Issue 176 February 16, 2015 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory
It is interesting to note that in the course of the Eurozone-Crisis and the related debate on how to remedy Greece's plight, a heterodox economist has risen to great prominence within European media discourse. This development has been largely unnoticed by media commentators themselves, who are interested in Yanis Varoufakis primarily as Greece's newly appointed minister of finance and obviously have a hard time in adequately characterizing Varoufakis' economic and political approach. Especially in the German-speaking media he is rather crudely portrayed as some "good-looking Marxist" coming up with somehow dubious and unconventional political suggestions.
While such superficiality is regrettable, the underlying question - what motivates somebody to first go into economics and then into politics - is surely legitimate. I am proud to state that I know Yanis Varoufakis' answers to these questions. This is not because I know Yanis, but rather because he stated his answers very clearly on his blog. Since I think his answers are very good ones, I wanted to share with you the one on going into economics:
"My initial urge was to study physics but I soon came to the conclusion that the lingua franca of political discourse was economics. Thus, I enrolled at the University of Essex to study the dismal science. However, within weeks of lectures I was aghast at the content of my textbooks and the inane musings of my lecturers. Quite clearly economics was only interested in putting together simplistic mathematical models. Worse still, the mathematics utilised were third rate and, consequently, the economic thinking that emanated from it was atrocious. In short shrift I changed my enrolment from the economics to the mathematics school, thinking that if I am going to be reading mathematics I might as well read proper mathematics.
After graduating from Essex, I moved to the University of Birmingham where I read toward an MSc in Mathematical Statistics. By that stage I was convinced that my escape from economics had been clean and irreversible. How deluded that conviction was! While looking for a thesis topic, I stumbled upon a piece of econometrics (a statistical test of some economic model of industrial disputes) that angered me so much with its methodological sloppiness (which was hidden behind a certain mathematical sophistication) that I set out to demolish it. That was the trap and I fell right into it! From that moment onwards, a series of anti-economic treatises followed, a Phd in… Economics and, naturally, a career in exclusively Economics Departments, in every one of which I enjoyed debunking that which my colleagues considered to be legitimate ‘science’. At the price, that is, of a life which can only be compared to that of an atheist theologian ensconced in a Middle Ages monastery."
So far for his motivation to enter economics - his path to politics is slightly more dramatic and shortly described here.
All the Best,
Jakob
© public domain
25-26 June, 2015 | Bilbao, Spain
The Department of Applied Economics V of the University of the Basque Country and the Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy, Department of Land Economy, of the University of Cambridge, are organizing the 12th International Conference Developments in Economic Theory and Policy. The Conference will be held in Bilbao (Spain), the days 25th and 26th of June 2015.
Although papers are invited on all areas of economics, there will be one Plenary Session with Invited Speakers on the topic of Emerging Economies During and After the Great Recession.
Besides this Special Session, there will be two Plenary Sessions, with Professors Robert Wade (London School of Economics) and Paul Davidson (New School for Social Research) each delivering Keynote Speeches.
Suggestions for Organized Sessions are encouraged. An Organized Session is one session constructed in its entirety by a Session Organizer and submitted to the conference organizers as a complete package. A proposal of an Organized Session must include the following information:
Besides Plenary, Organized and Normal Parallel sessions, there will also be Graduate Student Sessions where students making a MSc or a PhD programme can present their research. Participants in the Graduate Student Sessions will pay a lower conference fee.
At the conference, there will also be parallel sessions of Presentation of New Books. In this kind of sessions, authors will be able to introduce recently published books.
The deadline to submit Papers and ‘Organized Sessions’ is 25th May 2015.
The Journal Panoeconomicus will publish a special issue with a selection of papers presented at the conference. The selection of the papers will be made by the Scientific Committee of the Conference. The final decision about the papers to be published will be subject to a process of anonymous evaluation.
For more information, you can contact with Jesus Ferreiro (jesus.ferreiro@ehu.es) or visit the conference website.
2-4 July, 2015 | Southampton Solent University
Extended Call for Papers – Abstracts now by the 28 of February
Traditionally, the economics profession has been concerned with why some countries are richer than others and/or why some economies grow faster than others. Some of the insistence on growth has been due to the potential role of growth in reducing poverty and inequality, that of leading to higher standards of living, more technological progress and advancement of knowledge and a better quality of life for most of society. Policy-makers and governments assumed that by raising growth rates they could offset the negative effects of business-cycles fluctuations. This positive vision of the role of growth has been affected by increasing disparities in the distribution of income, wealth and growth rates amongst the countries but also by an increasing pressure of achieving ‘sustainable and green growth’ due to the environmental crisis that we face. The recent financial crisis has also emphasized our limited knowledge regarding business cycles and their economic and policy implications.
This conference continues the tradition of the AHE linking economic issues with socio-political and environmental issues by suggesting a thematic that bridges macroeconomic growth, business cycles and sustainability.
Conference Theme: Growth, Cycles and Sustainability
We welcome individual papers and organized sessions on the following special themes of the conference:
We also warmly welcome proposals/abstracts for sessions and individual papers on any other heterodox topic. Refereed and non-refereed options will be available for your paper, so please state if you will want your paper to be refereed.
Deadline for individual abstracts and session proposals: 28 of February 2015.Please email your abstracts to: nick.potts@solent.ac.uk and simon.mouatt@solent.ac.ukDeadline for submitting completed papers – 31 of March for papers wishing to be refereed, 31 of May for papers not wishing to be refereed.
Please note the following special sessions have already been offered (and are likewise open for abstracts/offers for participation, up to the 28 of February, send abstracts to Nick or Simon at the above e-mails, stating which session you are submitting to):
Fees
Accommodation Options
For all enquires email nick.potts@solent.ac.uk or simon.mouatt@solent.ac.uk
More information is available at the conference website.
9-11 September, 2015 | University of Leeds, UK
Conference Theme: Rethinking Economics: Pluralism, Interdisciplinarity and Activism
The economic crisis that started in 2007, while remaining a crisis for huge parts of the world’s population, has officially morphed into a “recovery” – albeit the slowest and weakest in recent history.
Mainstream economics is broadly discredited, with even some voices from some of its major bastions calling for its rejuvenation. But heterodox economics appears as theoretically and institutionally splintered as before the crisis, with its only solid point of agreement being the rejection of the dominant mainstream. Hence it continues to be unable to offer any positive alternative that can command broad acceptance even among heterodox economists, not to speak of making inroads into the orthodox teaching, researching and popularization of economics. Similarly, heterodox economists have made little new progress since the crisis toward their long held goal of linking to progressive forces in sociology, geography, political science, and other social disciplines.
The Sixth Annual Conference in Political Economy aims at fostering a reflection on positive alternatives to the mainstream by examining political economy from the complementary angles of pluralism, interdisciplinarity and activism. Papers on all aspects of political economy are welcome, while those focused on these topics are especially encouraged, whether relating to the current crisis or otherwise.
Practical Information
IIPPE welcomes the submission of (a) proposals for individual papers (which IIPPE will group into panels), (b) proposals for panels, (c) proposals for streams of panels, or (d) proposals for sessions on activism. Unlike last year, proposals for individual papers, panels, streams of panels or sessions on activism will use different electronic application forms. The four different application forms are all available on the IIPPE website. If your browser has problems with this link, please contact Niels Hahn (nsc.hahn@gmail.com).
Application Forms
This Call and these electronic applications can all be found on the IIPPE website.
All proposals can be submitted to either the Working Group coordinators or directly to the Conference Programme Committee, as indicated on the electronic application forms. Any papers or panels proposed to a Working Group which cannot be accepted by it will be forwarded to the Programme Committee for further consideration, without prejudice.
Note that an individual can present only one paper (or book presentation, roundtable or similar presentation) at the conference. The program will list only registered presenters, not the co-authors not in attendance. If two or more co-authors choose to register to jointly present one paper, they will both be listed on the program. Please contact Al Campbell (al@economics.utah.edu) if there is a pressing (very exceptional) case for someone to present more than once. All co-authors of course can be listed on the papers submitted for posting on the IIPPE website.
The deadline for submission of proposals for papers and panels is 1 April 2015. Successful submissions will be confirmed by 1 May 2015. The deadline for registration for the Conference is 1 July 2015. The program should be sent out by 30 July, 2015. The deadline for the submission of full papers for those who submit them, which will be posted on the IIPPE website, is 1 September 2015.
If you have any questions concerning your submission, please contact Al Campbell (al@economics.utah.edu), and cc Niels Hahn (nsc.hahn@gmail.com).
More information is available on the conference website.
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Panel organised by Social Capital Working Group: "Social Capital: Re-capturing the Collective Dimensions of the Economy for a More Pluralist and Interdisciplinary Economics"
Organisers: Asimina Christoforou (Athens University) and Luca Andriani (University of London)
Social capital, identified generally as trust, norms and networks, is often studied for the ways it can facilitate cooperation for individual well-being and social welfare. Yet critical views of social capital claim that even though the concept was applied to underscore aspects of collective action, it provided economists and institutions oriented toward the neoclassical tradition with the means to promote individualist and instrumentalist perceptions of social capital that overlook collective dimensions of the economy. Nonetheless, there have been many attempts to re-contextualise and re- operationalise the concept of social capital in order to incorporate its collective aspects on the basis of alternative principles of human behaviour. Generally these attempts support the collaboration of scholars in various disciplines and the application of different approaches and methods, and aspire to restore the pluralist and activist features of the economy and economics.
These collective dimensions, characteristic of social and scholarly discourse (even more so in the social sciences that study human behaviour), can pertain to: the social and institutional embeddedness of the economy; the pluralism of needs, priorities, values and attitudes; the complex processes of participation and coordination, struggle and debate, collaboration and consensus between diverse and conflictual interests in both the public and private spheres; and the combination of multiple meanings and principles, and thus of various disciplines and perspectives of social science research, aiming at a more realistic and holist understanding of the economy.
In this context, we would like to invite contributions that re-address the concept and measures of social capital in a way that enables us to incorporate the complex reality of social relations, as a dynamic space where people interact, define and pursue, individually and collectively, principles and objectives, means and ends for well-being. Such alternative perceptions have the potential not only to helps us rethink the ways we see social relations, but also the way we see the economy and economics.
