Heterodox Economics Newsletter-35, By: Frederic S. Lee

From the Editor

The Heterodox Economics Newsletter has lots of new material—new books promoting heterodox economics to look at, new calls for papers, new jobs. Also there are some ‘new’ heterodox economics associations you might want to check out. Finally, under FYI there are documents on the defining of economics in the UK and on the upcoming research assessment exercise in Australia. These issues are of great importance since their tendency is eliminate the teaching of heterodox economics at universities.

In previous Newsletters I have provided information about the allocation of the ASSA conference fee. I have now information about the allocation of the fee for the 2006 ASSA meetings. The allocation report from ASSA with the information regarding the funds from the 2006 Boston meeting is the following:

Now compare it to the distribution of the payments for the 2005 Philadelphia meetings is the following:

What is clear is that it is important for those coming to the ASSA to register with the Association for Social Economics (ASE)—if you put down nothing then the AEA gets the money.

As noted below, ICAPE is hosting a conference on 1-3 June 2007 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. It will prove to be an exciting conference. The papers can be on a wide range of topics. But like everybody who attends conference, we all hope that there are lots of papers that deal with issues that we are particularly interested in. My interests, as is well know, are in microeconomic economics. Thus I am interested in putting together a couple of panels on the following topics:

1. an inter-paradigm examination of market governance—such as the formation and operation of cartels, price leadership, market/industry regulatory agencies, and laws that regulate market/competitive activities. Enterprises do not act as individuals but in associational relationships with other enterprises and the state to control competition and regulate markets in their own interest.

2. following the above, an inter-paradigm examination of anti-trust, competition regulations-laws and their relevance to heterodox economics.

3. a third topic could be on an inter-paradigm approach to big business. Too often today we see a lot of work done in economics which treat the large business enterprise as the best thing since sliced bread—they innovate, create new products, are dynamic, and generally are creating a better world. What has happened to a more critical-populist-robber barons attitude? Workers died at work; homes are taken by the state for the interest of big business; children are indoctrinated at schools with educational material supplied by big business; and the list goes on. Let us have a session(s) where these issues are discussed, where there are critical case studies of the history of business enterprises, where innovation and product development are done to control peoples’ lives and not done for making a better world.

If you are interested in giving a paper that is somehow related to the above topics/concerns, please send me a 250-word abstract to me (leefs@umkc.edu) no later than January 15.

Remember everyone is invited to the January 4th Thursday evening opening ASE plenary session followed by a reception helped sponsored by ICAPE.
Fred Lee

In this issue:

          - ICAPE Conference, 1-3 June 2007
          - Association for Heterodox Economics 9th Annual Conference 2007
          - IAFFE Conference
          - The Financialization of Global Capitalism: Analysis, Critiques, and Alternatives
          - 5th International Colloquium Marx & Engels
          - Class Matters: Working-Class Culture and Counter-Culture
          - Fifth Marx International Congress


  - Conferences, Seminars and Lectures

          - Roy Rotheim "Economic Ideology" Seminar
          - Seminaire Arc 2: Accumulation, Regulation, Croissance Et Crise
          - Karl Niebyl Centenary Symposium
          - Middlesex University Business School Seminar
          - The 2007 Left Forum conference
          - Beyond Schumacher: Alternative Approaches to Economics and Sustainability Perspective for the 21st Century
          - Americans Face Rising Economic Insecurity: What Can Be Done?
          - Book Lunch: The Lost World of British Communism
          - The 7th SCEME Workshop

          - Earlham College
          - State University of New York- Potsdam
          - The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
          - CNRS-GREDEG
          - Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

          - Review of Political Economy
          - Feminist Economics
          - Intervention
          - EAEPE News
          - Revista de Economia Politica

          - Empirical Post Keynesian Economics
          - Reintroducing Macroeconomics
          - Social Costs and Public Action in Modern Capitalism
          - John Maynard Keynes and International Relations
          - A Different Marx. The Utopia-Free Scientist
          - The Economics of Global Turbulence

- Sociedad Latinoamericana de Economía Política y Pensamiento Crítico (SEPLA)
- The Japanese Society for Post Keynesian Economics

        - QAA
        - Baroque fantasies of a peculiar science
        - Shun the rational agent to rebuild economics
        - The Cuckoo's Egg in the Nobel Prize Nest

ICAPE Conference, 1-3 June 2007

Dear colleague and fellow heterodox economist,

Between now and January 15, I hope you will feel inspired (or coerced, whichever you find more compelling) to propose a paper for the ICAPE conference on Economic Pluralism for the 21st Century, to be held June 1-3 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Like ICAPE's inaugural conference in 2003, this is a "big tent" conference open to all economic thinkers, topics, and fields of specialization.

We have received proposals so far from scholars in 12 countries (Belgium, China, Colombia, Denmark, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S.) who represent a several distinct traditions of thought. This is a healthy start.

But in order to fulfill ICAPE's mission of promoting intellectual diversity and inter-paradigmatic exchange in economic scholarship and education, we need to elicit proposals from a critical mass of Austrian, Feminist, Institutional-Evolutionary, Marxian, Postcolonial, Post Keynesian, Postmodern, Radical, Social, Sraffian, and OUT (Otherwise Unorthodox and Talented) economists.

In short, we need more proposals from economic thinkers like YOU!

If you would like to join us for three days of unusually good conference conversation, food, and drink in Salt Lake City next June, please send a 250-word abstract to Rob Garnett (r.garnett@tcu.edu ) no later than January 15.
Or, to learn more about the conference or ICAPE itself (the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics), please visit our web site: www.icape.org
We really hope to hear from you!
For the ICAPE conference organizers (Al Campbell, Wilfred Dolfsma, Edward Fullbrook, Rob Garnett, Neva Goodwin, John Henry, Mary King, Fred Lee, Ed McNertney, Judith Mehta, Erik Olsen, and Martha Starr),
Rob Garnett
Department of Economics
Box 298510
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX 76129
USA

Twelfth World Congress of Social Economics

Social Values and Economic Life
Twelfth World Congress of Social Economics
University of Amsterdam
June 8-10, 2007

The Association for Social Economics has scheduled its Twelfth World Congress of Social Economics for June 8-10, 2007, at the University of Amsterdam in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The general theme will be “Social Values and Economic Life.” It is not necessary to be a member of the Association to participate in the World Congress. We hope that non-members who participate in the World Congress will be interested in joining the Association.

Social economists assume that all economic theory and policy is strongly influenced by social values, whether or not these values are explicitly articulated, thereby rejecting the notion of a value-free, positive economic science. Social economists therefore view the economy as a social, cultural, and political institution. Social economics questions mainstream economic assumptions of homo economicus, rational economic man, and recognizes the interconnectedness of people’s life and work - both paid and unpaid. The Association for Social Economics ( www.socialeconomics.org ) was founded in 1970 as the successor of the Catholic Economic Association, founded in 1941. Social economists challenge the dominant paradigm of neoclassical economics, endeavor to broaden the scope and methodology of economics, encourage the pursuit of economic justice, and support research and analysis on policies to eradicate poverty, unemployment, hunger, inequality, and that promote an economy that values human beings and allows them to live with dignity.

Proposals for the World Congress may include: (1) individual or coauthored papers; (2) entire sessions of 4 papers; (3) roundtables of 4-5 persons on a particular topic; and (4) pedagogical sessions on teaching in the social economics tradition. The editors of the two journals of the Association—Review of Social Economy and Forum for Social Economics—are especially interested in papers suitable for publication. There will be no formal discussant assigned to papers/sessions. Instead, we encourage participation and discussion among the panelists and participants.

We encourage historical, theoretical, empirical, and policy papers. We are particularly interested in research that explicitly articulates a particular framework of social values. Five broad areas for exploring the theme of social values and economic life include: (1) family and community relationships; (2) the workplace and its social organization; (3) the social nature of market relationships; (4) macroeconomic social policy issues; and (5) economic methodology and the history of economic thought.

