Podcast: Economics & Beyond

Camilla Toulmin, former director and associate of the International Institute for Environment and Development, talks to Rob about the role of civil society and education in African development.

Harvard Kennedy School economist Dani Rodrik talks to Rob about the importance of putting debt payments by developing countries on hold in the face of the pandemic. They also discuss the state of globalization and the US-China relationship.

Rob talks to Nobel laureate economist George Akerlof about economics’ bias against the “soft” social scientific perspectives of anthropology, sociology, and psychology in favor of “hard” economic models that attempt to replicate iron-clad scientific laws. They also discuss how to reform the economics profession and the needs of a new generation of economists.

Jeremy Lent, founder of founder of the Liology Institute and author of The Patterning Instinct, talks to Rob about how values shape our economics and our reaction to the pandemic, and how the pandemic could, in turn, provoke a shift in values in favor of community and against neoliberalism.

Rob talks to Adair Turner—member of the House of Lords, former Chairman of the British Financial Services Authority, and member of INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation—about how the COVID-19 economic crash compares to the post-2008 recession: namely, how to deal with a crisis of supply in addition to aggregate demand.