Thus, we encourage contributions that not only deal with the ontology and methodology of social capital, but also examine how this can become a vehicle to re-capture the collective aspects of the economy and economics. Included are contributions that focus on how networks, organisations, and various collectives can impact the way we perceive the economy and economics and become advocates of pluralism, multiplicity and activism. We welcome works that derive from various social science disciplines and use different units of analysis (individual, regional, country or cross-country level), methodologies and techniques (theoretical, empirical, qualitative and quantitative).
Abstracts (500 words maximum) should be submitted to Asimina Christoforou (asimina.christoforou@gmail.com) and Luca Andriani (luca.andriani@bbk.ac.uk ) by March 25, 2015.
14-17 July, 2015 | Campinas (SP), Brazil
Marxist Studies Centre - Cemarx at University of Campinas - Unicamp
The 8th International Colloquium Marx and Engels of the Marxist Studies Centre (Cemarx) will be held from 14 to 17 July 2015 at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at Unicamp. Papers should be submitted here by February 21, 2015 (The form is in Portuguese, but in case of any problem regarding to the language, please contact us: cemarx@unicamp.br).
General Information
The 8 International Marx & Engels Colloquium accepts three modalities of participation: papers (to be presented in Thematic Groups), Roundtables and Posters. In all modalities, the submissions have to achieve one of the following aims: a) to have the Marxist theory as their subject of research in order to analyse this theory, criticize it or develop it; and b) to utilize the Marxist theoretical framework in empirical researches. The submitted papers and proposal must fit into the event's Thematic Groups (see below).
Each researcher can make only one submission. One modality has to be chosen. In case of papers, it is necessary to indicate which Thematic Group they fit in. Occasionally, the 8 International Marx & Engels Colloquium Organizing Committee might reallocate the papers from one group to another.
The 8th Colloquium’s Thematic Groups are the following:
Critical examination of Marx and Engels’ work and classical Marxism works in the 19 and 20 centuries. Polemics stimulated by Marx's theoretical work.
Critical examination of the different branches and schools of Marxist thought and their transformations during the 19 and 20 centuries. Theoretical work of Brazilian and Latin American Marxists. Issues on the renovation of Marxism.
Examination of the Marxism’s influence on Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, History, International Relations, Law, Geography and Social Work. Examination of the Marxist critique of Human Sciences and the contributions of Human Sciences for the development of Marxism. Marxist theoretical polemics and conceptual developments in these areas of knowledge. The presence of Marxism in the Brazilian and Latin American universities.
The Marxist approach to economical, political and social transformations of capitalism at the end of the 20century and the beginning of the 21 century. New accumulation patterns of capital, new imperialist phase, transformations of the State and capitalist democracy. The condition of dominant and dependent countries. Brazil and Latin America. Capitalism and ecology.
The Marxist approach to the transformations of class structure. Laborers, working class, "new working class" and "middle class". The petite bourgeoisie. The peasants in current capitalism. The current debate on the decline of class polarization in the end of the 20 century and the beginning of the 21 century. The working classes and the new configuration of the bourgeoisie. The social classes in Brazil and Latin America. The Marxist concept of social class and class struggle in contemporary capitalism. Social movements and popular protests in local and international context.
Social Theory, labor and production. The labor theory of value and contemporary capitalism. Theoretical conceptions on production structure. Production processes: process of valorisation and process of work. Control and management of the production process. Class struggle in production. Theories on the affirmation and denial of the "centrality of work". The new forms of labour exploitation: immaterial labour, casual labour, precarious labour and informational work. Work and social emancipation.
Reflection on gender, race and sexuality relations, and their role in the reproduction of capitalism. Analysis of the relationship between exploitation and oppression, and configurations of the social, sexual and racial divisions of labor today. Discussion on consubstantiality/ intersectionality of social relations and the Marxist theory. Debates on politics, Marxism and feminist, black and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) movements.
The relationships between the educational system and capitalism according to the Marxist perspective: training of workforce; education and social classes; ideology and educational process; educational policy. The Marxist analysis of education in Brazil and Latin America. The cultural apparatuses of capitalism (universities, research centres). The cultural centres created by the socialist movement. Analysis of the innovative educational experiences in the societies emerged in the revolutions of the 20 century. Marxist theory and education.
Capitalism and cultural production: the new tendencies; plastic arts, literature and cultural industry. Marxist analysis of culture in Brazil and Latin America. Culture and socialism: the cultural movements in the societies originated in the revolutions of the 20 century. Marxism and cultural production.
Marxist analysis of the 20 century Revolutions. The communist and socialist heritage of the 19 and 20centuries and the socialism of the 21 century. Marxism and socialism. The issue of renovation of socialism. The theory of transition to socialism. Workers and socialist transition. Strong points and obstacles for the reconstruction of the socialist movement in the 21century.
Modalities of submission (Portuguese, Spanish or English)
1.Papers
Papers can be based on on-going or finished research (research projects do not fit in this modality). Papers should have between fifteen and twenty thousand characters (including spaces and footnotes), in 12 points Times New Roman font format. Submissions must not exceed this limit; otherwise, it will be rejected. Papers should include proposed title, author’s name and position (professor, lecturer, post-graduate student, independent researcher). Papers should clearly define the topic/subject that will be examined, including theses and arguments, and making explicit the debate (theoretical, historiographical or political) within the paper is inserted. Important: papers should follow the citation rules displayed at Cemarx's website. The accepted papers will be published in the Annals of the colloquium. Some papers may subsequently be selected for publication in books organized by Cemarx or in the journals associated with the latter. In such cases, the author should do a review of the text submitted having, therefore, the opportunity to develop the paper further.
Registration fee: US$ 25.
2. Roundtables
Roundtables are proposals submitted by groups, research centers or even scientific and cultural associations. A Roundtable is composed of a set of at least three and no more than four presentations. For a roundtable, the submitted proposals should be more developed than those submitted as communication papers in thematic groups. Only a small number of roundtables will be accepted. The coordinator of the roundtable must submit in his/her proposal including the title and summary of the roundtable in which there is a brief explanation of the topic addressed. After submitting the proposal and his/her own paper, the Coordinator must indicate the full name and email of other members. They, in turn, will submit their own papers on a proper form. The submission of participants’ paper of the roundtable must follow the same format that was specified in the general information (see above).
Registration fee per member of roundtable: US$ 25
3. Posters
The 8 International Marx & Engels Colloquium is open for participation of undergraduate students who can present scientific initiation papers whose subjects fit in one of the Thematic Groups of the colloquium.
The paper abstract should have between three to five thousand characters (including spaces and footnotes) in Times New Roman font format, 12 points. The paper should include title, author's name and the undergraduate course in which he/she is enrolled. Papers should present the research's subject and its main ideas and information. The poster submission format will be published at Cemarx's website.
Registration fee: 15 US$
Submission of papers
Papers should be submitted by February 21. Researchers should fill in the on line submission form at Cemarx's website ( http://www.ifch.unicamp.br/formulario_cemarx/instrucoes.php). The form is in Portuguese, but in case of any problem regarding to the language, please contact us: cemarx@unicamp.br. Foreign researchers can pay the registration fee only during the event.
Notification of Acceptance
Accepted papers will be divulged at Cemarx's website by April 2015.
Important dates
26-29 August, 2015 | Montréal, Canada
The call for panel and individual communications for the 2015 ECPR general conference (Montréal, 26-29 August) is now opened. We would like to invite you to submit your proposals to our session entitled "Frankenstein or Machiavelli? The European Elite-Driven Forced March Towards Austerity”, endorsed by the Political Economy standing group.
While we already suggest some panels , our session is fully opened to any political economy proposal about the issue described in our abstract.
Section Chairs: Clement Fontan (Post-doc, Montreal University) clement.fontan@gmail.com and Guillaume Gourgues (Associate prof., Franche-Comté University), guillaume.gourgues@hotmail.com
Abstract:
Since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the political and economic structures of financial capitalism did not substantially change. Worst, its structural tendencies, which have been causing the “great recession”, are reinforcing. Some examples are particularly striking : the amount of structured financial products (CDO, ABS) is higher now than its pre-crisis level, top income shares are still rising in the EU and the size of the banking and financial sectors as percentage of GDP is very far from shrinking. In the political economy academic field, there is today a global consensus that the “great recession” has been caused by the activities of the banking and financial sectors rather than by fiscal profligacy from the states. Yet, the eurozone political and economic elites have been framing it as a crisis caused by public overspending and a lack of competiveness due to rigid labour markets. This discrepancy is especially noteworthy since the Keynesian paradigm did not survive to its own crisis at the end of the 1970’ and seems to be unable to take advantage of the economic orthodoxy’s dilemmas; the Popperian approach of economic paradigms cycles is thus empirically misleading.
Accordingly, the eurozone crisis resolution process has been mainly oriented towards a large diffusion of austerity policies among the whole continent despite adverse recommendations from international partners such as the US government, the IMF or the OECD and the lessons drawn from the Japanese “lost decade”. The imposition of this economic order has been triggering dire consequences on the quality of democracy, economic performances, social cohesiveness and even the health of citizens in the EU. Political economy scholars have established a large body of work on the discrepancy between the academic consensus on the causes of the crisis and its framing by the European elites; they explain it by focusing on the resilience of neo-liberal economic ideas, the constraining role of institutions and financial markets on political choices as well as the hegemony of the German ordo-liberal model.
Yet, the role of political contingency has not been investigated thoroughly. The starting point of this section is to consider that there were many other alternatives for the resolution of the crisis which could have been implemented by the EU political and economic elites. We propose two main scenarios to investigate the choice of austerity: an elite debacle or a well-crafted strategy aimed at protecting and enforcing the interests of a very narrow social group. The first scenario (Frankenstein) relies on the historical institutionalism notion of unexpected consequences from past political choices: drawing on a popular metaphor, the Drs. Frankenstein from the past have conceived autonomous creatures they cannot control anymore (such as too big to bail commercial banks, independent central banks and automatic budgetary sanctions). The second scenario (Machiavelli) states that political elites are well aware of the social and economic consequences of austerity policies which are nonetheless implemented. This can be explained either by a capture of the political elites by business interests or by a sociological logic of protection of class interests.