The Program Committee prefers to receive proposals by e-mail. In your proposal, include:

Author/Panelist name(s), postal address, telephone, fax, e-mail address
Paper, Panel, or Session title
A 100 word (maximum) abstract of the Paper, Panel, or entire Session

Please send these materials, preferably by no later than January 31, 2007, to each member of the Program Committee:

Betsy Jane Clary, College of Charleston, USA                        claryj@cofc.edu
John B. Davis, Marquette University, USA, and                       john.davis@marquette.edu
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Edith Kuiper, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands          kuiperedith@hotmail.com
Harro Maas, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands           h.b.j.b.maas@uva.nl
Ellen Mutari, Richard Stockton College, USA                          ellen.mutari@stockton.edu

Association for Heterodox Economics 9th Annual Conference 2007

Pluralism in Action
13 – 15 July, 2007
University of the West of England, Bristol

The Ninth Annual Conference of the Association of Heterodox Economics (AHE) will be held at the University of the West of England from 13th to 15th July 2007.

Last year’s highly successful AHE conference yielded a stimulating and original range of papers on pluralism in the social sciences. A striking feature of the conference was the interdisciplinary character of the contributions which explored the relation between economics and other branches of the social sciences. The Ninth Annual Conference will build on this success.

The conference will have both a thematic part and an open part. The AHE is happy to consider papers of both types; however, priority will be given to papers addressing the conference theme, “Pluralism in Action”. Papers are particularly encouraged dealing with the impact of heterodox, pluralistic and interdisciplinary approaches both on problems of policy, and on the advancement of understanding, where mainstream approaches have failed or fallen short.

For the open part of the conference, as in previous conferences we welcome submissions dealing with issues of fundamental theory, teaching and learning in economics, and the history of economic thought.

This year, the committee seeks to broaden the range of heterodox viewpoints. We encourage single papers or sessions addressing Austrian, Behavioural, Critical Realist, Ecological, Evolutionary, Feminist, Institutionalist, Marxist, Post-Keynesian, Schumpeterian, or other non-mainstream approaches. A feature of the AHE is as a forum for dialogue between different viewpoints, and we encourage proposals for sessions which address a single issue or theme from a variety of viewpoints.

The international character of the conference has been a vital factor in its growing success. Scholars requiring documentation in support of visa or funding applications should indicate this in their initial submission. At present the AHE regrets that it has no funds to provide financial support, but is actively seeking it and welcomes proposals from participants regarding organizations for the AHE contact in search of support for participants from outside the US and European Union.

Deadline for submission:

Proposals for single papers: please send an abstract of not more than 500 words by email only to the local organiser, Andrew Mearman (andrew.mearman@uwe.ac.uk) , AND the programme coordinator, Alan Freeman (afreeman@iwgvt.org ), by 19th January 2007. Text, HTML, Word and PDF format attachments are acceptable.

Proposals for sessions and streams: please indicate exactly what you are proposing, giving the names and email addresses of the proposed speakers, and attaching the abstracts (of not more than 500 words each) for their papers. Send by email to Andrew Mearman and Alan Freeman, as above, by Friday 19th January 2007.
The AHE Committee will consider all abstracts and will notify you of acceptance or rejection of your proposal by Monday 12th February 2007.
Those whose abstracts have been accepted must send their full paper and completed registration to be received by Friday 26th April 2007.
Parallel sessions will be 90 minutes long and will consist of two papers. Sessions may have a discussant for each paper. The conference is to be conducted in English.
To see details of previous conferences, and to keep up to date with the 2007 conference and other AHE activities please visit: www.hetecon.com

IAFFE Conference

The International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) is now accepting submissions for the 16th Annual IAFFE Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, June 29 â€“ July 1, 2007.

Submissions should be made online at the Conference Maker website. There, you will be prompted to create an account and submit your proposal. Submission instructions and a detailed Call for Papers are available at the IAFFE website, www.iaffe.org.

If you do not have internet access you may submit a hard copy of your abstract (with full contact information) by mail to:
Martha MacDonald, IAFFE Program Chair
Economics Department
Saint Maryâ€™s University
Halifax, NS, B3H 3C3
Canada

The deadline for submission is January 31, 2007.

The Financialization of Global Capitalism: Analysis, Critiques, and Alternatives

We are seeking paper submissions for a special issue of the Review of Radical Political Economics that addresses the role of finance capital in the era of globalization. We are interested in papers on the following general themes: a) the rise to power of finance capitalists; b) how the resulting changes in the balance of power between social classes impacts the laws of motion of capitalism with particular emphasis on accumulation and crises; c) the (in)compatibility of the goals/objectives of finance capitalists with those of industrial capitalists, particularly in a period of increased international competition; d) the impact of any finance-induced macroeconomic changes on labor and the environment; e) the financialization of productive capital, and f) the influence of finance capitalists on domestic and foreign policy formation.

Examples of specific topics of interest that would be welcomed include:

1) The impact of the increased power of owners, investors, and their financial intermediaries on real investment and growth.

2) On the micro level, the rise to power of financial executives within the corporation and their impact on corporate governance and strategic decision making.

3) The role of the ascendant financial sector in generating increased inequality; the role of finance in causing generalized wage repression, reduction, and elimination of private pension benefits, and increased debtor defaults.

4) The increased role of finance in government and central banking institutions, especially with regard to interest rate policies and the gutting of social safety nets in the form of social wages and social security.

5) General analysis of the role of the new “global finance capital,” and especially its center, in fostering neo-imperialist policies including the impact of the new financialization on military and security spending.

6) Finance and the “new rentier capitalism” as it effects dividend payouts, stock market and real estate bubbles.

7) The role of finance in fostering non-sustainable production of commodifiable consumer goods and long-term environmental destruction.

8) The effect of the new “privatization of risk” that has been promoted and implemented by global and national financial sectors and the effect of this on macroeconomic instability, recessions, and “accumulation by dispossession.”

9) The new resurgent power of finance: a viable resurgence of capitalist class power or a destructive rentier restoration that will ultimately undermine global capitalism.

Please send four copies of submissions for the special issue by December 2007 to Hazel Dayton Gunn, Managing Editor, Review of Radical Political Economics, Department of City and Regional Planning, 106 W. Sibley Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA, phone: 315/789-1414; e-mail: hg18@cornell.edu .

Submissions must follow the instructions to contributors listed in the back of the journal and available on our website: http://www.urpe.org/rrpehome.html . All submissions are subject to the RRPE’s usual review procedures.

5th International Colloquium Marx & Engels

Centro de Estudos Marxistas (Center of Marxist Studies -Cemarx) of the University of Campinas - Unicamp Campinas (SP) Brazil
November 2007
The Centro de Estudos Marxistas (Cemarx), of the Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas ( Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences – IFCH) of the Unicamp, has started the call for papers for the 5th INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIM MARX & ENGELS. Papers could be submitted between February 28 and May 31, 2007 .
For detailed information: 5th International Colloquium Marx.doc

Class Matters: Working-Class Culture and Counter-Culture

I am pleased to circulate the call for papers for the 2007 annual conference of the Working-Class Studies Association, which will be at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. next June (instead of Youngstown State University, where odd-number-year conferences have been held in the past). The How Class Works - 2008 conference will again be at Stony Brook in June 2008. I hope to see you at Macalester next year, and then again at Stony Brook. Please also consider joining the Working-Class Studies Association if you have not already done so.
Michael Zweig
Director, Center for Study of Working Class Life

June14-17, 2007

Annual Conference of the Working-Class Studies Association

Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota
Dormitory housing available

This conference will explore working-class culture in all its forms – activism, pop culture, the arts, storytelling, and more. Working-class culture can be a source of unity as well as division, and it is constructed in the workplace as well as in the realms of "leisure" and popular culture. At this conference, we hope to explore the relationships between "cultural workers" and their audiences, control over the means of cultural production (publishers, music producers, universities, etc.), and the commodification of working-class culture, among other issues. We are eager to provide a venue in which scholars of working-class culture using Humanities and Social Science frames and lenses can come together with each other, and with creators of working-class culture.

How has working-class culture changed over time? Is there is a diasporic, transnational, and/or global working-class culture? How do working-class people use representations, organizations, and everyday life to resist the dominant culture? How does working-class culture reflect divisions among working-class people?

We invite proposals for presentations, panels, posters, roundtables, and performances. Submit 1-page abstracts with a brief biographical statement January 15, 2007 to:

Peter Rachleff
History Department
Macalester College
1600 Grand Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55105
Or by email to rachleff@macalester.edu.

