St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar - 'Why there will Never be a Complete Consensus in Macroeconomics: A Tale of Group Thinking and Paradigms’ by John McCombie
2018-04-25 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday, 25 April 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: John McCombie
Talk Title: ‘Why there will Never be a Complete Consensus in Macroeconomics: A Tale of Group Thinking and Paradigms’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
The next St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar in the series on the Economics of Austerity, will be held on 25 April, 2018 – John McCombie will give a talk on “Why there will Never be a Complete Consensus in Macroeconomics: A Tale of Group Thinking and Paradigms”.The seminar will be held in the Ramsden Room at St Catharine’s College from 6.00-7.30 pm. All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.
Speaker:
John McCombie is Emeritus Professor in Regional and Applied Economics, and Senior Emeritus Fellow of the Department of Land Economy. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association. John is Director of the Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy; Emeritus Fellow in Economics, Downing College; Director of Studies in Land Economy, Christ’s College, Downing College and Girton College. He was formerly a lecturer in Economics at the University of Hull and at the University of Melbourne. His interests are regional economics, post Keynesian macroeconomics, the causes of variations in national and regional growth rates, income inequality, trade and economic geography and the methodological implications for macroeconomics of the Great Financial Crisis. He is a consultant to the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank and was a Special Advisor to a House of Lords Subcommittee inquiring into the EU regional funds. He was a founding co-editor of Spatial Economic Analysis and a former editor of Regional Studies. He has recently published (with Jesus Felipe) a book entitled The Aggregate Production Function and Technical Change; ‘Not Even Wrong’. This presents a fundamental criticism of one of the central concepts of neoclassical macroeconomics. He is currently researching into the economic and philosophical issues (including Rawls’ ‘Justice as Fairness’ and the concept of ‘Just Deserts’) concerning the optimal degree of income inequality..
Talk Overview:
After the acrimonious debates between the New Classical and Keynesian economists in the 1980s and 1990s, a complacent New Macroeconomic Consensus was achieved and by 2006, according to its adherents, all the major theoretical problems were deemed solved. The sub-prime crisis exposed fundamental flaws in this approach and for a time there was a return to the putatively discredited Keynesian Economics of fifty years ago. Using this as one example, this seminar looks at the broader question as to why competing schools of thought can, and have persisted, almost indefinitely in macroeconomics. This is notwithstanding the emergence of a dominant, or mainstream, approach. This contribution draws on Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm and the sociology of knowledge to understand why previous debates re-emerge and why some economists question whether there has been any meaningful progress in macroeconomics over the last thirty years. It also considers the strange case of the aggregate production function, which is at the heart of both applied and theoretical neoclassical macroeconomics. This is in spite of the fact that it is logically impossible to derive the production function from micro-foundations (the aggregation problem) and why it is always possible to obtain a near perfect statistical fit to the putative production function, although the estimates tell us nothing about the underlying economy. This raises some further important methodological issues for macroeconomics.
Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (mk24@cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – 'Modelling the Impacts of Brexit on Low-Income Households' by Sophie Heald, Richard Lewney &Laurie Heykoop
2018-05-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday 30 May 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Sophie Heald, Richard Lewney and Laurie Heykoop
Talk Title: ‘Modelling the Impacts of Brexit on Low-Income Households’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.
Speakers
Sophie Heald is a project manager and economist in the macroeconomic modelling team at Cambridge Econometrics. She specialises in the application of large-scale econometric models for scenario analysis and has several years’ experience modelling policy scenarios using E3ME, an econometric model of the global economy. In recent months Sophie has contributed to the European Commission’s impact assessment on the macroeconomic effects of measures to improve work-life balance and, for the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), she managed a project to assess the wider macroeconomic effects of measures to improve gender equality. Sophie led on the economic modelling and contributed to the scenario design for this study into the impacts of Brexit on low-income households.
Richard Lewney is Chairman of Cambridge Econometrics where he has worked since 1988. He specialises in the application of economic modelling to policy analysis, policy evaluation and forecasting, and he directed the study on which this seminar draws. He recently completed a two-year project for DG Energy to improve the treatment of innovation and finance in the macroeconomic modelling of decarbonisation policies. He led the macroeconomic modelling for DG Employment’s study on the feasibility of a pan-European unemployment benefit system. He is currently directing a project to extend and upgrade the economic modelling capability of Malta’s Ministry for Finance. He was the lead economist for the Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review. He is a Trustee of the Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics which owns Cambridge Econometrics.
Laurie Heykoop is an economist at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. His current areas of research include analysis of potential impacts of Brexit on low-income households, and monitoring the impact of inflation on the living standards of low-income households. Having graduated BA Economics and Politics at Manchester University in 2012, prior to his current post Laurie spent over three years as a government economist.
His work included producing official gas price projections, advising on options to reform agri-environment schemes, and producing models to enhance targeting of fuel poverty programmes. His other research interests include the economics of land, housing, and inequality.
Talk Overview
Several organisations across government, academia, and think tanks have modelled the potential economic impacts of post-Brexit trading arrangements. These have primarily focussed on economy-wide impacts. The research presented in this seminar focuses on analysis of impacts on low-income households. The research models a range of potential post-Brexit trading arrangements, producing estimates for impacts on prices, wages, and employment and then assesses the particular implications for low-income households.

Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

Post-Keynesian Economics Study Group Annual Workshop
2018-05-31 08:00 - 18:00 | Goldsmiths, University of London, London, SE14 6NW, United Kingdom
The 28th PKES annual workshop will take place at Goldsmiths, University of London (Room 306 Professor Stuart Hall Building New Cross, London, SE14 6NW) at 10.00 – 18.00 on Thursday 31 May. The programme is available at: http://www.postkeynesian.net/events/10042018-28th-pkes-annual-workshop/
Speakers include Danielle Guizzo, Marc Lavoie, Malcom Sawyer Gregor Semieniuk, Dimitris Sotiropoulos, Hanna Szymborska, Isabella Weber, Rafael Wildauer and Ariel Wirkierman.
If you are interested in participating, please register by sending an email to: G.Galanis@gold.ac.uk.
Tea and Coffee will be provided and we would be delighted if you could join us for dinner afterwards (at own expense).
The organising Committee
Giorgos Galanis, Maria Nikolaidi, Engelbert Stockhammer and Isabella Weber

15th International Conference Developments in Economic Theory and Policy
2018-06-28 - 2018-06-29
The Department of Applied Economics V of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU and the Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy, Department of Land Economy, of the University of Cambridge, are organizing the 15th International Conference Developments in Economic Theory and Policy. The Conference will be held in Bilbao (Spain), the days 28th and 29th of June 2018.
For more information, you can contact with Jesus Ferreiro (jesus.ferreiro@ehu.eus)

Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute Conference 2018
2018-07-02 - 2018-07-04
Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute Conference 2018
Call for Proposals
Political Economy Ten Years After the Crisis
Halifax Hall, University of Sheffield
2-4 July 2018
The SPERI Conference is becoming increasingly recognised as a key forum for debating major contemporary issues in political economy in new and challenging ways. It takes place in Halifax Hall in a leafy part of Sheffield and always attracts a range of leading scholars, doctoral students and practitioners with an interest in political economy.
Our 2018 conference will take place just a few weeks before the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event which exemplified the early stages of the financial crisis. We invite you to submit proposals for a panel of 3-4 papers, or an individual paper, related to the following conference themes:

The unfolding impact of the crisis: the upheaval created by the 2008 crisis and subsequent recession, including Brexit and shifting global economic power; the long-term social and political consequences of the crisis; the capitalist economy’s legitimacy crisis.
Responses to crisis dynamics: moves towards ‘inclusive growth’ and the rediscovery of ‘industrial strategy’; the rise of populism on the left and the right; prospects for the renewal of global governance.
The political economy of the longue durée: the role of historical approaches in understanding contemporary capitalist development; the 2008 crisis as a historical ‘juncture’, comparable but distinct to previous crises; the ability of political economists to foresee future change, including a deepening of the present crisis.
The generational implications of crisis: differential impacts and understandings of crisis across people at different life-stages; the ‘normalisation’ of crisis imperatives in young people’s political imaginaries; apparent conflict between different age cohorts.
Institutional upheaval and continuity: the changing role of the state in relation to the capitalist economy; how institutions ‘absorb’ crisis dynamics; the emergence of a new post-crisis institutional framework for ‘managed capitalism’.