This section is endorsed by the ECPR Political Economy Standing group. It aims at exploring the political economy of crises in general, and the Frankenstein and Machiavelli scenarios in particular, from a critical multidisciplinary perspective including public policy, international political economy, political philosophy and/or political sociology approaches. Besides, comparative perspectives with other regional contexts (such as Latin America, Japan and South-East Asia) would be appreciated. We welcome all types of contribution focusing on these issues (panel proposal 1), specifically with one of the two following angles of approach.
More information about the CfP is available here. As a reminder, a session is composed of several panels, each panel gathers several communications, submission guidelines can be found here.
Deadline for submissions: 16 February, 2015.
Editors
Managing Editor: Bogdan Dima (West University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration)
Invited Editor: Bogdan Nadolu (West University, Faculty of Sociology and Psychology)
Assistant Editor: Miruna-Lucia Nachescu (West University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration)
AIMS AND SCOPE
In a world dominated by uncertainty, there are more questions than answers and daily challenges for economic science. Frequently, the conventional wisdom fails to provide adequate guidance and useful tools for facing such challenges
In this context, Journal of Heterodox Economics (ISSN: 2344-4150; ISSN-L: 2344-4150) is a biannual, free-access online journal seeking to provide an active forum in discussing innovative critical ideas and promote interdisciplinary research for a better understanding of the economy as a social process.
The aim of the present call for papers is to find papers that can describe a conceptual and operational critical frame needed to approach the sustainable economic growth. Such type of growth is viewed as a tool for sustainable well-being and optimization of the social structures/clusters.
The standard models of growth are largely ignoring the cultural and social behaviors which are acting as “inhibitors” or “stimulus” of growth. Hence, critical approaches to challenge the standard views are required.
The special issue of the Journal of Heterodox Economics, for which we are launching a call for papers for today, would welcome papers promoting such approaches to growth issues, reflecting fresh views and new ideas.
An indicative, by no means exhaustive, list of questions that might be addressed includes:
SUBMISSION:
Submissions shall be provided on the Journal of Heterodox Economics website or via e-mail to jhec@e-uvt.ro.
All submissions will be subject to double-blind peer review process.
Deadline for submission of papers: 15th of March 2015
FEES:
No publication fee is charged for the contributors.
There is the opportunity, during the submission process, to indicate that your manuscript is a candidate for the Special Issue on ‘Sustainable development: an institutional and cultural integrative process. A heterodox perspective’. Authors are also advised to include a note indicating this in a covering letter that can be uploaded during the submission process.
All papers submitted will be considered using the Journal of Heterodox Economics’s normal peer review process. Please refer to the Journal’s information for authors.
Guest Editors: Geoffrey E. Schneider (Bucknell University) and Daniel A. Underwood (Peninsula College and University of Washington)
The Review of Keynesian Economics is seeking papers of various types related to Innovations in Economic Education that help advance student understanding of the economic process, the forces shaping macroeconomic and microeconomic performance, and appropriate policy options to increase economic welfare. Papers can be short (1500-3000 word) descriptions of classroom exercises or the application of particular pedagogies (e.g., collaborative learning, service learning, active learning, web based interactive exercises) to teach heterodox economics. Submissions can also be longer, in-depth articles (up to 7500 words) which explore a particular pedagogical issue, assess student learning outcomes, or address other teaching issues related to heterodox economics. Articles should clearly stress a heterodox economic tradition (e.g., social economics, institutional economics, post-Keynesian economics, Marxian economics, Feminist economics, etc.) with an emphasis on how that tradition can advance economic education in a Keynesian tradition. Where appropriate, articles should document the effectiveness of the teaching approach described in the article. Thus, authors should make sure to include documentation of their assessment of the teaching exercises they discuss.
Manuscripts should be submitted electronically using the Review of Keynesian Economicsweb submission system. When selecting the article type, please choose: Innovations in Economic Education. The deadline for manuscript submission is October 1, 2014. Articles must be in final form by August 31, 2015.
Papers will pass a double-blind referee process and are subject to the final approval of the Editors of the Review of Keynesian Economics.
24-28 June, 2015 | Georgetown University, Washington DC
Sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group (MLG)
The first volume of Capital was the only one completed by Marx and published during his lifetime. Volumes II and III were published by Engels, some ten years after Marx’s death, from unfinished manuscripts; Theories of Surplus Value was published after Engels’s death. Volume I has, with good reason, assumed renewed currency in the years since the global financial crisis of 2007-8, but the “later” volumes — written before Volume I was prepared for publication — have remained largely the province of specialists. This is unfortunate, not only because these volumes begin to fill in the system of which Volume I is a sketch, and not only because some of Capital’s alleged blind spots and deficiencies are preemptively addressed there, but because some of Marx’s most potent and controversial thinking on political economy emerges in these pages. In a departure from recent practice, this year’s Institute on Culture and Society will center on an intensive series of reading groups on the posthumous volumes of Marx’s Capital.
Accepted papers may take the form of considered responses to some aspect of Capital, to be circulated in advance of the Institute but intended as preparation for discussion in the reading groups rather than as material for direct discussion. Alternatively, papers may take the more traditional form of round-table presentations of 5-8 minutes, on any topic that bears substantially on issues relevant to Marxist theory and practice, from Heraclitus and the dialectic to race and capital accumulation. Both kinds of papers will be listed on the program by presenter’s name and presentation title. Additionally, the Institute welcomes the participation of non-presenters. In addition to roundtable proposals and paper proposals of both kinds, we invite proposals to lead reading sessions discussing particular sections of the posthumous volumes of Capital, or questions, issues, problems, or connections raised by them. The aim of this Institute is not only to study these volumes in depth, but to move them out of the exclusive province of specialists and to open them up to a diversity of approaches, interpretations, valences, and relevancies. In recent years articulations with feminism and queer theory have become a particular strength of the ICS, and engagements with research on race, postcolonial history, and other vectors of inequality are warmly encouraged.
Please send reading group session proposals (title, section or sections to be discussed, discussion facilitator or facilitators, and a very brief justification), paper proposals of either kind (title and 250-word abstract), roundtable proposals (title, presenters’ paper proposals, and a very brief justification), or intention to participate without presenting to MLGICS2015@gmail.com by March 2, 2015.
21-22 November, 2015 | Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan
Conference Theme: Challenges to Mainstream Economics and the Future of Capitalism
This years’ conference theme concerns challenges to mainstream theories from the point of view of Political Economy. The financial crisis of 2008 was an embarrassment for most mainstream economists who did not expect it and had no explanation for why it had occurred. Economics has gone astray. It is now the right time to reinvestigate the nature of capitalism, and to rebuild basic theories of capitalism based on diverse approaches of political economics including Marxian political economy,the Post Keynesian models, institutional and historical schools, the Regulation school, analytical Marxism and so on.This annual conference will provide an important forum for debate among diverse points of view in Political Economy.
Invited speakers:
We are delighted to announce the following confirmed speakers:
JSPE invites proposals for its English sessions in the following categories.
English Sessions I: Topics relating to the plenary session such as
English Sessions II: All proposals reflecting the tradition and analytical perspective of JSPE which include
Submission Procedures and the Deadline:
Proposals should reach the JSPE International Committee (Jspecice2014@jspe.gr.jp ) by 8 May 2015 at the latest.
When submitting your proposal, please include:
Notification of acceptance will be sent by 30 June.
Cost: Attendants will pay their conference fee (6000 yen per person including the conference dinner), as well as their own transportation, accommodation and other personal expenses.
Postal Address: c/o Prof. Masao Ishikura, Faculty of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186-8601 JapanTel: +81(0)42-580-8000
Information about the Japan Society of Political Economy (JSPE) is available here. Hitotsubashi University is located in West Tokyo.Detailed description is available here.
Contact: Prof. Nobuharu Yokokawa (Chairman of the JSPE International Committee)
E-mail: Jspecice2014@jspe.gr.jp, yokokawa@cc.musashi.ac.jp
3-5, January, 2016 | San Francisco
URPE invites proposals for complete sessions and individual papers for the URPE at ASSA annual meeting. URPE welcomes proposals on radical political economic theory and applied analysis from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives.
The deadline for proposed papers and sessions is May 1, 2015. At that time individual and panel proposals will be checked to ensure that everyone is current with their URPE dues or the proposals will be set aside.
Proposals for complete sessions are encouraged and should include the session title, a brief description of each paper, and the names, institutional affiliations, and email addresses of the chair, discussants, and presenters. Proposals for sessions should contain four papers. If you are proposing a complete session, please arrange to have discussants for your papers and a chair for your session. As the organizer of this session, you are responsible for conveying administrative information to session members, including confirmation that the session has been accepted, the time and location, and the deadlines for distributing papers.
Proposals for individual papers should include the title, the abstract, and the author's name, institutional affiliation, and email. Individual papers that are accepted will be assigned to sessions and each session will have an assigned organizer. Individuals whose papers are accepted may also be asked to serve as a discussant in a different session at the meetings.
We regret that high quality individual papers may be turned down due to the inability to place them in a session with papers with similar themes. The number of sessions we can have is limited by ASSA, and we regret that high quality session proposals may also have to be turned down.
You should receive word from URPE about the decision on your session or paper by late June. The date and time of sessions are assigned by the AEA in late August.
Please note that anyone who presents a paper (but not the chairs or discussants) must be a member of URPE at the time of submission of the paper or panel proposal. Membership information is available by clicking here.
Applications should be submitted online beginning April 1 at this link: URPE@ASSA Submissions. If you have questions or problems with the online submission, please contact Fred Moseley. Proposals submitted after the May 1 deadline will not be considered.
3-7 August, 2015 | Kyoto, Japan
The XVIIth World Economic History Congress (WEHC 2015) is an epoch-making event in that it is the first congress in Asia in the history of the WEHC. Today, Asia is regarded as one of the most important engines of growth of the world economy. For economic historians, late nineteenth century Japan was the first Asian country to experience economic growth based on modern technologies and institutions, and its post World War II economic miracle has long been seen as setting a new model of economic growth. Japan’s growth experience has been followed by many other Asian countries and regions. The Japanese and other Asian examples of rapid development have been based on a diversity of paths of development, drawing on indigenous elements of their economies, societies and cultures, while simultaneously interacting with many areas in Asia and the West. As historians we all find that this Asian rise has challenged our theories and become an important subject in our efforts to understand global patterns of development from a long-term viewpoint. Indeed, research that reconsiders Asian economic history from global perspectives has come to be one of the most active fields of research in recent years. We are looking forward to welcoming leading scholars from many countries and regions of the world who specialize in economic history and related fields, to WEHC 2015.