For more information, contact Peter Rachleff, rachleff@macalester.edu, or by phone at 651-696-6371.

Fifth Marx International Congress

The congress will be held between October 3 and 6, 2007, in Paris (Sorbonne) and Nanterre University (Paris-X).

The general theme of the congress is:

Alterglobalism – Anticapitalism- For an Alternative Cosmopolitics

Information concerning the organization of the congress is gradually made available on Actuel Marx site, at the following address:
http://netx.u-paris10.fr/actuelmarx/cm5/index5.htm

This message is devoted to the organization of the Economic Section of the congress, whose coordinators are Gérard Duménil (dumenil@u-paris10.fr) and Dominique Lévy ( dominique.levy@ens.fr ).

As during earlier congresses, Economics will probably be an important section. During the Congress IV, it gathered about 70 panelists, within one plenary session and 16 workshops. The official language of the congress is French, although we can normally make a translation into English available for several plenary sessions. For Economics, we will do our best to set up sessions in English and Spanish, according to the number of panelists. Reviews or groups of investigation can organize workshops of their own. The theme of the congress suggests multidisciplinary approaches (Economics, Sociology, Politics...). Coordination will be sought during a later stage of the preparation of the congress.

Applications must be sent before March 31, 2007

People willing to participate with a paper to be presented in a panel are asked to send a proposal of one page maximum, before the end of March 2007. We will inform the applicants before the end of April of the list of selected papers. We can, however, send letters of invitation to those willing to receive such a document as soon as possible (but such letters will not imply the acceptance of the proposal).

The theme of the congress, alterglobalism and anticapitalism, suggests contributions on contemporary neoliberal capitalism, within a critical perspective and emphasizing possible trajectories beyond the present stage of capitalism. The analysis of “contradictions”, economic and correlatively political, seems particularly relevant, as well as the investigation of historical dynamics: which phases or stages capitalism underwent historically, how can we interpret the present phase, what are the perspectives? The overall field is obviously broad, but we ask the participants to actually focus their contributions on the theme of the congress.

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Roy Rotheim "Economic Ideology" Seminar

CISD Lunchtime seminars, SOAS
The Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, School of Oriental and African Studies
Lunchtime seminar, 21 November, 13:00, Room G2, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

Roy Rotheim
"Economic Ideology and Visual Perception: how capitalism obliterates from our visual field what it doesn't want us to see"

Prof Roy Rotheim (Quadracci Professor in Social Responsibility & Economics, Skidmore College, US) obtained a B.A. from Ohio University and an M.A. and Ph.D from Rutgers University. He is a world-renowned expert in microeconomic theory, advanced macroeconomic theory and policy, monetary theory and policy and in the history of economic thought. This talk will address fundamental issues concerning economic theorising and policy-making:
How do (mainstream) economists go about in constructing views of the world as universal wisdoms? How susceptible are we all to manipulation and misperceptions under the label of 'scientific truths'? How does our perceptive apparatus work and why is economics so important in shaping our views of what is going on in the world?

Seminaire Arc 2: Accumulation, Regulation, Croissance Et Crise

CEPREMAP - GERME (Paris VII) - IRIS (Paris IX)
CEPN/CNRS (PARIS XIII) - MATISSE (PARIS I)

LUNDI 20 NOVEMBRE 2006
DEMI JOURNEE (15h-19h)

ENS Jourdan
Salle 10, bâtiment principal (rez-de-chaussée)
48 Boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
http://www.paris-jourdan.ens.fr/accue/zacces.php

Nouveau Capitalisme, Nouvelles Régulations

Autour de l’ouvrage
« The Hardship of Nations - Exploring the Paths of Modern Capitalism »
B. Coriat, P. Petit, G. Schmeder (dir.), Edward Elgar, 2006
15h-15h15 : Présentation succincte de l’ouvrage
Organisation et Objectifs du Séminaire
B. Coriat, P. Petit, G. Schmeder
15h15- 17h : 1ière Table Ronde :
Un Nouveau Régime d’Accumulation est-il en train d’émerger ?
Points : B. Coriat, P. Petit
Contre points : R. Boyer, B. Paulré
17h-17h15 : Pause
17h15 – 19h : 2ième Table Ronde
L’Espace Mondial : Intégrations, Conflits, Régulations
Introduction : Geneviève Schmeder
Points : B. Chavance, Luis Miotti, El Mouhoub Mouhoud
Contre point : Xavier Pasco (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique)

Prochaine séance :
15 janvier 2007 - SALLE 117, MSE
« Economie politique et concertation sociale »
Organisateurs : Donatella Gatti, Ariane Ghirardello, Hélène Zajdela

Karl Niebyl Centenary Symposium

On Thursday 7 December 14.00 - 17.00, The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, room tbc
Speakers will include Sheila Dow, Alistair Dow, Dana Gabor and Victoria Chick
Other speakers tbc.
Karl Niebyl (1906-1985), a German Marxist studied briefly at the London School of Economics with Hayek, before emigrating to the U.S. where he wrote his most important work, Studies in the Classical Theories of Money, a devastating critique of the monetary theory of capitalism.
The Symposium is the first of a series of workshops on Money and Development, organised by Ph.D. students, Daniela Tavasci and Radha Upadhyaya, with assistance from Jan Toporowski.
Further information may be obtained from Jan Toporowski, e-mails: jt29@soas.ac.uk

Middlesex University Business School Seminar

New Directions for US Unions - reflections on the American workplace, workers and their unions with Kim Moody.

Kim Moody is the internationally respected author of Workers in a Lean World (Verso, 1997) which tells the story of corporate power in a globalising economy, the rise and limits of lean production, the new international division of labour and workers’ response internationally. Kim was formerly the Director of the US based Labor Education and Research Project and Guest Lecturer at both Columbia and Cornell Universities. More recently he has been researching the crisis of governance in New York City and his book Global City in Crisis: the Transformation of New York City, 1975-2005, (The New Press, New York and London) was published early this year. In this seminar Kim will be talking about the developing crisis in American labour, which recently culminated in a split within the AFL-CIO. The American labour movement has always been characterised as a ‘sleeping giant’ which sporadically comes to life in a wave of labour unrest. Kim will introduce the discussion by describing the new realities of working life in America and examines reasons for the split and its implications for the future.

Monday December 4th 6pm
Graduate Centre Room G236

Middlesex University Business School, Hendon Campus, The Burroughs, Hendon.
(nearest tube Hendon Central (Northern Line), turn right out of station then after 5 minutes walk, turn right again into The Burroughs. The Hendon Campus is a further 5 minutes walk. The Graduate Centre is the building to your right as you enter the Campus.

If you would like to attend this seminar please email Audrey Johnson (a.johnson@mdx.ac.uk) to confirm places.

The 2007 Left Forum conference

MARCH 9 – 11, 2007 COOPER UNION NEW YORK CITY

Each spring Left Forum convenes the largest gathering in North America of the US and international Left. Continuing a tradition begun in the 1960s, we bring together intellectuals and organizers to share new perspectives, strategies, experience and vision. Last March_s 2006 Left Forum, held at Cooper Union, included 76 panels and 280 speakers from over 40 countries. For the US and the world, revitalizing an American Left has never been more urgent; Left Forum has a critical role to play in that undertaking.

Assaults on civil liberties, the continuing decline of economic security, state-sanctioned torture, massive government incompetence from Baghdad to New Orleans, and a criminal war with no end in sight_these homegrown threats challenge American society. Yet as the gap between the poweful and powerless widens, as inequalities of wealth and income become grotesque, the differences between the Democratic and Republican parties narrows. Millions of Americans are becoming spectators of rather than participants in politics of any kind.

Our work parallels and cross-fertilizes with the renewal of left strength elsewhere_from indigenous movements in Bolivia to the South Korean farmers to the electoral gains of European and Latin American left parties. Like many movements abroad, Left Forum seeks to link the critique of neo-liberalism to anti-capitalism, and to foster radical alternatives to the established order.

Left Forum provides a context for critical engagement by people of different persuasions on the Left who, nevertheless, seek common ground.
Join with us for Left Forum events throughout the year, and for the 2007 Left Forum. Please contact us to get involved at leftforum@leftforum.org, or call 212-817-2003.

