In Europe and the United States, political and economic breakdowns have become untenable.

A new angle on the link between property rights and economic growth

What can be done to repair economics so economists can play a productive role in helping society?

We are pleased to announce the program of INET’s annual plenary conference in Berlin.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking will host its third annual plenary conference in Berlin fromApril 12 to 14, 2012.

INET Advisors Help Answer

INET Founding Sponsor George Soros recently had a commentary piece published in the FT, where he argued against Germany’s proposed solution to the “euro crisis.”

What is missing from the Goodhart prescriptions for European fiscal governance is a more robust taxing authority, and a new Europe-wide banking and financial sector framework ought to be adopted.

Goodhart brings back on the table the 2% minimalist federal fiscal counterpart to monetary union: “As has been exemplified in the recent crisis, it is problematical to try to issue money without the power to support that via taxation. Equally without access to money (notably via taxes), the power to undertake counter-cyclical, or cross-country, stabilisation is limited. So, the second proposal is to revisit the exercise that was done, some twenty years ago, to assess what fiscal changes might be needed to accompany a single currency.”

The Globe and Mail published a long piece about the dismal science, covering a lot of ground from moral philosophy to rational expectations, from Adam Smith to this year’s Nobel laureate Thomas Sargent, from the Post-Autistic Economics movement to the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Excerpts:

INET presents you a paper that deals with the relationship between economics and the world we live in. John Kay spells out methodological critiques of economic theory in general, and of DSGE models and rational expectations in particular. The paper builds on two articles that Kay, Fellow at St. John’s College of Oxford University and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, recently published in the Financial Times (scroll down to find the links). It is concerned with the relation of quantitative models to the world in which we live, and with evergreens such as the implications of unrealistic assumptions in economic theory. Highly recommended reading. INET forwarded Kay’s paper to a handful economists and invited them to respond. In the following days, we are going to publish direct responses to the paper by a handful of prominent economists. Follow the INET Blog and stay tuned to what is going to be a healthy discussion.

A story about the rise of the modern Think Tank and how in a very strange way they have made thinking impossible.

Reminder

The Institute for New Economic Thinking and The Centre for International Governance Innovation are calling for new research proposals in areas of vital importance to the field of economics for the Fall 2011 grants cycle.

INET and CIGI Award Spring 2011 Grants: The grants offer a diversity of approaches and global perspectives that target critical issues that have been neglected by conventional economic analysis.