The XVIIth World Economic History Congress is now open for individual paper submissions. The list accepted sessions can be found here.
Venue: Kyoto International Conference Center (ICC Kyoto),Takaragaike, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-0001 Japan
Host: International Economic History Association (IEHA)
Keynote Speakers
Plenary Session Speakers
Details about the registration & fees are available here. Criteria for travel grant can be found here.
Key Dates
Further information is available on the conference website. E-mail contact: wehc2015@c-linkage.co.jp
25 July - 1 August, 2015 | IG Metall Bildungszentrum Berlin Pichelssee, Berlin, Germany
Organised by the Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies (FMM) and the IMK (Institut für Makrökonomie and Konjunkturforschung)
The summer school aims at providing an introduction to post-Keynesian economics and to the problems of European economic policies as well as presenting some ongoing research to interested graduate students (MA and PhD) and junior researchers. It will consist of overview lectures, a panel discussion, student study groups and academic papers. The summer school will feature leading international researchers in the area, like Thomas I. Palley (US), Marc Lavoie (Canada), Eckhard Hein (Germany), Engelbert Stockhammer (UK), Steve Fazzari (US), Gennaro Zezza (Italy), and Özlem Onaran (UK), covering the following areas:
Language is English. There is a fee of EUR 100,- for each participant for accommodation and meals. Travelling costs cannot be covered. Accepted participants will be asked to pay the fee ahead of the summer school.
Application
Please proceed with your application through the application form is available here.
Deadline for applications:
The application form will be active beginning 30 October 2014 and deadline for applications is 15 March, 2015.
Applicants will be informed by mid-April and accepted participants will be provided with a reading package for the summer school.
More information on the research network and the summer school is available here.
Contact:
More information about the summer school is available here.
6-10 July, 2015 | University of Vienna, Austria
The global digital Workplace – New Ways of Working, New Forms of Labour, a training school for PhD students and Early Stage Researchers will be hosted by the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna.
This COST Training School will also constitute the 5th Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology to be held at the University of Vienna. The event will therefore be a close co-operation between the University and the COST Action.
Two interrelated processes have transformed work and labour on a global scale: The wider reach of multinational corporations and global value chains and the digitisation of information and the advances of telecommunications and the Internet. They have contributed to new dynamics of job relocation and shifting international divisions of labour, new forms of cooperation over distance and new opportunities to integrate geographically distributed work processes. These changes have also brought forth entirely new types of ‘digital’ or ‘virtual’ labour, both paid and unpaid. The summer school will explore recent developments of digital work and labour within corporations, along global value chains and over the Internet. It will devote special attention to the ways in which people experience new forms of work and labour and to their individual and collective reactions.
Focusing on the global digital workplace, the Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology will provide an academic frame for a deeper and interdisciplinary approach to these complex processes. An understanding will be developed of how changes in work take place as new forms of virtual labour emerge and what their implications are for work organization, workers identities and workers’ agency. Account will be taken of the ways in which work and labour are being transformed in the context of global economic and technical dynamics and in relation to their local embeddedness. This may include the shifting boundaries between paid and unpaid work and between ‘work’ and ‘play’.
PhD students are invited to send in their applications, including an abstract of their PhD research, and will be elected according to the persuasiveness and congruity of their abstracts. During the Summer-School the participants have to present a research paper (about 20 pages) and subsequently have the chance to discuss it with the audience. Each day of the summer school is devoted to a core topic and is led by an experienced and distinguished scientist. Additionally, two keynote speeches by renowned researchers and social events in the historic city of Vienna are planned. PhD Students and early stage researchers are welcome to apply for the summer school.
Applicants are asked to submit their CV (max. 2 pages), an abstract of their PhD project (max. 2 pages) and the Application form.
Email the application to this address: costis1202@herts.ac.uk
The deadline for applications is February 28, 2015.
Accommodation and how to get there
More information is available here and here.
29 May, 2015 | University of Sydney
The Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney is hosting a one-day graduate workshop exploring the work of Antonio Gramsci. Anchored by keynote presentations from two leading scholars, the workshop will bring together research students working with Gramsci’s writings and conceptual tools to collaborate, exchange ideas, establish wider networks, critically engage, and develop their research for publication.
Across the social sciences and tinged with post-disciplinary appeal, there is a rich period of continuing international scholarship on the thought and practice of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Most promisingly, one can witness debates on Gramsci and subalternity linked to the work of Massimo Modonesi in Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy (2014), on Gramsci and space evidenced in the co-edited volume by Michael Ekers et al., Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics (2013), on Gramsci, political theory and hegemony as developed by Carlos Nelson Coutinho in Gramsci’s Political Thought (2012), on Gramsci and post-coloniality in Neelam Srivatstava and Baidik Bhattacharya’s edited volume The Postcolonial Gramsci (2012), on The International Politics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Guatemala (2007) by Nicola Short, and from a different perspective on Gramsci and Latin America in Jon Beasley-Murray’s Posthegemony, Political Theory and Latin America (2010). The season of Gramsci studies is seemingly everlasting with many ‘images’ of Gramsci ever-present.
In this environment, there has been an understandable growth in the consideration and use of Gramsci’s work by research students worldwide. It seems timely, then, to initiate a postgraduate workshop on and around Gramsci’s writings and methodology.
The workshop is an opportunity for research students to discuss and elaborate their work in dialogue with each other, but also with experts in the field. Keynote presentations from two leading Gramsci scholars will be delivered at the event. The first will be from Peter Thomas (Brunel University), winner of the Premio internazionale Giuseppe Sormani 2011 for his pathbreaking The Gramscian Moment (2009). Peter is a pivotal scholar exploring a philological method of reading Gramsci relevant to the 21st century that connects philosophy, sociology, and political science as well as linking philosophy to Marxist practice today. The second will be from Adam Morton (University of Sydney), winner of the 2012 BISA International Political Economy Group (IPEG) Book Prize for his monograph Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (2011). His major impact has been in advancing a focus on Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution as a method of understanding the political economy of state formation in the modern world.
Workshop details
For further information or to submit an abstract please contact Elizabeth Humphrys: elizabeth.humphrys@sydney.edu.au
21-23 May, 2015 | Berlin, Germany
The workshop targets PhD students and young researchers and consists of mini-courses covering topics and methods that are overlooked in the conventional economics curriculum. It also features student presentation sessions, which give young scholars the opportunity to present and discuss their research in a collaborative environment.
Mini Courses:
Young Scholar Presentations:
A subset of the participants will be given the opportunity to present their research, be it a completed dissertation chapter or work in progress, on any topic. Presenting is voluntary.
Application:
Participants should be enrolled in a PhD program in economics or a related field. Postdocs, young assistant professors, and qualified masters students are also welcome.
The workshop is organized by the Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) and the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and its Young Scholar Initiative (YSI).
Please see the following webpage for details.
24 February 2015 | University of Vienna, Austria
Hosted by the Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation (VIDC) and the Department of Development Studies (IE) – University of Vienna
Schedule: From 9.00 to 18.00
Venue: Sky Lounge, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1 (12th floor), 1090 Vienna, Austria
The Global Alliance For Tax Justice (GATJ) and the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) are pleased to invite you to join us for an important conference to build closer cooperation between professional researchers and tax justice activists:
Background
Taxation plays an important role for the mobilization of public domestic revenues and will be one of the hot topics at the United Nation’s Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa in July 2015. Tax policies can be designed to curb inequalities, but need to be complemented by redistributive budget policies. Tax revenues play an important role in funding collective public goods in the form of social protection benefits and public services such as healthcare and education. Tax systems can also enhance democratic governance by making governments more accountable to their tax-paying citizens.
Despite the importance of tax for financing sustainable development and redistributing wealth, many countries face challenges in their efforts to increase their tax revenues. The reasons on the domestic level include tax administrations’ capacity problems, and the undercutting of tax revenues when numerous tax incentives and exemptions are given to corporations and wealthy individuals. On the international level, tax avoidance and evasion are enabled by an outdated international tax architecture that is based on bilateral tax agreements and is unsuitable for the globalized economy of the 21st century, as well as an international system of tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions.
Multinational corporations, in particular, profit from declining corporate tax rates and tax incentives, and exploit existing loopholes in and between national legislations. Initiatives from the G20 and the OECD are currently being developed to address some of these problems. But critics say these reforms will not go deep enough, leaving untouched the root causes of rising illicit flows, tax evasion and avoidance.
This Tax Justice to Promote Social Justice conference brings together experienced (development) researchers and tax justice campaigners to exchange views on the most effective ways forward to share findings for policy change, public education and mobilization. Participation in this conference is free of charge.
Program
Find the details of the conference program here.
How to come to the city centre and the conference venue
List of hotels and pensions near the conference venue
Registration required! Please contact Martina Neuwirth for registration and more information.
5 June, 2015 | University of Newcastle, UK
Sponsored by the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University and Development Politics Specialist Group, Political Studies Association
Organizers: Jojo Nem Singh (University of Sheffield/ PSA Development Politics) and Jesse Salah Ovadia (Newcastle University)
Developmental States beyond East Asia is a small specialist workshop that will be held at Newcastle University on June 5, 2015. This workshop will explore whether the concept of ‘developmental states’ retains analytical purchase on how states respond to pressures of globalisation, particularly in the aftermath of privatisation and liberalisation of national economies. We will revisit the ‘East Asian model’ to reflect on the theoretical debates on state capacity, political autonomy, and changing state-business relations. In particular, the workshop will critically analyse how the ‘East Asian model’ has been interpreted and applied in other regions of the developing world, and the degree to which lessons from East Asia have successfully translated across both space and time to provide viable developmental strategies today.