The 2007 Left Forum conference will take place March 9_11, 2007, in New York City.
To register, please visit www.leftforum.org

Beyond Schumacher: Alternative Approaches to Economics and Sustainability Perspective for the 21st Century

Ubon Rajathanee University, Mahasarakam University, and Global Standards welcomes business leaders, scholars, teachers and students to a two-day learning forum in Northeast, Thailand, December 12-13, 2006

For detailed information: Beyond Schumacher Seminar.pdf

Americans Face Rising Economic Insecurity: What Can Be Done?

A Special Symposium on the Crisis in the U.S. Pensions System
Sponsored by The Bernard Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis
(SCEPA)

Featuring:
Robin Blackburn, The New School for Social Research. Author of Age
Shock: How Finance is Failing Us (Verso Books, 2006).
Teresa Ghilarducci, University of Notre Dame. Author of How Defined Contribution Plans and 401(k)s Affect Employer Pension Costs: 1981-1998 (Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, 2006).
Jacob Hacker, Yale University. Author of The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement--And How You Can Fight Back (Oxford University Press, 2006).
With discussant Bob Kerrey, President of The New School

Americans face an indisputable crisis of the private pensions system, and the appropriate policy response remains unclear. Three prominent researchers discuss their recent books on the subject. They will each identify the causes and scope of the problem, and outline proposals for what can be done. Followed by a reception and book signing.

Free and open to the public. RSVP required. E-mail cepa@newschool.edu or call 212-229-5901 x4911.
Date: Monday, December 11, 2006
Time: 7pm
Place: The New School, 65 Fifth Avenue, Wolff Conference Room

Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis The New School 80 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10011
Tel: (212) 229-5901 x4911
Fax: (212) 229-5903
http://www.newschool.edu/cepa

Book Lunch: The Lost World of British Communism

By: Raphael Samuel
(Verso, 2006)
Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2 (just across from Liverpool Street station)
FRIDAY 1 DECEMBER 2006. 6.30 – 9 pm

The Lost World of British Communism is a vivid account of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In the mid-1980s Raphael Samuel (1934 – 1996) published three essays in New Left Review on British Communism in the world of his youth in the 1940s and 1950s. Verso have now reprinted these in book form, together with an extensive bibliography of Samuel’s work, to mark the tenth anniversary of his death. A tour de force of historical writing, The Lost World of British Communism draws on novels, memoirs, interviews, Party literature and archives, as well as Samuel's own childhood recollections, to conjure up an era when the movement was at the height of its political and theoretical power.

A roundtable discussion of the book, with contributions from:

· Eric Hobsbawm
· Beatrix Campbell
· Kevin Morgan
· Jean McCrindle

This will be followed by a reception. There will be a display of items from the Raphael Samuel Archive. This event is co-hosted by the Bishopsgate Institute and Verso Books.

The 7th SCEME Workshop

The 7th SCEME Workshop will be held at the University of Stirling on Saturday 19 May 2007, on the topic 'Economics as a Moral Science'. Irene van Staveren, of Radboud University Nijmegen and ISS, will be attending to lead the discussion. Offers of contributions are invited by 16 February, to be sent to Sheila Dow at s.c.dow@stir.ac.uk. Further details may be found at www.sceme.stir.ac.uk.

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Earlham College

TENURE-TRACK JOB OPENING in Peace and Global Studies

Earlham College is hiring a full-time tenure track faculty member and Director of our Peace and Global Studies Program (PAGS) to begin Fall 07. Earlham’s PAGS program is interdisciplinary and approaches Peace Studies in the context of global social structures and social movements. The primary goal of the program is to develop students' competencies in fields contributing towards peace and social transformation.
We welcome candidates from a wide range of academic areas of expertise. Directing the program entails taking the leading role in coordinating and overseeing the elements of the program in consultation with the other PAGS faculty.
Earlham invite applications from women, African Americans, Hispanics other ethnic minorities and Quakers and is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
You can find this posting and more about Earlham and the PAGS program by looking at : http://www.earlham.edu/jobs/pags.html.
We will continue the search until the position is filled.
Send: three letters of recommendation, c.v., cover letter in which you discuss your academic and experiential work in Peace Studies and your teaching philosophy, a syllabus for a course you have or may teach to:
Sadie Forsythe, PAGS Office, Drawer 105 Earlham College
801 National Rd. West, Richmond, IN 47374

State University of New York- Potsdam

Employment Relations Assistant Professor

Candidates are invited to apply for a tenure track position at the rank of instructor or assistant professor beginning August, 2007. Individuals with a Ph.D. or ABD are invited to apply. For appointment at the assistant professor level, applicants must hold a Ph.D. by August 2007. Some scholarly activity and excellence in teaching are vital to the position. The candidate is expected to teach a broad range of Employment Relations courses in a liberal arts environment. For a list of current courses, refer to www.potsdam.edu/emre/courses. The department also welcomes new courses. Applications will be reviewed immediately and until the position is filled. Please send: a cover letter indicating your previous teaching experience and describing your teaching methods; curriculum vitae; copy of graduate transcript; teaching evaluations, if available; and the names of three references. Contact: George Gonos, Chair, Search Committee, Economics and Employment Relations, Dunn Hall, SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, New York 13676. An equal opportunity affirmative action employer.

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

Research Associate and Editor

Job Description:

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College seeks a new Resident Research Associate and Editor. Responsibilities include editing many of the Institute's policy-oriented publications and writing and editing the /Report/, a quarterly newsletter on Institute research and events.

Requirements

The incumbent may also have an opportunity to engage in independent research in his or her own field. A completed Ph.D. in economics is required, though candidates who expect to graduate within 6 months will be considered. Qualifications include a good command of written English and the ability to communicate complex economic ideas to noneconomists.
Ideally, the candidate would have research interests that complement one or more of the institute's projects-including the distribution of income and wealth, gender equality and the economy, and macromodeling.
Demonstrated success in professional writing or editing would be helpful. Information on the Levy Institute is available at www.levy.org .

The Levy Economics Institute is located on the campus of Bard College, 90 miles north of NYC, overlooking the Hudson River. The Institute provides state-of-the-art computer networking, a dedicated library, and a supportive collegial environment.

To apply, please submit two writing samples, undergraduate and graduate transcripts (for prospective and recent graduates), and curriculum vitae, and the names of three references to: Human Resources-3406, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale On Hudson, NY 12504 5000 or fax to 845
758 7826. AA/EOE.

CNRS-GREDEG

A post-doc position is available at CNRS-GREDEG, Sophia Antipolis, France (deadline for submission of applications December 1st 2006).

We are encouraging applications of candidates with proven research experience in the field of industrial dynamics, knowledge dynamics and financial dynamics; and specialization in relevant empirical, econometric and/or modelling tools.

Applicants are expected to contribute to a research project entitled “Knowledge Intensive Sectors: Models and Evidence” (funded by Agence Nationale de la Recherche and coordinated by Jackie Krafft), that analyses the specificities of the evolution of knowledge intensive sectors. The project explores the following dimensions that generate a possibly different profile of evolution to such sectors, compared to more traditional ones:

1. The role played by knowledge dynamics in KISs
2. The role played by innovation networks within KISs
3. The role of corporate governance in KISs

Applicants should be familiar with database treatment and exploitation, especially patent databases, innovation networks databases, and corporate governance databases.

The fellowship is granted for 3 years, starting from January 2007. We offer prime research facilities and a salary between 2 400 and 2 700 euros per month, free of income tax depending on experience and knowledge.

If you are interested in the project, and want to join our internationally oriented team, please send no later than December 1st, a letter of interest, CV, publication list and, where applicable, a sample of unpublished scholarly work to:

Dr. Jackie Krafft, CNRS-GREDEG, 250 rue Albert Einstein, 06560 Valbonne, France, E-mail: Jackie.Krafft@gredeg.cnrs.fr .

General information on the Institute and the ANR project can be found at http://www.gredeg.cnrs.fr

Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Innovation (submission deadline 24 November 2006)
(Fixed 1 year contract)

Salary Scale RA: £21,791 - £25,940 pa

REF: JK128

This post is part of the Business School's commitment to invest in newly qualified researchers. You will be expected to develop research in innovation for publication in international journals from your previous doctoral work and to support the quantitative research and/or simulation modelling research conducted in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and International Business Division.

