been raised this way. Our main costs are the employ­ment of staff for edit­ing, for­mat­ting and IT work and the pur­chase of IT soft­ware. Assum­ing that the man­age­ment of the WEA oper­a­tions con­tin­ues to be avail­able on a vol­un­tary basis, then a total bud­get of $200,000 for the next 2 years would secure WEA’s devel­op­ment and future.

For this we require sub­stan­tial dona­tions.

 We invite any­one who sym­pa­thizes with the WEA’s man­i­festo, agrees with WEA’s goals and appre­ci­ates its poten­tial to con­tact us, either to vol­un­teer or to donate: supportWEA@worldeconomicsassociation.org

 7 key WEA mem­bers are par­tic­i­pants in the INET Hong Kong Con­fer­ence.

• Sheila Dow – co-edi­tor of Eco­nom­ic Thought
  
• Jean-Pierre Dupuy – found­ing mem­ber
  
• Edward Full­brook – Exec­u­tive Direc­tor (edward.fullbrook@btinternet.com)
  
• Nor­bert Häring – Direc­tor
  
• Steve Keen – mem­ber of Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee
  
• Richard Koo – mem­ber of Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee
  
• André Orlean – found­ing mem­ber
  

WEA Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee Mem­bers

• Juan Car­los Moreno Brid, Mex­i­co, UN Eco­nom­ic Com. for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean
  
• C. P. Chan­drasekhar, India, Jawa­har­lal Nehru Uni­ver­si­ty
  
• Ping Chen, Chi­na, Peking Uni­ver­si­ty and Fudan Uni­ver­si­ty
  
• Edward Full­brook, UK, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Eng­land
  
• James K. Gal­braith, USA, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin
  
• Grazia Iet­to-Gillies, Italy / UK, Lon­don South Bank Uni­ver­si­ty
  
• Steve Keen, Aus­tralia, Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Syd­ney
  
• Richard C. Koo, Japan, Nomu­ra Research Insti­tute
  
• Tony Law­son, UK, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty
  
• Peter Rad­ford, USA, Rad­ford Free Press
  
• Dani Rodrik, USA, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Found­ing mem­bers of the World Eco­nom­ic Asso­ci­a­tion

 Ini­tia­tors

Edward Full­brook

Peter Rad­ford
Nor­bert Häring
Grazia Iet­to Gillies
Vic­ki Har­ris
Valerie Rad­ford

Launch Com­mit­tee

Dean Bak­er

Ha-Joon Chang
Her­man E. Daly
Hein­er Flass­beck
Edward Full­brook
James Gal­braith
Jay­ati Ghosh
Grazia Iet­to Gillies
Nor­bert Häring
Steve Keen
Richard C. Koo
Tony Law­son
Frédéric Lor­don
Juan Car­los Moreno-Brid
Peter Rad­ford
Erik S Rein­ert
Irene van Staveren
Robert Wade

san­i­ty, human­i­ty and sci­ence                      prob­a­bly the world’s most read eco­nom­ics jour­nal

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— A jour­nal of the World Eco­nom­ics Asso­ci­a­tion (WEA) 11,201 mem­bers, join here

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Issue no. 63, 25 March 2013

In this issue:

The veil of decep­tion over mon­ey                                 2
Nor­bert Häring

Ultra easy mon­e­tary pol­i­cy and the law of unin­tend­ed con­se­quences              19

William White

Civ­i­liz­ing cap­i­tal­ism                                         57

Erik Rein­ert

Look­ing at the right met­rics in the right way — Two kinds of mod­els                  73

Mer­i­jn Knibbe

Cri­sis and method­ol­o­gy: Some het­ero­dox mis­un­der­stand­ings                 98

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Inap­plic­a­ble oper­a­tions on ordi­nal, car­di­nal, and expect­ed util­i­ty                118

Jonathan Barzi­lai

Reduced work hours as a means of slow­ing cli­mate change                     124

David Ros­nick

Elec­tron­ic mon­ey and Mod­ern Mon­e­tary The­o­ry                        135

Trond Andresen

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, unem­ploy­ment and the Rule of Eight                        142

Alan Tay­lor Har­vey

What I would like eco­nom­ic majors to know                            147

David Hemen­way

Past con­trib­u­tors, sub­mis­sions and etc.                                155

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