As recent works on state-building suggest (Kuhonta 2011; Slater 2010; Vu 2011), distinctive historical conditions, political legacies, and past state choices shape in large measure the potential for a developmentalist orientation to emerge among national elites. In this workshop we will explore the role of such conditions in spurring elites to pursue developmental imperatives, while also moving beyond the narrow conceptualisation of development as industrialisation (see Fine et. al. 2013). We will also consider the possibility of ‘democratic developmental states’ (Robinson and White 1998; Mkandawire 2001) and the role of ‘transformational social policy’ (Yi and Mkandawire 2014).
The workshop will showcase empirical research regarding how some states – for example, Angola Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Turkey – attempt to utilise novel approaches to development policy-making that blend together market incentives and state regulations as they become integrated into the international economy. Some of these development strategies include natural resource exploitation, alternative forms of financing development, pro-poor poverty reduction and social programmes, the development of service sectors (such as tourism, ICT, construction and real estate), new industrial planning based on developing new comparative advantages, and/or new forms of incentivisation and protection for infant industries.
Additionally, we are looking for papers that explore the limited space in which state elites operate (whether traditional ‘policy space’ with regard to aid, or ‘political space’ in ensuring a stable political settlement), and the consequent innovative bargains they must nurture with capitalists in the early stages of development.
Papers will be expected to address one or more of the following key questions:
The workshop aims to attract academics and practitioners from a variety of sub-disciplines in the social sciences, including comparative and international political economy, development studies, economic and political sociology, economic geography, and anthropology, among others. A small amount of funding has been made available by the Political Studies Association for travel stipends for postgraduate students. We strongly encourage papers which take historical approaches, intra- and inter-regional comparisons, single case studies on sectors, regions and countries, or those focusing on relations between states, markets and labour. This one-day workshop will set a new intellectual agenda based on cross-cutting research linking state theory, globalization and neoliberalism.
Keynote Speakers
Deadlines
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to devstateconference@gmail.com by 30 March 2015 and indicate if you would like to be considered for a postgraduate travel stipend.
Summer School in Social Economics: 21-22 June, 2015 | Brock University at St. Catherines, Canada
World Congress of Social Economics: 23-24 June, 2015 | Brock University at St. Catherines, Canada
The Association for Social Economics announces an exciting Summer School workshop for graduate students and recent Ph.D.s. to be held in conjunction with the 15th World Congress of Social Economics. These will be held at Brock University at St. Catherines, Canada (across the border from Niagara Falls, NY and within reasonable shuttle of the Buffalo, NY airport). The Summer School begins at noon on June 21 and continues on June 22. The World Congress opens the evening of June 22 and concludes on June 24.
Aims: The Summer School brings together a small group of fellows to discuss the central concerns of social economics as a springboard for cutting-edge research and teaching. Social economics is centrally concerned with questions of social, cultural and ethical values in economic life and the study of these questions at philosophical, theoretical, empirical and policy-related levels.
Summer School topics include aspects of:
Eligibility: Fellows must be graduate students or recent Ph.D.s in economics or related fields.
Awards: Fellows accepted to the Summer School will receive complementary room and meals for the Summer School, complementary registration and room for the World Congress, complementary pass to the plenary session, plus all Summer School materials, a package worth up to $1,400. Some travel stipends are also available on a competitive basis.
Fellow Obligations: Accepted fellows must become members of ASE and submit a Summer School refundable deposit of $100 (that will be returned upon completion of the World Congress). All fellows must commit to participating in all sessions of the Summer School and to staying for the entire World Congress.
Applications: Application forms can be made at the Association website.
For questions please contact John Davis, john.davis@mu.edu, or Jonathan Wight, jwight@richmond.edu
More information about the 15th World Congress of Social Economics is available here.
14-19 July, 2015 | Université du Québec à Montréal, CA
Sponsored by the History of Economics Society, and hosted by the Interuniversity Centre for Research in Science and Technology (CIRST) and the Economics Department at ESG-UQAM
At several points in the history of science, economists have been significant players in shaping the landscape of research. Specifically, during World War II and the Cold War, economic rationality became a major benchmark of the transformation of the institutions of science. Historians of science have increasingly acknowledged the complex role played by economists and their ideas, just as historians of economics increasingly connect their narratives to larger developments in the sciences in general. This 5 full-day summer school, with established scholars from both fields, will provide students in the history of science with the knowledge necessary to contextualize the tradition of economics, and students in the history of economics with a larger knowledge of general topics in recent history of science.
Speakers:
Applications are open for all PhD and post-doc students in the history of science, history of economics and neighbouring fields. Applications by Master’s students will also be considered. Given that the intention is to encourage significant interaction, the number of participants is limited to 20. Applications should include a letter of motivation outlining the applicant’s graduate research project (1-2 pages) and one short reference letter. Students will have the opportunity to present their research projects. There is no participation fee. Students will provide for their accommodation and travel expenses. All students can apply for (limited) travel funding.
Deadline for applications is March 1st, 2015.
Local Organizers: Till Düppe, Alessandro Barattieri, Juan Carvajalino, and Yves Gingras.
For more information see this website or contact Till Düppe via email: duppe.till@uqam.ca.
29 September - 2 October 2015 | Buchenbach, Germany
From September 29 to October 2, 2015 the XII. Workshop on Evolutionary Economics for PhD students and Post-Docs will take place in Buchenbach (Haus Wiesneck). It is the 12th workshop for young Evolutionary Economists after the foundation of the workshop series in 1993 by Prof. Ulrich Witt (former Director of Evolutionary Economics Group at the Max-Planck-Institute in Jena), former Professor at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau. From the V. Buchenbach-Workshop in 2001 onwards Prof. Marco Lehmann-Waffenschmidt (University of Technology, Dresden) has become the local and scientific organizer in cooperation with Ulrich Witt. Like the Buchenbach Workshops so far the format will be a mixture of a workshop with selected contributed papers by the participants and a summer school by a number of Keynote Lectures by internationally renowned evolutionary economists. Again, there will be a special session on simulations.
The workshop will take place in German to promote the use of German as scientific language, albeit there can be submissions in English. If the submission is accepted, the talk can be held in English, but the participant should be willing to follow the rest of the workshop in German. Please find the Call for Papers in German only at the conference webpage. Submission to buchenbach@mailbox.tu-dresden.de.
Key dates:
Submission Deadline: June 15, 2015
Notification of Acceptance: End of July 2015
Final Confirmation of Participation: August 15, 2015
Job Position: Senior Lecturer in Economics (full time)
Goldsmiths, University of London, is proud of its reputation for innovative and challenging thinking across its wide range of disciplines. One of its major strengths is its interdisciplinary ethos - the way in which departments, institutes, centres and units interrelate to offer new perspectives and insights.
The Institute of Management Studies (IMS) combines innovative and world-renowned 4* research from a UK top 20 creative university with the expertise of leading academics in the field entrepreneurship, Strategy, business psychology, facilitating innovation, and history of economic thought. We are now seeking a full-time Lecturer or Senior Lecturer to contribute to the development, teaching, and high-impact research output of the IMS.
You will have a good first degree and PhD (or equivalent) in an area related to economics and an internationally recognised portfolio of research (or the clear potential to develop one) in economic theory and will be interested in developing interdisciplinary research and teaching links.
Applications are encouraged from academics that can teach methodology of economics and courses in intermediate microeconomics or macroeconomics that combine mainstream and heterodox approaches. The ideal candidate will conduct research into economic theory and will be interested in developing interdisciplinary research and teaching links both within the IMS, and with the expanding community of political economists at Goldsmiths.
The ideal candidate would foster new research links within the IMS and with this wider community of researchers.
The post holder will be expected to be able to carry out the following duties in line with the grade of the post:
More information about the job and application form is available here.
Job Position: Project Scientist
The IASS is an international, interdisciplinary research institute located in Potsdam, Germany, financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Federal State of Brandenburg. It is devoted to promoting science and research for global sustainability, particularly in the areas of climate change, the earth systems and social pathways to sustainability. Under the responsibility of IASS Executive Director Prof. Dr. Klaus Töpfer, we focus on the societal and political transformations that must take place if we are to achieve sustainability.
Within the EU Horizon 2020 project “Distributed Global Financial Systems for Society (DOLFINS)“, the IASS will lead a research task for investigating the future of the international monetary system. This task comprises to develop scenarios for the future evolution of the international monetary system, combining monetary theory and algorithmic game theory; to explore the consequences of the ability of banks to create credit and money in an international context, drawing on insights from the history of the Bretton Woods institutions; and to investigate the perspective of distributed control if alternative institutional designs of the international monetary system can lead to increased international cooperation and stability. Beyond this task, the IASS is supposed to contribute to further research tasks of DOLFINS.
Under the supervision of the Executive Director of IASS, Prof. Dr. Klaus Töpfer, the successful applicant will mainly be involved in the EU Horizon 2020 project “Distributed Global Financial Systems for Society (DOLFINS)”.
In particular, she/he will be entrusted with:
What we offer:
Requirements:
This position is to be filled by 1 April 2015 until 31 December 2016 with a possible prolongation until 28 February 2018 subject to pending final confirmation of future funding of IASS by the funding ministries.
Applications, including a cover letter and a full CV with two referees should be received no later than 28 February 2015 by e-mail to Mr. Armin Haas (armin.haas@iass-potsdam.de). Please indicate the reference number (Ref-Nr. Economics&Cultures-2015-2) in the e-mail subject line as well as in your application.
For further information and details on this position please contact Mr. Armin Haas (armin.haas@iass-potsdam.de, Tel.: +49 331 28822-378. The IASS particularly encourages applications from female researchers; handicapped applicants will be given preference in case of equal qualifications.
Job Position: Visiting Assistant Professorship in Economics
The Department of Economics of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Redlands invites applications for a full-time, one-year visiting assistant professor position, beginning September 2015. The ideal candidate for this position will have a Ph.D. in economics by the time of hire, a proven intellectual disposition to work across disciplines, and an appreciation of the liberal arts perspective and of heterodox economic paradigms. Teaching and research interests in ecological/environmental economics and some independent teaching experience are strongly preferred. The teaching load is six courses/year, and consists of two upper-division electives and four sections of Principles of Microeconomics.
Send application letter, curriculum vitae, evidence of teaching competency, official graduate school transcripts, and two letters of reference to Professor Lorenzo Garbo, Department of Economics, P.O. Box 3080, Redlands, CA 92373-0999. Inquiries may be directed to lorenzo_garbo@redlands.edu.