You will hold a recently awarded PhD (or award imminent); demonstrate the ability to produce publications in international quality journals; have profound experience in advanced statistical methods and/or simulation modelling.

Informal enquiries to Dr. Paul Windrum, Deputy Director of the Centre for International Business and Innovation on 0161 247 3808 or e-mail p.windrum@mmu.ac.uk.
Closing date for applications is 24 November 2006.
Interviews will be held the week commencing 1 February 2007.

For an application form and further particulars, please contact k.tran@mmu.ac.uk quoting reference number JK128. Alternatively you can download these documents from our website https://www.jobs.mmu.ac.uk/mmujobsite.

MMU values diversity and welcomes applications from all sections of the community

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The 2006 Human Development Report

Throughout history water has confronted humanity with some of its greatest challenges. Water is a source of life and a natural resource that sustains our environments and supports livelihoods – but it is also a source of risk and vulnerability. In the early 21st Century, prospects for human development are threatened by a deepening global water crisis. Debunking the myth that the crisis is the result of scarcity, this report argues poverty, power and inequality are at the heart of the problem.

In a world of unprecedented wealth, almost 2 million children die each year for want of a glass of clean water and adequate sanitation. Millions of women and young girls are forced to spend hours collecting and carrying water, restricting their opportunities and their choices. And water-borne infectious diseases are holding back poverty reduction and economic growth in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Beyond the household, competition for water as a productive resource is intensifying. Symptoms of that competition include the collapse of water-based ecological systems, declining river flows and large-scale groundwater depletion. Conflicts over water are intensifying within countries, with the rural poor losing out. The potential for tensions between countries is also growing, though there are large potential human development gains from increased cooperation.

The Human Development Report continues to frame debates on some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. Human Development Report 2006:

• Investigates the underlying causes and consequences of a crisis that leaves 1.2 billion people without access to safe water and 2.6 billion without access to sanitation • Argues for a concerted drive to achieve water and sanitation for all through national strategies and a global plan of action • Examines the social and economic forces that are driving water shortages and marginalizing the poor in agriculture • Looks at the scope for international cooperation to resolve cross-border tensions in water management • Includes special contributions from Gordon Brown and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, President Lula, President Carter, and the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.

http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf

Dissertation Fellowship Program at CASE&E

Center for the Applied Study of Economics & the Environment
C A S E & E

The Center for the Applied Study of Economics & the Environment (CASE&E) is pleased to announce the launch its Dissertation Fellowship program. Applicants should be enrolled in a PhD-granting institution in the United States, and should have completed all degree requirements except for the dissertation. The dissertation research project should contribute to CASE&E's aims of developing and applying economic arguments for the active protection of human health and the natural environment. This year, an area of special interest is the economics of climate change; proposals on other topics are also welcome. The Fellowship will provide up to $10,000 and can be used for field research, write-up, or both. Applications are due by December 1, 2006; awards will be announced in February 2007.

For information on CASE&E, go to http://www.case-and-e.org/

For Fellowship details and application materials, go to
http://www.case-and-e.org/dissertationfellowship.html Download the application form

Review of Political Economy

If you are interested in getting a subscription to the Review of Political Economy and you are a member of one of these organizations,
Association for Evolutionary Economics
Association for Heterodox Economics
Eastern Economic Association
European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy
European Society for the History of Economic Thought
History of Economics Society
International Association for Feminist Economics
Union for Radical Political Economics
You can get a discounted rate of $56/year rather than the $95/year they usually charge. To get this offer go to this link: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/offer/crpe-so.asp

Feminist Economics

Volume 12 Number 4/October 2006 of Feminist Economics is now available on the journalsonline.tandf.co.uk

This issue contains:

- Gender differences in vocational school training and earnings premiums in Taiwan
Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Joseph E. Zveglich Jr., Laura Wherry

- Tackling the endogeneity of fertility in the study of women's employment in developing countries: Alternative estimation strategies using data from urban Brazil
Rachel Connelly, Deborah S. DeGraff, Deborah Levison, Brian P. McCall

- Uplifting the race through domesticity: Capitalism, African-American migration, and the household economy in the Great Migration era of 1916–1930
Nina Banks

- “Sweeping the heavens for a comet”: Women, the language of political economy, and higher education in the US
Ann Mari May

- Gender and change in Central and Eastern Europe
Marianne A. Ferber, Lisa Giddings, Edith Kuiper

- Economic relations between women and their partners: An East and West German comparison after reunification
Heike Trappe, Annemette Sørensen

Intervention

Journal of Economics, Vol. 3 (2006), No. 2,
Special Issue: The 'New Monetary Policy'– A Critical Appraisal,
edited by Giuseppe Fontana, Claude Gnos and Achim Truger
Content
Editorial to the Special Issue "The 'New Monetary Policy'– A Critical Appraisal"
Philip Arestis: New Monetary Policy and Keynes
Giuseppe Fontana: The 'New Consensus' View of Monetary Policy: A New Wicksellian Connection?
Sebastian Dullien: Rethinking the Role of Monetary Policy and Wage Bargaining in a World Without the Real Balance Effect
Eckhard Hein: Wage Bargaining and Monetary Policy in a Kaleckian Monetary Distribution and Growth Model: Trying To Make Sense of the NAIRU
Malcolm Sawyer: A Kaleckian Analysis of Monetary Policy
Thomas Palley: Currency Unions, the Phillips Curve, and Stabilization Policy: Some Suggestions for Europe
http://www.journal-intervention.org/seiten/englisch/current_issue.shtml

Revista de Economia Politica

Brazilian Journal of Political Economy http://www.rep.org.br/

- Crítica do crescimento com poupança externa
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira e Paulo Gala

- External debt in developing economies: assessment and policy issues
Márcio Holland

- Liquidez internacional e ciclo reflexo: algumas observações para a América Latina
Marco Flavio da Cunha Resende e Adriana Amado

- National exchange rate policies and international debt crises: how Brazil did not follow Argentina into a default in 2001-2002
Bryan Andrew Kenyon Johnson

- Um modelo macrodinâmico pós-Keynesiano de simulação
José Luis Oreiro e Fabio Hideki Ono

- As razões do laissez-faire: uma análise do ataque ao mercantilismo e da defesa da liberdade econômica na Riqueza das Nações
Laura Valladão de Mattos

- Modelos de crescimento Kaleckianos: uma apreciação
Mário Augusto Bertella

- Sobre a economia política do desenvolvimento e a contribuição dos serviços
Anita Kon

- El éxito del Mercosur posible
Aldo Ferrer

- Book Reviews

Rodrígues-Fuentes, Carlos J., Regional Monetary Policy
(Adriana Moreira Amado)

Empirical Post Keynesian Economics

Looking at the Real World

Editor(s): Richard P.F. Holt, Southern Oregon University
Steven Pressman, Monmouth University

This text highlights the major empirical questions and issues facing Post Keynesian economics today. Featuring contributions by leading Post Keynesian economists, it focuses on public policy and real life analysis of this vibrant and dynamic economic theory.

In language that is accessible to upper level undergraduate and graduate students, professional economists, and public policy makers, each of the chapters takes on a specific issue of concern to all professional economists, provides empirical analysis of the issue, and then discusses the Post Keynesian view on the topic and contrasts it with the orthodox perspective. The topics covered are grouped into three main categories: empirical studies of consumption; empirical studies of business investment; and empirical studies of international economic relations.

