Becom­ing an Econ­o­mist is the intro­duc­tory course on eco­nom­ics for under­grad­u­ates at Kingston Uni­ver­sity. This is the sec­ond of 11 lec­tures in the sub­ject; I’ll post the oth­ers as I write them over the next few months. This lec­ture dis­cusses why the Main­stream approach, start­ing from the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion Wal­ras posed “Can a sys­tem of free mar­kets reach a set of prices that ensures that sup­ply equals demand in all mar­kets?”

The answer was “No”, but that did­n’t stop the “Equi­lib­ri­um Fetish Jug­ger­naut” that Wal­ras unleashed.

This is the Pow­er­point file for the lec­ture.

The Pri­vate Debt Project (this web­site will become active as of Decem­ber 2015) invites pro­pos­als for arti­cles, papers, and research notes relat­ed to the study of pri­vate debt and its rela­tion­ship to eco­nom­ic growth and finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty. The Project will pro­vide hon­o­rar­i­um for all pub­lished work. In cas­es involv­ing papers with orig­i­nal research, it will also con­sid­er small research grants to help cov­er the cost of the research.

Com­mis­sioned arti­cles, papers, and research notes will be pub­lished on The Pri­vate Debt Project’s on-line jour­nal and will be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to a wide audi­ence of aca­d­e­mics, pol­i­cy experts, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, investors, and busi­ness lead­ers.

The Friends Prov­i­dent Foun­da­tion has just estab­lished a Fel­low­ship for UK jour­nal­ism to pro­duce a “a sig­nif­i­cant work of long form jour­nal­ism in any medi­um on the theme of build­ing resilient economies.”

I’ve copied the full press release below. For fur­ther details, click on this link. The full press release is copied below.

Journalist Fellowship 2016

The Foundation’s trustees have cre­at­ed a jour­nal­ist fel­low­ship to build a bet­ter under­stand­ing of eco­nom­ics in the wider pub­lic by work­ing with a lead­ing jour­nal­ist to cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant work of long form jour­nal­ism in any medi­um on the theme of build­ing resilient economies.

Becom­ing an Econ­o­mist is the intro­duc­to­ry course on eco­nom­ics for under­grad­u­ates at Kingston Uni­ver­si­ty. This is the first of 11 lec­tures in the sub­ject; I’ll post the oth­ers as I write them over the next few months. This lec­ture dis­cuss­es why econ­o­mists dis­agree with each oth­er, and draws analo­gies with astron­o­my at the time when Galileo dis­cov­ered craters on the Moon, and moons orbit­ing Jupiter and Sat­urn.

This is the Pow­er­point file for the lec­ture, which includes links to the Youtube videos used in this lec­ture:

Lec­ture 1: Why Econ­o­mists Disagree–Lessons from Astron­o­my

One of the peo­ple I miss talk­ing with in Aus­tralia is radio jour­nal­ist and tech and inter­net expert Phil Dob­bie. For­tu­nate­ly there’s Skype, and we reg­u­lar­ly now chat mat­ters eco­nom­ic on his inter­net radio show Balls Radio. Here’s the lat­est com­plete pro­gram, includ­ing our dis­cus­sion of why inter­est rates are so low and are not going to move up until the lev­el of pri­vate debt falls dramatically–which is unlike­ly to hap­pen.

One of the very enjoy­able aspects of being in Lon­don is speak­ing reg­u­lar­ly with Simon Rose on the busi­ness-ori­ent­ed inter­net radio Share Radio. I know I can talk under wet cement; I think Simon could man­age to talk after it had set sol­id. We have a great time ban­ter­ing about top­ics eco­nom­ics, and I hope it’s of inter­est to the audi­ence as well. Here’s the lat­est install­ment, with some ear­li­er ones avail­able here.

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For sev­en years now, the rate The Fed sets to deter­mine the price banks pay to bor­row from it and from each oth­er has been zero, or so close to zero that the dif­fer­ence is imma­te­r­i­al. This is, his­tor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, not nor­mal, and The Fed has a des­per­ate desire to return to what is nor­mal, which is rate a few per cent above the rate of infla­tion (see Fig­ure 1).

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This is the brief talk I gave at a con­fer­ence cel­e­brat­ing 25 years of the Crit­i­cal Real­ist sem­i­nar series at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. Crit­i­cal real­ists argue against the use of math­e­mat­ics in eco­nom­ics; I argue here that it’s the abuse of math­e­mat­ics by Neo­clas­si­cal economists–who prac­tice what I have dubbed “Mythe­mat­ics” rather than Mathematics–and that some phe­nom­e­na are uncov­ered by math­e­mat­i­cal log­ic that can’t be dis­cov­ered by ver­bal log­ic alone. I give the exam­ple of my own mod­el of Min­sky’s Finan­cial Insta­bil­i­ty Hypoth­e­sis, which revealed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a “Great Mod­er­a­tion” pre­ced­ing a “Great Reces­sion” before either event had hap­pened.

One thing my 28 years as a card-car­ry­ing econ­o­mist have taught me is that con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic the­o­ry is the best guide to what is like­ly to hap­pen in the econ­o­my.

Read what­ev­er it advis­es or pre­dicts, and then advise or expect the oppo­site. You (almost) can’t go wrong.

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There was a time when most edu­cat­ed peo­ple knew that the Earth was the cen­ter of the uni­verse. There was a sophis­ti­cat­ed “Geo­cen­tric” mod­el, known as the “Ptole­ma­ic sys­tem”, that pre­dict­ed to very high accu­ra­cy the observed move­ment of all the objects in the Heav­ens, as they pur­port­ed­ly orbit­ed the Earth on per­fect crys­talline spheres. 500 years ago, any­one who pro­posed an alter­na­tive model—in which the Sun was the cen­ter and the Earth was just anoth­er plan­et orbit­ing it—was derid­ed as a heretic and a mad­man.

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