The Department of Economics will begin to review applications during the month of February. Position remains open until filled. The University of Redlands is a private, comprehensive liberal arts institution located sixty miles east of Los Angeles, and is an equal opportunity employer. We actively encourage applications from women and under-represented populations. Information about the University is available at www.redlands.edu.
Job Position: Political Economy Open Rank (Assistant, Associate, or Full)
The Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley invites applications for a full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member in Global or International Political Economy to begin September 1, 2015. The department is particularly interested in applicants with a rigorous theoretical and empirical approach to Political Economy preferably with substantive research interests in globalization, border and trans-border regional economies, and/or global inequality and poverty. The successful candidate will teach upper-division and graduate level courses in their areas of substantive specialization, introduction to globalization, and required lower-division courses in U.S. & Texas Government and Politics.
UTRGV has 11 colleges and schools that offer 61 baccalaureate degrees, 50 master’s degrees, and 4 doctorates in the liberal arts, fine arts, education, sciences, business and entrepreneurship, engineering and computer science, and health affairs. The university has nearly 30,000 students enrolled in its graduate and undergraduate programs and it will open a medical school in 2016. UTRGV is located in one of the fastest growing regions of the United States. The department is seeking candidates who are committed to UT-RGV’s guiding principles (see, http://www.utrgv.edu/en-us/about-utrgv/transition-plan/guiding-principlesbecoming an emerging research), which include promoting access to postsecondary education to a diverse student body and to become one of the largest and most successful Hispanic-serving emerging research institutions in the U.S.A. The department is seeking high quality faculty members who will pursue global excellence in teaching, research, and service, including applied and translational research to address critical local, state, national, and global needs and providing a leadership role in fostering economic and community partnerships to help solve local, state, national, and global problems.
Qualifications
1) Ph.D. in Political Science from an accredited institution of higher education. ABDs may be considered, but a conferred doctorate by September 1, 2015 is required for appointment. 2) for junior level tenure-track appointments demonstrated potential for strong research and publication record; for tenured appointment at Associate or Full Professor level demonstrated record of research and publication appropriate for appointment and tenure at a senior rank. 3) demonstrated potential for teaching excellence for appointment at the junior level or established record of teaching excellence for appointment at the senior level.
For the application to be considered complete, please make sure these items are submitted.
Required Documents
Texas law requires faculty members whose primary language is not English to demonstrate proficiency in English as determined by a satisfactory paper-based test score of 500 (computer-based of 173 or internet-based of 61) on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or a satisfactory test score of 6.0 on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Incomplete applications will not be considered.
More information is available here.
The 2015 competition is now open for submissions. Deadline 4 May 2015.
ELIGIBILE ENTRANTS
LEVELS OF COMPETITION
There are two levels of competition
CONTENT OF THE ESSAY
ELIGIBLE SUBMISSIONS
Eligible entries will be…
➢…sent by email at the latest on May 04, 2015, to: essaycontest@progressive-economics.ca
➢ …the only submission by the author(s) (i.e., one submission per person)
➢ …between 20-40 pages in length, and typed in 12-point font, double spaced
➢ …referenced to academic standards (including any data)
➢ …written in either English or French
➢ …original, single-authored essays that do not infringe upon the rights of any third parties
➢ …accepted on re-submission once
➢ …accompanied by a signed scanned file of the completed PEF Essay Contest Submission Form.
Entrants consent to having the Progressive Economic Forum publish essays from winners and those receiving honourable mention. Each applicant will submit a valid email and postal address for correspondence.
ADJUDICATION
WINNING SUBMISSIONS
Download a poster here. Click here to read winning essays from previous competitions.
This is to announce the launch of an annual Journal Article Prize for the best article published in the broad field of International Political Economy (IPE) by an Australia-based academic, with further details available HERE.
For some time, it has been noticeable that, outside individual academic journals or associations, independent recognition of IPE scholarship in journal article form has been lacking. While there are independent and esteemed prize awards for academic book publishing, e.g. the British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group Book Prize, the recognition of something similar for journal article accomplishment has been neglected.
As a consequence, we are announcing the Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) — Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize. The Prize will be awarded to the best article published in IPE as deemed by a selection committee of IPE scholars. The award will be given to any article in IPE, understood in a pluralist sense to include the political economy of security, geography, literature, sociology, anthropology, post-coloniality, gender, finance, trade, regional studies or economic theory. For that reason, it is fitting that the prize be named after Professor Richard Higgott. In a career spanning four decades, Richard has played a pivotal intellectual and practical role in establishing IPE as a thriving enterprise committed to theoretical innovation and inclusion in Australia and elsewhere. In 1987 he and Richard Leaver introduced the first graduate course in IPE at the ANU. Author or editor of 20 books, research monographs and edited volumes, as well as over 120 journal articles and book chapters, Richard has been at the forefront of research on globalisation, global and regional governance, and international trade. He served as President of the Australian Political Studies Association and as Vice-President of the International Studies Association and has supervised some 25 PhD theses, including those by now leading scholars. He was also principal investigator on a number of large-scale grants, totaling some $30m, which facilitated the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick and two major international scholarly networks providing funds for postdoctoral positions and PhD scholarships.
Nominations should be made by authors and/or academic colleagues that have published an article in the previous calendar year, either in journal hardcopy or early online publication, in 2014. These articles can be single-authored or multiple co-authored journal publications published in international or Australia-based periodicals. The only requirement is that the author (for a single-authored piece) or one of the authors (for joint pieces) is permanently based in Australia and that they commit to joining the AIPEN listserv and write a short blog post on the wider import of their article for Progress in Political Economy.
Once nominated, the longlist of candidates will be circulated on the AIPEN list after which the members will cast a vote for their top three preferences. These will be collated to make a shortlist of three, which will then be read in full and deliberated by a committee made up of Shahar Hameiri (Murdoch University), Jacqui True (Monash University), Adam David Morton (University of Sydney), Penny Griffin (University of New South Wales), and Jason Sharman (Griffith University) to decide on the eventual awardee.
The winner of the best journal article prize granted by the committee will then be awarded at the following Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) meeting, with the next one to be hosted at the University of Tasmania (December 2016). The winner will also receive a cheque for $250.
The deadline for nominations for IPE-related articles matching the above wide-ranging and inclusive criteria published in 2014 is 1 June 2015 and the full bibliographic reference, including EOI for early online publication, should be sent to Adam.Morton@sydney.edu.au. The longlist will then be circulated in August, leaving time for the voting process to be completed in September, and then the committee will read the final three articles prior to announcing the winner by December.
Amy Glasmeier and Susan Christopherson: Thinking about smart cities
Taylor Shelton, Matthew Zook, and Alan Wiig: ArticleEditor's choice: The ‘actually existing smart city’
Chirag Rabari and Michael Storper: Editor's choice: The digital skin of cities: urban theory and research in the age of the sensored and metered city, ubiquitous computing and big data
Luís Carvalho: Smart cities from scratch? A socio-technical perspective
Robert G. Hollands: Critical interventions into the corporate smart city
Robert Goodspeed: Smart cities: moving beyond urban cybernetics to tackle wicked problems
Dietmar Offenhuber: Infrastructure legibility—a comparative analysis of open311-based citizen feedback systems
P. Christopher Zegras, Emily Eros, Kuan Butts, Elizabeth Resor, Stephen Kennedy, Albert Ching, and Muntasir Mamun: Tracing a path to knowledge? Indicative user impacts of introducing a public transport map in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Rob Kitchin: Making sense of smart cities: addressing present shortcomings
Bertell Ollman and Dennis Badeen: Preface to the special issue: Dialectics and the Gordian knot
Sean Sayers: Marxism and the doctrine of internal relations
Lou-Ann Wurst: The historical archaeology of capitalist dispossession
Dennis Badeen: An organicist critique of the ahistorical character of orthodox economics
Paul Paolucci: Marx’s scientific and political criticism: The internal relation
Anne F. Pomeroy: Internal relations and the revolutionary consciousness
Ted Winslow: ‘Internal relations’ and Marx’s ‘materialist conception of history’
Kevin M. Brien: Internal relations, the concrete universal, and historical materialism
David McNally: The dialectics of unity and difference in the constitution of wage-labour: On internal relations and working-class formation
Bertell Ollman: Bibliography: The philosophy of internal relations
Roger Koppl, Stuart Kauffman, Teppo Felin and Giuseppe Longo: Economics for a creative world
David Colander: Creative economics for a creative world: a comment
John Foster: Next steps toward an economics for a creative world: a comment
Pavel Pelikan: Economics for a creative world: some agreements and some criticism
Ulrich Witt: Causality and regularity in a ‘creative world’
Roger Koppl, Stuart Kauffman, Teppo Felin and Giuseppe Longo: Economics for a creative world: a response to comments
Bas van Bavel: History as a laboratory to better understand the formation of institutions
Douglas W. Allen: Coasean method: lessons from the farm
Kostadis J. Papaioannou and Jan Luiten van Zanden: The dictator effect: how long years in office affect economic development
Andreas P. Kyriacou and Francisco José López Velásquez: Inequality and culture in a cross-section of countries
Lotta Moberg: The political economy of special economic zones
Guilherme Signorini, R. Brent Ross and H. Christopher Peterson: Historical analysis of institutions and organizations: the case of the Brazilian electricity sector
Georg H. Fromm & Translated by Manuel S. Almeida: Empiricism, Science, and Philosophy in The German Ideology
Michel Kail & Richard Sobel: Toward a Sartrean Economics
Matthew J. Smetona: Marx's Normative Understanding of the Capitalist System
Sam Friedman, Diana Rossi & Gonzalo Ralón: Dignity Denial and Social Conflicts
Spyros Sakellaropoulos & Panagiotis Sotiris: From Territorial to Nonterritorial Capitalist Imperialism: Lenin and the Possibility of a Marxist Theory of Imperialism
Phillip Drake: Marxism and the Nonhuman Turn: Animating Nonhumans, Exploitation, and Politics with ANT and Animal Studies
Serhat Koloğlugil: Digitizing Karl Marx: The New Political Economy of General Intellect and Immaterial Labor
Gregory Jackson: Scholarly contribution between science and art
David J. Bailey: Resistance is futile? The impact of disruptive protest in the ‘silver age of permanent austerity’
Cathie Jo Martin: Labour market coordination and the evolution of tax regimes
Lucy Barnes: The size and shape of government: preferences over redistributive tax policy
Joshua C. Gordon: Protecting the unemployed: varieties of unionism and the evolution of unemployment benefits and active labor market policy in the rich democracies
Daniel Oesch and Isabel Baumann: Smooth transition or permanent exit? Evidence on job prospects of displaced industrial workers
Maite Tapia, Christian L. Ibsen, and Thomas A. Kochan: Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations: the contested role of worker representation
By Richard Tudway | 2015, Heterodox Publishing Limited
The Looming Corporate Calamity by Richard Tudway is a masterful analysis of the evolution of the limited liability corporation from its 19th Century origins to today's crisis in the corporate governance of publicly traded corporations. He argues that structural failures in the modern corporation and abuses of corporate power have triggered a collapse in public confidence. These failures centre on the classic agent/principal problem and the unitary board system common to Anglo American jurisdictions. He outlines what has to be done to reform corporate governance and restore corporate legitimacy. It is a book that needs to be read by all students of business, business leaders, other professionals and citizens at large who seek to understand why public confidence in corporate behaviour has now reached rock bottom. The problems, as he explains, are connected with the evolution of corporate governance principally in Anglo American jurisdictions. In other jurisdictions governance arrangements have evolved differently. There are important lessons to be learnt from these differences. He identifies clearly the fundamental governance issues that have to be addressed and the reforms that have to be introduced. The book runs to 14 chapters with five supporting Annexes. Throughout it is supported with detailed references to key literature sources. Each Chapter has its own questions for review and tasks for readers to address in reaching a complete understanding of what is so fundamentally wrong with corporate governance as it stands.