“This exciting collection of essays is an impressive beginning to the realization of Alfred Eichner’s vision of completing the Post Keynesian paradigm by mounting a research program to provide empirical support for its theoretical conclusions and policy recommendations. Unlike the empiricism of the neoclassical mainstream, which considers prediction as the sine qua non of scientific methodology, Post Keynesian empiricism is concerned with explaining and validating critical economic relationships as a basis for public policy. In furthering the ‘third stage’ of the Post Keynesian paradigm, the essays in this collection will enable heterodox economic thinkers of all persuasions to introduce new leading edge research into the classroom.” —Ingrid H. Rima, Temple University

Selected Contents:
List of Tables and Figures
1. Empirical Analysis and Post Keynesian Economics, Richard P.F. Holt and Steven Pressman
Part I. Empirical Studies of Distribution, Inequality, and Consumption
2. What Can Post Keynesian Economics Teach Us About Poverty? Steven Pressman
3. Unemployment, Inequality, and the Policy of Europe: 1984 2000, James K. Galbraith and Enrique Garcilazo
4. The Racial U Curve in U.S. Residential Credit Markets in the 1990s: Drawing Empirical Evidence from a Post Keynesian World, Gary A. Dymski and Carolyn B. Aldana
5. An Analysis of Credit Card Debt Default, Robert H. Scott, III Part II. Empirical Studies of Business Investment
6. The Dynamics of Innovation and Investment, with Application to Australia, 1984 1998, Jerry Courvisanos
7. Kalecki's Investment Theory: A Critical Realist Approach, Anthony J. Laramie, Douglas Mair, and Anne G. Miller
8. Bubbles or Whirlpools? An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Speculation and Financial Uncertainty on Investment, Michelle Baddeley
9. An Analysis of the Shrinking Supply of Equity and the U.S. Stock Market Boom: Does Supply Matter? Lawrance L. Evans, Jr.
Part III. Empirical Studies of International Economic Relations
10. The Effect of Distribution on Accumulation, Capacity Utilization, and Employment: Testing the Profit led Hypothesis for Turkey, Özlem Onaran and Engelbert Stockhammer
11. Growth Under External Constraints in Brazil: A Post Keynesian Approach, Frederico Jayme, Jr.
About the Editors and Contributors • Index

Reintroducing Macroeconomics

A Critical Approach

Author(s): Steven Mark Cohn, Knox College

This comprehensive introduction to heterodox economics provides a critique of standard introductory macroeconomics from the perspective of another theoretical lens. It enables researchers to escape the confines that most standard books impose on economic analysis, and allows them to pursue and support a broader range of ideas about the causes and appropriate policy responses to a wide range of economic concerns.

Reintroducing Macroeconomics carves out a common ground among a broad spectrum of heterodox economic paradigms, including institutionalist economics, radical economics, Marxist economics, feminist economics, Post Keynesian economics, ecological economics, humanistic economics, social economics, socio economics, and contextual economics. The breadth of these paradigms demonstrates the vitality of the heterodox approach and provides the choices of thinking about economic issues in different ways.

Selected Contents:
List of Tables, Figures, and Boxes
Acknowledgments • Preface
1. Philosophical Debates in Economics
2. Thinking Differently: Neoclassical vs. Heterodox Economics
3. Thinking Differently: Competing Assumptions, Methods, and Metaphors
4. New Beginnings: Heterodox Critiques
5. Reintroducing Supply and Demand: A Heterodox Micro Foundation
6. From Micro to Macro Analysis: Heterodox Critiques
7. Re Measuring Economic Activity: Heterodox Critiques of the GDP Accounting
8. Re Measuring Economic Activity: Heterodox Critiques of Labor Market and Inflation Statistics
9. Reintroducing Aggregate Demand
10. Reintroducing Money: Basic Concepts
11. Applications of Heterodox Monetary Theory
12. Reintroducing Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand
13. Heterodox Alternatives to the AS AD Framework
14. Reintroducing International Economic Issues
15. Reintroducing the Macroeconomics of Inequality
16. Reintroducing Macroeconomics and the Environment
17. Reintroducing Current Policy Debates in Macroeconomics
18. Conclusion
Glossary of Heterodox Macroeconomic Terms
Works Cited • About the Author • Index
www.mesharpe.com

John Maynard Keynes and International Relations

John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace by Donald Markwell, just published by Oxford University Press.

Details are at
http://getir.net/ca or http://getir.net/fb

Based on extensive archival research, the book traces Keynes's thinking on the economic causes of war and economic means of promoting peace - from the free trade debates before World War I, through the Paris Peace Conference to The General Theory, Bretton Woods, and beyond.

In the current age of globalization, when issues of war and peace are acutely topical, it is hoped that this study will encourage debate on the contemporary relevance of Keynes's evolving thinking.

The author, Professor Donald Markwell, is Warden of Trinity College, the University of Melbourne. A former Rhodes Scholar and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, he is soon to take up the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Western Australia.

The book is available from Oxford University Press, and from on-line booksellers around the world.

A Different Marx. The Utopia-Free Scientist

Un altro Marx. Lo scienziato liberato dall’utopia, Guido Carandini

Percorsi
20067, pp. 216
140x210 mm

There were two Karl Marxes. The first was the notorious prophet of the communist utopia and the imminent collapse of capitalism. The second was the almost entirely unknown social scientist who, on the contrary, subordinated the birth of a superior model of society to the global distribution of wealth. Liberating Marx the scientist from Marx the utopian, his theory is reconfirmed as the most in-depth analysis to date of the capitalist movements that for five centuries have conquered the world through commerce, science and violence. And this explains why the impetuous development of profit-led wealth also generates extreme forms of inequality, violent conflicts and environmental devastation. The world population of one and a half billion in Marx’s time has since exploded to six billion, of which half are in the grip of poverty and hunger. With such an unjustly divided humanity, ripped asunder by religious conflict, what would be the price to pay for the fulfilment of the Marxian prophecy of universal capitalism?

Guido Carandini is a former lecturer in History and Economics and a member of the PCI (Italian Comunist Party) between 1976 and 1982). Besides numerous studies and articles on politics and economic theory, he has published: Lavoro e capitale nella teoria di Marx (19783), La struttura economica della società nelle opere di Marx (19782) and, for Laterza, Il nuovo e il futuro (1990).

The Economics of Global Turbulence

Robert Brenner
Praise for the original New Left Review article:
‘A brilliant economic overview of the world’s current economic state.’ The Nation
‘Here, at last – something good out of the left.’ Wall Street Journal
For years, the discipline of economics has been moving steadily away from the real world towards formalized axioms and mathematical models with only a precarious bearing on actuality. Commentators seek to fill the gap as best they can, but in the absence of real background scholarship, journalism is vulnerable to the myopias of fashion and
immediacy. The deeper enigmas of post-war development remain in either case largely untouched.

Bringing together the strengths of both the economist and the historian, Robert Brenner rises to the challenge. In this commanding survey of the world economy from 1950 to the present, a revised and newly introduced edition of his acclaimed New Left Review special report, he charts the turbulent post-war history of the global system and unearths the mechanisms of over-production and over-competition which lie behind its long-term crisis since the early 1970s. He thereby demonstrates the thoroughly systematic factors behind wage repression, high unemployment and unequal development, and raises disturbing and far-reaching questions about the global economy’s future trajectory.

AUTHOR: Robert Brenner is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA. He is the author of The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy and Merchants and Revolution.

* Title: The Economics of Global Turbulence
* Author: Robert Brenner
* Publication: 28th August 2006
* Binding: Hardback
* ISBN: 1-85984-730-7
* Price: £25/ $35 / $45.50CAN
To order:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/brenner_r_econ_turbulence.shtml

Sociedad Latinoamericana de Economía Política y Pensamiento Crítico (SEPLA)

Latin American Association of Political Economy and Critical Thought (http://www.sepla.cl)
Estimado Fernando Pellerano, conforme acordado, escrevo para usted para informar sobre la associación que fuera criada en 2005 nel México. Las informaciones sobre la associación e sobre los congressos puedem ser encontradas en nel sitio www.sep.org.br. Esta ano el congresso será realizado en Chile. Nel próximo ano Yo pensava que seria en Costa Rica, pero non está confirmado. Poderiamos hacer un congresso na Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, conforme su idea. Se quiers saber un pouco del grupo de pos-keynesiano en brasil, usted puede consultar el sitio www.ie.ufrj.br/moeda . Esperando que possamos manter contacto, seguem saludos, Fernando Ferrar

The Japanese Society for Post Keynesian Economics

The Japanese Society for Post Keynesian Economics was established in April 1980 in order to promote the researches on Post Keynesian Economics in Japan and to activate communications among scholars who have interests in Post Keynesian Economics. The Society holds seminars(or Meetings) three times a year (in 2006 seminars were held on 4th March, 15th July, and 16th September, and the next will be held on 9th December).　The Society has a good partnership with Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha Ltd, a well-known publisher in Japan, which publishes a translation series on Post Keynesian Economics ( 33 books were translated in Japanese and published since 1978 by Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha Ltd: http://www.nikkeihyo.co.jp/).