More generally, we would be interested in panel and paper proposals which address any of SPERI’s main research areas.
The opening plenary session of the conference will be addressed by Professor Adam Tooze, Professor of History at Columbia University and author of The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931. Professor Tooze will be speaking about his ongoing work on the history of the financial crisis. Other speakers already committed to address plenary sessions include: Helen Thompson (University of Cambridge), Richard Roberts (King’s College London), Michael Moran (University of Manchester), Ann Pettifor (PRIME Economics) and Torsten Bell (Resolution Foundation). More plenary speakers will be announced in due course.
More information about the conference can be found on the SPERI conference website.
Please submit your panel or paper proposal(s) to the conference administrator by emailing speri@sheffield.ac.uk by no later than Monday 18th December.
Please also feel free to discuss your ideas in advance with any of the conference convenors:
Colin Hay, Craig Berry and Adam Leaver

20th Anniversary Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics
2018-07-05 - 2018-07-07 | De Montfort University, Leicester, The Gateway,, Leicester, LE1 9BH, United Kingdom
5-7th July 2018, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
The 20th Anniversary Conference of the AHE (Association of Heterodox Economics) is being held at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. The AHE has established a reputation as a major forum for the discussion and development of interdisciplinary and pluralistic alternatives to mainstream economics. It is committed to strengthening the community of heterodox economists, and to the development of heterodox economic theories. Recognition of failures within mainstream economics and popular discontent about economic problems are widespread. We particularly encourage submissions for streams and papers on the history of economics; finance, banking and financialisation; austerity, inequality and diversity; sustainable economics and climate change; methodology; teaching and learning; heterodox microeconomics; and other standpoints which critically examine the mainstream, such as critical management studies.
Academic Committee
Proposals for streams, papers and bursaries will be reviewed by an academic committee comprising Lynne Chester (University of Sydney), Thoralf Dassler (University of Westminster), Ioana Negru (SOAS, University of London), and Bruce Philp (Birmingham City Business School). We aim to notify successful participants and bursary winners within two weeks of the closing date. The decision of the academic committee will be final.
Please complete this form with your proposal(s): https://goo.gl/forms/gHeHpOUAGtkj6TvY2
The conference language is English. Normal sessions will be 90 minutes long and will usually consist of two or three papers with at least one discussant. You do not need to submit a paper to register. Participants should be prepared to serve as discussants and/or session chairs.
Deadlines

Proposals for complete sessions by 1st February 2018:
Abstracts for single papers (not more than 250 words) by 1st March 2018.
Draft papers for refereeing by 1st May 2018.
Normal registration by 1st May 2018.
Late registration by 1st June 2018.
Final submission of papers, for inclusion in the online programme, by 8th June 2018.

For further details, please go to: http://hetecon.net/?page=ahe_conferences&side=20th_call_for_papers

Back on the Agenda? Industrial Policy revisited Conference
2018-07-12 - 2018-07-13 | Senior Combination Room (SCR), St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
The 2018 Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society Conference will be on the topic of ‘Industrial Policy’ and will be held on 12-13 July 2018 at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.
After years of disrepute in several countries, Industrial Policy (IP) is back in vogue of late at regional, national and international levels, driven by concerns over competitiveness, globalisation, de-industrialisation, unemployment and, in the European case, by comparatively slow growth. Modern industrial policy is a broad concept and has moved beyond entailing specific industrial policies (that aim to improve the competitiveness of particular firms and sectors); rather, it is increasingly viewed as the architecture through which the state enables businesses and people to acquire new capabilities to enhance growth and socio-economic development within geographical places.
The conference themes include:

Rethinking sectoral and regional-level industrial policies
Changes in manufacturing processes
Smart Specialisation strategies
Enhancing growth and socio-economic development
Regional/International policies

CALL FOR PAPERS
The Special Issue Editors welcome papers for consideration from academics and researchers seeking to build upon recent research on industrial policy and smart specialisation.
Authors interested in publishing in the Special Issue should submit:
Abstract: Around 400 words
Email: Francis Knights fk240@cam.ac.uk
Abstract Deadline: 6 January 2018