Link to the book is available here.
By Timothy Kuhner | 2015, Stanford University Press
As of the latest national elections, it costs approximately $1 billion to become president, $10 million to become a Senator, and $1 million to become a Member of the House. High-priced campaigns, an elite class of donors and spenders, superPACs, and increasing corporate political power have become the new normal in American politics. In Capitalism v. Democracy, Timothy Kuhner explains how these conditions have corrupted American democracy, turning it into a system of rule that favors the wealthy and marginalizes ordinary citizens. Kuhner maintains that these conditions have corrupted capitalism as well, routing economic competition through political channels and allowing politically powerful companies to evade market forces. The Supreme Court has brought about both forms of corruption by striking down campaign finance reforms that limited the role of money in politics. Exposing the extreme economic worldview that pollutes constitutional interpretation, Kuhner shows how the Court became the architect of American plutocracy.
Capitalism v. Democracy offers the key to understanding why corporations are now citizens, money is political speech, limits on corporate spending are a form of censorship, democracy is a free market, and political equality and democratic integrity are unconstitutional constraints on money in politics. Supreme Court opinions have dictated these conditions in the name of the Constitution, as though the Constitution itself required the privatization of democracy. Kuhner explores the reasons behind these opinions, reveals that they form a blueprint for free market democracy, and demonstrates that this design corrupts both politics and markets. He argues that nothing short of a constitutional amendment can set the necessary boundaries between capitalism and democracy.
Link to the book is available here.
By John T. Harvey | 2015, Edward Elgar
This accessible book provides a non-technical yet rigorous introduction to the various competing schools of thought in economics including Neoclassical, Marxist, Austrian, Post Keynesian, Institutionalist, New Institutionalist, and Feminist. The unique features of each approach are highlighted, complemented by discussions of methodology, world views, popular themes, and current activities. Importantly, the book also examines common criticisms and how each school responds. In the interest of preserving balance and accuracy, every chapter covering a heterodox school of thought has been vetted by an acknowledged expert in that particular field. Though written for use in undergraduate courses, this guide will no doubt offer a great deal to any scholar wishing to gain a fresh perspective and greater understanding of the variety and breadth of current economic thinking.
Link to the book is available here.
By Luis Suarez-Villa | 2014, SUNY Press
The largest, wealthiest corporations have gained unprecedented power and influence in contemporary life. From cradle to grave the decisions made by these entities have an enormous impact on how we live and work, what we eat, our physical and psychological health, what we know or believe, whom we elect, and how we deal with one another and with the natural world around us. At the same time, government seems ever more subservient to the power of these oligopolies, providing numerous forms of corporate welfare—tax breaks, subsidies, guarantees, and bailouts—while neglecting the most basic needs of the population. In Corporate Power, Oligopolies, and the Crisis of the State, Luis Suarez-Villa employs a multidisciplinary perspective to provide unprecedented documentation of a growing crisis of governance, marked by a massive transfer of risk from the private sector to the state, skyrocketing debt, great inequality and economic insecurity, along with an alignment of the interests of politicians and a new, minuscule but immensely wealthy and influential corporate elite. Thanks to this dysfunctional environment, Suarez-Villa argues, stagnation and a vanishing public trust have become the hallmarks of our time.
Link to the book is available here.
Edited by Altug Yalcintas | 2015, Palgrave MacMillan
This volume offers scholarly perspectives on the creative and humorous nature of the Occupy protests that took place at Gezi Park in Turkey, 2013. The contributors argue that these protests inspired musicians, film makers, novelists, poets, writers, social scientists, and other members of the creative class out of a concern for the aesthetics of the protests, rather than seizure of political power. Taken together, they illustrate that when the protestors hit the streets in solidarity against the political establishment, perhaps for the first time in the social and political history of Turkey, the non-material creative talent of the people and their will to create became apparent.
Link to the book is available here.
By John Michael Roberts | 2015, Routledge
Today we often hear academics, commentators, pundits, and politicians telling us that new media has transformed activism, providing an array of networks for ordinary people to become creatively involved in a multitude of social and political practices. But what exactly is the ideology lurking behind these positive claims made about digital publics?
By recourse to various critical thinkers, including Marx, Bakhtin, Deleuze and Guattari, and Gramsci, Digital Publics systematically unpacks this ideology. It explains how a number of influential social theorists and management gurus have consistently argued that we now live in new informational times based in global digital systems and new financial networks, which create new sbjectivities and power relations in societies. Digital Publics traces the historical roots of this thinking, demonstrates its flaws and offers up an alternative Marxist-inspired theory of the public sphere, cultural political economy and financialisation. The book will appeal to scholars and students of cultural studies, critical management studies, political science and sociology.
Link to the book is available here.
By Kevin P. Gallagher | 2015, Cornell University Press
In Ruling Capital, Kevin P. Gallagher demonstrates how several emerging market and developing countries (EMDs) managed to reregulate cross-border financial flows in the wake of the global financial crisis, despite the political and economic difficulty of doing so at the national level. Gallagher also shows that some EMDs, particularly the BRICS coalition, were able to maintain or expand their sovereignty to regulate cross-border finance under global economic governance institutions. Gallagher combines econometric analysis with in-depth interviews with officials and interest groups in select emerging markets and policymakers at the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the G-20 to explain key characteristics of the global economy.
Gallagher develops a theory of countervailing monetary power that shows how emerging markets can counter domestic and international opposition to the regulation of cross-border finance. Although many countries were able to exert countervailing monetary power in the wake of the crisis, such power was not sufficient to stem the magnitude of unstable financial flows that continue to plague the world economy. Drawing on this theory, Gallagher outlines the significant opportunities and obstacles to regulating cross-border finance in the twenty-first century.
Among the key findings and arguments in the book are that:
Link to the book is available here.
By Rick Aalbers and Wilfred Dolfsma | 2015, Routledge
Organizations are complex social systems that are not easy to understand, yet they must be managed if a company is to succeed. This book explains networks and how managers and organizations can navigate them to produce successful strategic innovation outcomes. Although managers are increasingly aware of the importance of social relations for the inner-workings of the organization, they often lack insights and tools to analyze, influence or even create these networks.
This book draws on insights from social network theory; insights sharpened by research in a number of different empirical settings including production, engineering, financial services, consulting, food processing, and R&D/hi-tech organizations and alternates between offering critical real business examples and more rigorous analysis.
This concise book is vital reading for students of business and management as well as managers and executives.
Link to the book is available here.
By Ellen Mutari and Deborah Figart | 2015, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ust One More Hand tells a story that workers all over can relate to: an industry that promised a solid and stable livelihood is being transformed by competitive pressures, causing employees to lose their economic footing. What seemed like a good job one day becomes a bad job the next. Incorporating the real experiences of casino employees, the book demonstrates the difficulties for local communities that are building new casinos in the hopes of luring tourists. Local communities placing all their chips on casinos as an economic development strategy face increasingly long odds.
Life stories of individual workers in Atlantic City are explored in the context of the history of the city and the now-global gaming industry. With more and more casinos competing for customers, employees are feeling the brunt of cost-cutting measures, including the wholesale closure of some casinos. While long-time employees are fighting against concessions and wage stagnation, younger workers juggle multiple part-time and seasonal jobs at several casinos. Policy makers hoping to offset these trends are trying to rebrand Atlantic City for a younger, hipper, and more well-to-do clientele using public-private partnerships. Unfortunately, scant attention is being paid to the core issue in economic development—the need for sustainable livelihoods and meaningful work. Here, Ellen Mutari and Deborah Figart explore the realities of the industry and the lives and challenges the workers within it are facing.
Link to the book is available here.
By Florian Butollo | 2015, Chicago University Press
The Chinese government and international observers argue that China’s economy must overcome its excessive dependence on exports if substantial growth in domestic consumption is to be achieved and sustained in the future. But this shift can only occur if China also lessens its reliance on cheap migrant labor and encourages investment in its own labor force.
In The End of Cheap Labour, Florian Butollo investigates the recent transformation of the garment and LED lighting industries in the Pearl River Delta, China’s largest industrial hub. He reveals that industrial upgrading rarely supports improvements in working conditions and the basic employment pattern; and this failure of “social upgrading” threatens to undermine the desired rebalancing of the Chinese economy. Butollo demonstrates that the implementation of collective labor rights remains an important obstacle in the future of the Chinese growth model.
Link to the book is available here.
By Murray Bookchin| 2015, Verso Books
The ideas about political organization that have animated the new radical movements worldwide.