News :
　　1．　Forthcomming Society's seminar: 9 Dec 2006　
　　　　　　The next seminar will be held on 9 December 2006 at Nishogakusha University in Tokyo.
　　　　　　Presenters:　Prof.M.Kaneko, Prof. T.Ohno, Mr. Ohuchi, Mr. Kurata

　　2．　Other Informations from members:
　　　　1)Seminar at Daito Bunka Univ.
　　　　　Prof. Mituharu Ito (Emeritus Prof.of Kyoto Univ.) will give a Lecture
　　　　　　　　　　　　　at Daito Bunka Univ's seminar on 27th Oct 2006.　
　　　　2)Events of the Centenary celabration of theFaculty of Economics of Rikkyo University
　　　　　17th　Nov.　Lectures
　　　　　　　　　　　by　Prof.Willi Semmler(New School Univ. and Bielefeld Univ.) ,
　　　　　　　　　　　　Prof.E.J. Nell(New School Univ.)
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Prof. Heinz Kurz(Graz Univ. President of ESHET)
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Prof.Y.Ono（Osaka Univ.)
　　　　　　29th　Nov.　Lecture　by　Prof. Masao Fukuoka(Emeritus Prof. of Keio Univ.)　　

　Prof. Kazunori Watanabe (Managing committee member(2005-2006))
　　　　(Vice-President of Nishogakusha University,　http://www.nishogakusha-u.ac.jp/）
　Prof. Takashi YAGI (Managing committee member and Treasurer (2005-2006))
　　　　(Gunma University, E.mail: yagi@si.gunma-u.as.jp)
　　　　http://www.si.gunma-u.ac.jp/~yagi/yagi1.htm

　*This page is not the official page of the Society but it is managed by Prof. Takashi YAGI under the instructions of members.
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Tom P Abeles

I am wondering if any heterodox economists are working in the arena of Synthetic Worlds as pioneered by Ed Castronova? If so, please contact me.

Thanks

Tom P Abeles, editor
On the Horizon
3704 11th Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
tabeles@gmail.com

EURAS Workgroup “Standards and Conflict Resolution” (SCR)

organized by

Manfred J. Holler
Institute of SocioEconomics (IAW)
University of Hamburg
Von-Melle-Park 5
D-20146 Hamberg, Germany
holler@econ.uni-hamburg.de

Version of November 1, 2006: On the occasion of the last membership meeting of the European Academy for Standardization (EURAS) it was agreed that workgroups on selected topics will be organized in order to intensify research and communication. If you are interested to participate in the EURAS Workgroup on "Standards and Conflict Resolution" (SCR), please send an e-mail to Manfred J. Holler (holler@econ.uni-hamburg.de).
Please add further topics to the following (very preliminary) list:
1. When and what kind of standards reduce conflicts (or the potential for conflicts) or lead to conflicts? – Can we describe categories for the one or the other type of standards?
2. How do standardization bodies such as CEN, CENELEC, ISO, IEC and ITU handle conflicts? – To what extent is voting a means of conflict resolution in these organizations?
3. How do mechanisms of conflict resolution (such as mediation, arbitration and bargaining) apply to conflicts in standardization? – Is there empirical material?
4. Are standards the source of “conflicts of interest” or “conflicts of misperception”?
5. Can we observe significant interaction between politics and standardization and what is the “logic” of it? – Are there cases which illustrate this relationship?

QAA

In the United Kingdom, the QAA is carrying out a review of the benchmark statement for economics. The revision of the 2000 benchmark statement can be found at:
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/drafts/economicsdraft06.asp. The QAA then open the revision process and asked for comments. The Association for Heterodox Economics has submitted a response--Submission from the Association for Heterodox Economics to the Consultation on the QAA Benchmark Statement on Economics. You may find the submission of interest. Download AHE response covering letter

Society of Heterodox Economists web site regarding the Australian Research Quality Framework, which is similar to the Research Assessment Exercise in the UK and other research assessment exercises elsewhere. The outcome of the exercises in economics is to attack heterodox economics and attempt to eliminate it from the academy completely. So look at what is happening in Australia.

http://www2.economics.unsw.edu.au/contribute2/Economics/research/Heterdox/ResearchQualityFramework.htm

Baroque fantasies of a peculiar science

By Philip Ball
Financial Times October 29, 2006

Published: October 29 2006 18:48 | Last updated: October 29 2006 18:48
It is easy to mock economic theory. Any fool can see that the world of neoclassical economics, which dominates the academic field today, is a gross caricature in which every trader or company acts in the same self-interested way – rational, cool, omniscient. The theory has not foreseen a single stock market crash and has evidently failed to make the world any fairer or more pleasant.
The usual defence is that you have to start somewhere. But mainstream economists no longer consider their core theory to be a “start”. The tenets are so firmly embedded that economists who think it is time to move beyond them are cold-shouldered. It is a rigid dogma. To challenge these ideas is to invite blank stares of incomprehension – you might as well be telling a physicist that gravity does not exist.
That is disturbing because these things matter. Neoclassical idiocies persuaded many economists that market forces would create a robust post-Soviet economy in Russia (corrupt gangster economies do not exist in neoclassical theory). Neoclassical ideas favouring unfettered market forces may determine whether Britain adopts the euro, how we run our schools, hospitals and welfare system. If mainstream economic theory is fundamentally flawed, we are no better than doctors diagnosing with astrology.
Neoclassical economics asserts two things. First, in a free market, competition establishes a price equilibrium that is perfectly efficient: demand equals supply and no resources are squandered. Second, in equilibrium no one can be made better off without making someone else worse off.
The conclusions are a snug fit with rightwing convictions. So it is tempting to infer that the dominance of neoclassical theory has political origins. But while it has justified many rightwing policies, the truth goes deeper. Economics arose in the 18th century in a climate of Newtonian mechanistic science, with its belief in forces in balance. And the foundations of neoclassical theory were laid when scientists were exploring the notion of thermodynamic equilibrium. Economics borrowed wrong ideas from physics, and is now reluctant to give them up.
This error does not make neoclassical economic theory simple. Far from it. It is one of the most mathematically complicated subjects among the “sciences”, as difficult as quantum physics. That is part of the problem: it is such an elaborate contrivance that there is too much at stake to abandon it.
It is almost impossible to talk about economics today without endorsing its myths. Take the business cycle: there is no business cycle in any meaningful sense. In every other scientific discipline, a cycle is something that repeats periodically. Yet there is no absolute evidence for periodicity in economic fluctuations. Prices sometimes rise and sometimes fall. That is not a cycle; it is noise. Yet talk of cycles has led economists to hallucinate all kinds of fictitious oscillations in economic markets. Meanwhile, the Nobel-winning neoclassical theory of the so-called business cycle “explains” it by blaming events outside the market. This salvages the precious idea of equilibrium, and thus of market efficiency. Analysts talk of market “corrections”, as though there is some ideal state that it is trying to attain. But in reality the market is intrinsically prone to leap and lurch.
One can go through economic theory systematically demolishing all the cherished principles that students learn: the Phillips curve relating unemployment and inflation, the efficient market hypothesis, even the classic X-shaped intersections of supply and demand curves. Paul Ormerod, author of The Death of Economics, argues that one of the most limiting assumptions of neoclassical theory is that agent behaviour is fixed: people in markets pursue a single goal regardless of what others do. The only way one person can influence another’s choices is via the indirect effect of trading on prices. Yet it is abundantly clear that herding – irrational, copycat buying and selling – provokes market fluctuations.
There are ways of dealing with the variety and irrationality of real agents in economic theory. But not in mainstream economics journals, because the models defy neoclassical assumptions.
There is no other “science” in such a peculiar state. A demonstrably false conceptual core is sustained by inertia alone. This core, “the Citadel”, remains impregnable while its adherents fashion an increasingly baroque fantasy. As Alan Kirman, a progressive economist, said: “No amount of attention to the walls will prevent the Citadel from being empty.”
The writer is consultant editor of Nature and the author of Critical Mass (Heinemann)
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Shun the rational agent to rebuild economics

