Archive

Here is a talk I gave recently at Wake Forest University.

Our usual problem in history (of economics) is a lack of information.

Human beings aren’t mechanical. And mechanistic economic theories can’t account for uncertainty or political instability and individual creativity.

The topic of this session of the INET conference is a question: does the effectiveness of fiscal policy in stabilizing an economy depend on the underlying economic context in which the policy is implemented?

The paper deals with the mysterious persistence of the Chicago approach as the main analytical engine driving antitrust enforcement in the US.

In conversation recently, I was called upon to defend the claim that banks are in the business of creating and destroying private money.

The Washington Consensus is dead.

When Paul Krugman paints John Maynard Keynes as a pioneering critic of dominant free-market economics, he exaggerates wildly, both about the rigidity of orthodoxy and about the pioneering character of Keynes’ critique.

New economic thinking is no passing fad. The movement for new economic thinking is here to stay - with broad-based, worldwide support from undergraduate and graduate students as well as both young and established professors and Nobel laureates.

how economics students have begun to push back against the stale ideas that were proven wrong during the recent financial crisis.

I don’t seem to be able to fully grasp Mark Blaug’s distinction between a relativist and an absolutist approach to the history of economics – first introduced in Economic Theory in Retrospect (1962) – and that is a source of much frustration.

The Huffington Post spotlights the INET financial instability video, produced by Four Corners Media, accompanied by an extensive written introduction fromINET Executive Director Robert Johnson.

Like many economists, I have enjoyed Axel Leijonhufvud’s “Life among the Econ” and nodded appreciatively when he described the social classifications of the Econ as “Grads, Adults and Elders” and chuckled when the young grad tries to impress the elders of the ‘dept’ through adept ‘modl’ building; so when the man himself was holding a glass of champagne and chatting with me at the INET conference, I had to ask how he got that paper started.

Paper revised for the Institute’s Plenary Conference in Berlin

The text below is the comment I offered on Mr. Soros’ opening speech at INET’s Berlin Conference April 12, 2012. The text of Mr. Soros’ own speech is here. Video of the entire session is below—my bit starts at 55:00.