From Athens to New York, recent mass movements around the world have challenged austerity and authoritarianism with expressions of real democracy. For more than forty years, Murray Bookchin developed these democratic aspirations into a new left politics based on popular assemblies, influencing a wide range of political thinkers and social movements.
With a foreword by the best-selling author of The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Next Revolution brings together Bookchin’s essays on freedom and direct democracy for the first time, offering a bold political vision that can move us from protest to social transformation. A pioneering voice in the ecology and anarchist movements, he is the author of The Ecology of Freedom and Post-Scarcity Anarchism among many other books.
Link to the book is available here.
By Brian Massumi | 2015, Duke University Press Books
Rational self-interest is often seen as being at the heart of liberal economic theory. In The Power at the End of the Economy Brian Massumi provides an alternative explanation, arguing that neoliberalism is grounded in complex interactions between the rational and the emotional. Offering a new theory of political economy that refuses the liberal prioritization of individual choice, Massumi emphasizes the means through which an individual’s affective tendencies resonate with those of others on infra-individual and transindividual levels. This nonconscious dimension of social and political events plays out in ways that defy the traditional equation between affect and the irrational. Massumi uses the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement as examples to show how transformative action that exceeds self-interest takes place. Drawing from David Hume, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhmann and the field of nonconsciousness studies, Massumi urges a rethinking of the relationship between rational choice and affect, arguing for a reassessment of the role of sympathy in political and economic affairs.
Link to the book is available here (for discount enter code "CSL0215POW"@checkout).
By David M. Kotz | 2015, Havard University Press
The financial and economic collapse that began in the United States in 2008 and spread to the rest of the world continues to burden the global economy. David Kotz, who was one of the few academic economists to predict it, argues that the ongoing economic crisis is not simply the aftermath of financial panic and an unusually severe recession but instead is a structural crisis of neoliberal, or free-market, capitalism. Consequently, continuing stagnation cannot be resolved by policy measures alone. It requires major institutional restructuring.
Kotz analyzes the reasons for the rise of free-market ideas, policies, and institutions beginning around 1980. He shows how the neoliberal capitalism that resulted was able to produce a series of long although tepid economic expansions, punctuated by relatively brief recessions, as well as a low rate of inflation. This created the impression of a “Great Moderation.” However, the very same factors that promoted long expansions and low inflation—growing inequality, an increasingly risk-seeking financial sector, and a series of large asset bubbles—were not only objectionable in themselves but also put the economy on an unsustainable trajectory. Kotz interprets the current push for austerity as an attempt to deepen and preserve neoliberal capitalism. However, both economic theory and history suggest that neither austerity measures nor other policy adjustments can bring another period of stable economic expansion. Kotz considers several possible directions of economic restructuring, concluding that significant economic change is likely in the years ahead.
Link to the book is available here.
By William Van Lear | 2015, Palgrave MacMillan
The theories and hypotheses driving economic modeling and policy have real-world, tangible effects on the lives of those implicated. As such, ideologies play a particularly challenging role in economic policymaking, as the decisions made by governing bodies have the potential to alter the lives of many. In this engaging work, Van Lear paints a vivid picture of the social implications of economic thought, creating a careful narrative which stresses the importance behind turning ideas into action within the economic world. This book aims to explain how social outcomes result from the influence of economic ideas which are themselves strongly impacted by the distribution of power in society.
Link to the book is available here.
The Department of Politics and Public Policy at De Montfort University is delighted to announce a full PhD studentship, which will be offered to an outstanding student investigating urban crisis, austerity governance and resistance. The scholarship is available for three years full-time study starting October 2015 and provides a bursary of £14,057 pa in addition to covering University tuition fees. The successful candidates will work with a team of internationally renowned researchers in critical governance and public policy. The studentship is an outstanding opportunity for an ambitious and talented graduate to contribute to our exciting research on crisis and austerity governance and join a thriving group of doctoral students. Please pass details to all potentially interested students.
If you wish to discuss the bursary, contact Professor Jonathan Davies at jsdavies@dmu.ac.uk.
We invite applications from UK or EU students with a strong Master’s degree and a good first degree (First, 2:1 or equivalent) in a relevant subject. For an application pack, please contact Morgan Erdlenbruch via email at Morgan.Erdlenbruch@dmu.ac.uk. Completed applications, together with a 1,500 word research proposal, should be returned with two supporting references.
Please quote ref: DMU Research Scholarships 2015: BAL FB2.
CLOSING DATE: Wednesday 4th March, 2015.
For a more detailed description of the scholarship and the subject area at DMU please visit this website.
GEGI's Cornel Ban has published the following opinion article in Foreign Affairs: Austerity vs. Democracy in Greece
Kevin Gallagher: The American Prospect: Exporting Financial Instability
Kevin Gallagher pens ablog-piecefor the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
China-Latin America Round-Up: News
Bilge Coban and Muzaffer Sisli: Metal Workers Keep Defending the Rights of the Working Class in Turkey
Sangheon Lee: Kuznets after the end of the Kuznets Curve
Ricardo Paes Mamede: Trouble ahead in Portugal, still?
Link to the latest news and articles is available here.
The economists featured a piece on the teaching of economics mentioning Leeds, Greenwich and Kingston as possible role-models; see here.
We the undersigned call on the governments of Europe, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF to respect the decision of the Greek people to choose a new course and to engage the new government of Greece in good faith negotiations to resolve the Greek debt.
The government of Greece is correct to insist on new policies because the previous policies have failed. They have not brought economic recovery. They have not brought financial stability. They have not brought jobs or foreign investments. They have stressed and damaged Greek society and weakened Greek institutions. There is therefore no value in that approach and no progress to preserve. We urge Greece’s European partners to accept this reality, without which the new government would never have been elected. Greece needs immediate humanitarian measures, a higher minimum wage, new jobs, new investments, and steps to restore and improve basic services such as education and health care. It needs a stronger and more progressive tax system, less dependent on VAT and better able to tax incomes and wealth. It needs to fight, punish and root out corruption. The new government needs fiscal space to implement these measures and to demonstrate their worth, and it needs continuing financial support from the European Central Bank to stabilize the financial sector meanwhile. We urge Greece’s European partners and institutions to provide that fiscal space and that support.
The government of Greece is correct to ask for a write-off of debts owed to European partners. These debts are unsustainable and so will not be paid in any event. There is therefore no economic loss involved, for any other nation or its taxpayers, in writing them off. On the contrary, a fresh start for Greece will help bring new activity, income, jobs and profit to her partners. We urge Greece’s creditors to seize this chance, and to explain these facts clearly and candidly to their own peoples.
These issues also engage the future of Europe as a whole. A policy of menace, threats, deadlines, obstinacy and blackmail will demonstrate to all Europeans that the European project will have failed. It will have failed morally, politically, and as a matter of economics. We urge Europe’s leaders to reject and condemn all efforts to coerce the government and people of Greece.
Conversely, success for Greece can show the path toward renewed prosperity and stability for Europe, with a new role for democracy and a new openness to elections that bring constructive change. We stand with Greece and with Europe, with democracy and with change. We urge Europe’s leaders to recognize the special basis of Greek decision-making in hard-fought and decisive democratic choice, and to choose the path of realistic assessment and reasonable negotiation.
You may sign it by leaving your name and if appropriate your affiliation as a comment to this post. Please do not comment further on this post as it will make the collection of the signatures more difficult.
Send enquires to Cedric Durand cedric.durand@ehess.fr.
It's out! The UK's subject benchmark statement for economics (SBSE), against which the quality of UK economics degrees is judged, has been published online. The QAA can withdraw degree awarding powers and the right to be called a university if it is not satisfied with standards and quality. The draft 2015 SBSE appears nine months after Rethinking Economics represented student voices at the QAA committee. The QAA have a survey to gather comments from 'anyone with an interest in higher education in the UK' including students, academic staff and graduate employers.
This brief post is to review changes since the 2007 SBSE, by mapping them against student calls for theoretical, methodological and interdisciplinary pluralism.
Theoretical pluralism
There is a new statement that ‘various interpretations of commonly observed economic phenomena exist, due to observational equivalence, and hence explanations may be contested. It is therefore important that economic phenomena are studied in their relevant historical, political, institutional and international contexts' (Section 2.2). Resources are no longer 'scarce' (Section 2.1) and economics is more modestly described as 'a social science' rather than 'a key discipline in the social sciences’ (Section 2.3). The phrase ‘a coherent core of economic principles’ has been replaced with the more open-minded 'relevant principles' (Section 4.1) and the threshold levels required by students refer to 'economic theories and interpretations' rather than just a single 'theory'. Finance and income distribution have been reclassified as dynamic analyses (Section 2.2.) and the subject specific skills include 'market failure' and 'conflicts of interest' (Section 5), perhaps in recognition of Minsky and Marx.
Methodological and interdisciplinary pluralism
The problems with abstraction have been highlighted, with students expected ‘(to appreciate) the specific assumptions that guide the criteria for simplification’ (Section 3.1). Students will be assessed on their ability to use 'evidence and knowledge of institutional and historical context' (Sections 6 and 7). In terms of their role in the broader academy, economists are said to engage with a wider range of disciplines, including ‘finance, international relations, law, ethics and philosophy’.
What is left out?
There are notable absences, and this list is not exhaustive. Although governments were accepted as economic entities, financial institutions were not; and legal and ethical contexts are not included (Section 2.2). The relationship with mathematics and management remains muddled: mathematics is used and management is informed (Section 2.3). Evidence is evaluated and assessed, but never critically. The role of government and the System of National Accounts were rejected as topics, as was re-wording to encompass qualitative and mixed methods. Students are asked to 'appreciate history (of economic thought)' but not to understand it; and there is no requirement to appreciate or understand ethical issues.
The Association for Social Economics (ASE) seeks a new Treasurer. The main responsibilities of this position include:
Familiarity with a financial software package is helpful. Interested individuals should send a cv and a letter expressing interest to the committee Chair, Steven Pressman (pressman@monmouth.edu). Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. Compensation for the position will be hotel, registration and travel expenses for the ASSA conference. The Association for Social Economics is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, or disability.
It is very sad to report that Robert E. Prasch, professor of economics at Middlebury College, has died unexpectedly.
See the official note released by Middlebury College here.