By Paul Ormerod
Financial Times, November 6, 2006

Published: November 6 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 6 2006 02:00
Philip Ball's recent articleon mainstream economics ("Baroque fantasies of a most peculiar science", Comment October 30) has attracted strong criticism on the letters page. Mr Ball argues that the subject relies on the rational, omniscient decisionmaker. Further, it has mistakenly placed an idea from physics - that of thermodynamic equilibrium - at the core of its theory.
His critics claim that this is a caricature of the subject. Substantial advances have been made, they say, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years.
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This latter point is certainly true. The list of economics Nobel laureates in the 21st century is largely made up of scholars who have worked outside the traditional rational agent paradigm of neo-classical economics. The work of Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University and Vernon Smith, at George Mason University deserves special mention. They created, almost on their own, the discipline of experimental economics. Standard economics merely assumes that people act in a particular way. Mr Kahneman and Mr Smith tested how people really do behave.
Their conclusions are a devastating blow to the postulates of the rational decisionmaker. In general, people gather limited information, reason poorly and act intuitively rather than rationally. All scientific theories, even quantum physics which has survived the most rigorous empirical tests, are approximations to reality.
The question is, in any application: how good is the approximation? In limited circumstances, the con-ventional economic view of rational behaviour is a good one. But most of the time it is a poor approximation, sometimes very poor. Its use can give seriously misleading views of how the world actually operates.
The challenge of reconstructing economic theory virtually from scratch makes it an exciting time to be an economist. It is attracting eminent researchers from other disciplines, such as mathematical sociology, computer science and statistical physics. One from the last of these, Doyne Farmer of the Santa Fe Institute, has a model that replicates many of the subtle features of prices on the London Stock Exchange. But far from assuming that traders are rational, he postulates that they have literally zero intelligence. Yet the model works very well.
The problem, and it is a very big one, is that most economists continue to act as if very little has changed and that the rational agent postulate remains generally valid.
Game theory, for example, has come to dominate much of economics. But outside the realms of auctions designed by economic theorists, it has few practical applications. The prisoner's dilemma, one of the most famous games where individually rational actions can give rise to an outcome that no one would choose, has been studied intensively for over 50 years. Yet, except in wholly trivial cases, the "optimal" - a word beloved by economists - strategy remains unknown. The demands placed on the cognitive abilities of decisionmakers in game theory are stupendous. A logical implication of the game theoretic view of the world is that the axioms of mathematics merely have to be stated for everyone immediately to know all the theorems of maths.
The textbooks used to instruct most students have, if anything, gone backwards in recent years. Aimed at the mass market of US community college students, they have dumbed down the subject to a terrifying degree. Even the material presented to strong students is replete with "theorems" and "lemmas" based on postulates of behaviour that have been discredited empirically within economics itself.
In practice, even professional economists fall back all too readily into the comforting world of the con-ventional rational agent. Competition policy, for example, is still derived from these theoretical principles, leading to the erroneous view that markets with fewer companies are necessarily less competitive. Yet the consumer has benefited enormously from innovations in markets such as food supermarkets and information technology that are dominated by a small number of large companies.
Even the very, very best are not immune to the temptation. Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University is perhaps the most distinguished economic theorist of the second half of the 20th century. He established, decades ago, fundamental results in general equilibrium theory, the central core of conventional economics. Prof Arrow has subsequently been severely critical of this theory, describing it as being "empirically falsified". This year he addressed the British Association for the Advancement of Science on "economics and sustainability". Which model did he use to draw his conclusions? The rational, maximising representative decisionmaker!
So, yes, at its frontiers economics is changing dramatically in exciting and challenging ways. But almost all economics as it is actually taught and practised lags many years behind.The writer is a director of Volterra Consulting and author of the Death of Economics (John Wiley & Sons). His latest book is Why Most Things Fail (Faber & Faber)
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

The Cuckoo's Egg in the Nobel Prize Nest

by Hazel Henderson

Peter Nobel, grandson of Alfred Nobel has been part of an academic movement critical of the economics prize as illegitimate. Nobel says “The Bank of Sweden, which set up this prize, is like a cuckoo that laid its egg in the nest of another decent bird, the Nobel Prize.” Many Nobel Laureates and scientists have protested that the Bank of Sweden Prize devalues the real Nobel Prizes and others believe that it should either be de-linked from the Nobels or abolished.

This year’s crop of Nobel prizes included another curious anomaly adding to the doubts about the prize in economics.

Celebrated Bangladeshi economist, Muhammad Yunus, who is renowned worldwide for expanding the scope of traditional village credit circles into the Grameen Bank’s multi-billion micro-credit lending to the poor, is deservedly recognized. But instead of receiving the prize for economics, Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – a much greater honor.
Meanwhile, yet another mainstream US economist, Edmund Phelps of Columbia University is awarded the prize in economics. This lesser prize was set up in 1969 by the Central Bank of Sweden to help legitimate economics, which is widely acknowledged as more of an art than a science.
This Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel – as the prize is actually called, has created wide controversy among mathematicians and physicists. They point out that economics is not a science and that many Bank of Sweden prize winners have misused mathematics to “dress-up” unproven notions or try to “prove” questionable hypotheses.

These mathematicians went public in December , 2004 in Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter, when they accused the winners, Edward C. Prescott and Finn E. Kydland of such practices in their 1977 article trying to “prove” why central banks should be free of political oversight – even by the most democratically-elected governments. I agree with Joseph Stiglitz, another Bank of Sweden Prize winner , who says “ Independent central banks that are not politically accountable undermine democracy “ in his Making Globalization Work.

Most Bank of Sweden prizes have gone to US “free market” economists and followers of the neo-liberal ( in US terminology, “ neo-conservative” ) Chicago School, beginning with the award to Milton Friedman in 1969. Some of these economists who use or misuse mathematics include those “rocket scientists” whose models of stock market behavior led to the collapse of the notorious hedge fund Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998. Their errors were so large and produced losses so great that LTCM almost caused a financial meltdown and required then US Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Alan Greenspan, to organize a bailout.

So what is Edmund Phelps’ claim to fame? Phelps received the 2006 economics prize for his work on re-defining the so-called “natural” rate of unemployment beyond the so-called “Phillips Curve,” which erroneously postulated a trade-off between unemployment and inflation in a paper in 1958. Successive generations of uncritical economists adopted Phillips’ view; codified by central bankers for decades as the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment).

The NAIRU became central bankers’ justification for raising interest rates across the board to contain inflation at the expense of increasing unemployment. Yet it is widely-known that there are many ways to reduce inflation without punishing workers, homeowners and car-buyers. These include raising banks’ capital reserve requirements (cash they must keep on hand for depositors’ withdrawals) as China does; raising margin requirements for speculators borrowing to buy stocks; fostering credit unions to compete with banks and others.

Phelps’ work since 1967 has instead reinforced the idea of the NAIRU and even contends that unemployment is necessary to keep workers in line and compliant with their company bosses. Phelps later becomes concerned to understand why unemployment levels fluctuated for other reasons. In his Structural Slumps,(1994), he acknowledges other forces at work in our globalized economy. Meanwhile, Columbia University is battling suits charging discrimination against female professors, including the Argentinian-American economist/mathematician Graciela Chichilnisky, who worked on the Kyoto Protocol and invented catastrophe bonds. She proposed an International Bank for Environmental Settlements to provide for equitable allocation of any rights to emit pollution to every man, woman and child on the planet. Happily, the Support Committee for Professor Graciela Chichilnisky, who also holds a UNESCO Chair, now reports that Columbia University is making some restitution and has elected Professor Chichilnisky to Columbia’s Academic Senate.

When I spoke with Peter Nobel, he was not surprised at the award to Columbia’s Edmund Phelps, or at the problems of gender discrimination against their female professors. Nobel added a comment on Muhammad Yunus ,“It’s the first time in history that an economist gets a real Nobel Prize! ”Perhaps it is fitting that economist Muhammad Yunus who helped improve the lives of millions of poor people should get the real Nobel, the Peace Prize.