May 11, 2013
"Economics is a child of the oil age, of the hydrocarbon age, and it’s very difficult to get the profession to accept that price does not do what you want it to do in this situation. I would argue that there’s no substitutability between oil and renewables for many applications. By the time you’ve built the wind farm out at sea, you’ve got that electricity back on shore to put into a battery, the losses involved with that compared with burning oil are so huge that you can’t do the same sorts of things with it. The costs involved don’t allow it. That’s a conversation which is met with blank incredulity amongst most of my profession unfortunately."

— Calvin Jones at Transition Culture. An interview with Prof. Calvin Jones: “Economics is a child of the oil age”

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(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: economics peak oil 
May 10, 2013
"This argument leads directly into a damning (and to me entirely convincing) indictment of the UK government’s privatization and ‘marketization’ of public services from Margaret Thatcher on. These have not created true markets. Instead, they have resulted in a kind of horrid chimera of government and private actor, with no obvious lines of accountability."

—

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber. Colin Crouch – The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism

Book (Amazon)

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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: economics neo-liberalism 
May 9, 2013
"Economic decision-making is methodically being taken out of democratic politics as the spectrum of acceptable policy choices has been dramatically narrowed. Politics has been reduced to the art of adjusting to the imperatives of the market."

— Ivan Krastev quoted in an article by Ethan Zuckerman at My Heart’s in Accra. Big stories and little details: what Charles Mann misses

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(Notes: 7)
  
Filed under: peak oil atmosperic carbon economics 
May 9, 2013
"What probably stands out with mainstream economists is their awe of the power of markets and their belief that the market logic will eventually vanquish whatever obstacle is placed on its path. As a result, economists tend to look down on other social scientists, as those distant, less competent cousins who may ask interesting questions sometimes but never get the answers right."

— Dani Rodrik at his blog. What is wrong (and right) in economics?

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(Notes: 6)
  
Filed under: economics heterodoxy 
May 8, 2013
"But here’s the sting in the tail of my story about Kilkenomics. When I criticized the “Road to Bangladesh” strategy, the conservative economists I was appearing with rushed to praise Bangladesh as the model for successful economic growth through exceptionally low wages. They responded that if Portugal was in fact on the Road to Bangladesh it was actually on the road to success."

—

Bill Black at Alternet. Why Economic Criminals View Bangladesh as a Model for Workers Everywhere

Low wages and horrible conditions are just dandy in the neoclassical economic textbook.

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(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: economics neo-liberalism 
May 2, 2013
"If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).
We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful."

—

Charles Hugh Smith from his book as an addendum to a post at his blog. The Real Cyprus Template (the one you’re not supposed to notice)

His book, Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It

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(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: book economics 
May 1, 2013
Can we rely on our current understanding of the economy?

This is from a great new paper by Dirk Helbing and Alan Kirman, which asks and attempts to answer many questions that are of importance to development, and answer them by drawing on ideas from complexity theory. Well worth a read.

Ben Ramalingam.

Mostly I do not enjoy reading papers in economics. This paper uses exceptionally clear language to rethink some of the basic assumptions of macroeconomics and financial theory. It really is worth clicking through to read, 

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(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: economics complexity 
April 29, 2013
"After all, as I and many others have long argued, austerity was never really an economic policy: ultimately, it was always about morality. We are talking about a politics of crime and punishment, sin and atonement. True, it’s never been particularly clear exactly what the original sin was: some combination, perhaps, of tax avoidance, laziness, benefit fraud and the election of irresponsible leaders. But in a larger sense, the message was that we were guilty of having dreamed of social security, humane working conditions, pensions, social and economic democracy."

— David Graeber in The Guardian. There’s no need for all this economic sadomasochism

If Reinhart and Rogoff’s ‘error’ has discredited the prevailing policy dogma, now is the time for an alternative that works

Finally a link to this puzzling case of errors in an academic economics paper to post. I notice that I tagged some links about it with “academia.” Probably not the main significance, but I’ve been rather fixated on Reinhart and Rogoff’s unembarrassed and uncharitable reaction to their mistakes. Graeber makes sense of it by pointing out it was never about economics in the first place.

BBC with a good background report about the errors and the discovery.

A link to the paper crtiquing  Reinhart and Rogoff’s paper.

Dean Baker, Reinhart and Rogoff Are Not Being Straight
  

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(Notes: 14)
  
Filed under: economics austerity morality academia 
April 10, 2013
"Conservatives have succeeded in casting government spending as useless profligacy that has made economy worse, centering the policy debate in the wake of the financial crisis on draconian budget cuts. They are told that they need to live in an age of austerity since they have all lived beyond their means and now need to tighten their belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer."

—

Mark Blythe via Giorgio Bertini—who is a very useful curator with his Learning Change Project. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

Book at Google Books

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(Notes: 10)
  
Filed under: economics austerity 
April 9, 2013
"What Bowles is essentially saying is that sharing the wealth causes an increase in the amount of wealth in the economy, due to more economic activity and job creation. This creates a larger and more robust tax base and reduces the benefits bill. Surely policymakers should be not just investigating but piloting projects based on Bowles’ ideas."

— Mamading Ceesay at London Creative Labs. INSIGHTS INTO ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND JOB CREATION FROM SAMUEL BOWLES

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(Notes: 9)
  
Filed under: economics inequality work debt 
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