Global Conference on Economic Geography 2018
2018-07-24 08:00 - 2018-07-28 17:00
Cologne, 24-28 July, 2018
Session: Global finance, development, and the new peripheries
Organizers: Leigh Johnson (University of Oregon); Stefan Ouma (Goethe University-Frankfurt); Patrick Bigger (Lancaster University)
This session examines the significance of financial relations and transactions in spaces of the global South that have typically been figured as “marginal” to, if not altogether excluded from, the operations of global finance. As finance relentlessly seeks to identify further spatial fixes and revenue streams, this session will probe the particularities of integration. What assemblages and legacies – (post)colonial and otherwise – characterize these spaces? What are the regional coordinates of integration, and the concrete social, political and material landscapes it produces?
The optic of “peripheries” – with its roots in dependency theory – highlights the relations of power, subordination and exploitation produced through finance’s expansion and experimentation at its frontiers. As certain places are linked to global flows of capital, they can become peripheralized in new ways. Yet as some “financial innovation” originates in the South and travels to the global North (e.g. mobile money and microfinance) and the South more generally becomes a source of capital (e.g. sovereign wealth or pension funds), existing understandings of peripheralisation must be reexamined. How can the dependent and extraverted notions of development suggested by the term “periphery” be reworked to make a place for heterogeneous forms of economic self-fashioning? How might other concepts such as extraction, dispossession, value grabbing, disarticulations and expulsion help render intelligible the new peripheral operations of finance and the place-making projects that emerge from them?
We especially invite papers making conceptual advances using empirical cases on topics including but not limited to: financial inclusion and adverse incorporation; new sites of experimentation and product development; the financialisation of development; multiple frontiers of peripheral financialisation (e.g. land, agriculture, nature, housing, manufacturing, IT…); macroeconomic policies, links between micro and macro scale finance; relationships between global and “indigenous” financial practices, institutions, and discourses; rethinking the core(s) of global finance.
Abstract Submission:
If this is of interest, please submit your abstract by filling out the embedded form and selecting this session as your first choice at: https://www.gceg2018.com/nc/call-for-sessions-and-papers/submit-an-abstract.html by 15 February, 2018.
We aim to finalize the session(s) by 1 March, a bit ahead of the conference abstract deadline.
Any questions about the session may be directed to Patrick Bigger at p.bigger@lancaster.ac.uk.

European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) 30th Annual Conference
2018-09-05 08:00 - 2018-09-08 17:00
European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) is having its annual conference in Nice during 6-8 September.
The 30th EAEPE Annual Conference will take place in Nice on 6-8 September 2018. The theme is to consider existing evolutionary theories and new developments in the field and the potential for putting theory in practice to cope with the complexity of the real world.
There is also a pre-conference for young scholars will be taking place during 5-6 September. Organized by a team of PhD students and currently in its 4th edition, pre-conference has an interactive format and aims at bringing motivated young scholars and established senior academics together. Content-wise, pre-conference consists of a series of workshops, a dedicated time slot for students to introduce their research projects and a dinner. It serves as a perfect venue to interact and network as well as to attend theme-specific workshops: this year pre-conference speakers are Erik Reinert, Özlem Onaran, Agnes Labrousse, and Alessandro Caiani. Apply here by May 31. Participation is free of charge for those who are registered for the main conference but participants need to submit a motivation letter. Students who are not taking part of the main conference are also welcome to apply but will need to pay a registration fee of 90 EUR. Meanwhile, a limited amount of travel stipends and tuition fee waivers is available. For further inquiries please contact pre-conference team via eaepe.preconference@gmail.com

PEF Event: Will Hutton 'Change Britain, Stop Brexit' - 9 Oct
2018-10-09 19:00 - 20:00
‘Change Britain, Stop Brexit’ by Will Hutton.
Co-hosted by Progressive Economy Forum (PEF) and SOAS
The lecture will take place on the 9th October at 7pm in SOAS’s Brunei Lecture Theatre.
To register your attendance please go to the EventBrite page.
Any questions please contact: mdavies@progressiveeconomyforum.com or go to the PEF website
The EU referendum result exposed deep economic and social divisions in our society, and this was decisive in persuading millions to vote against the status quo. Leave voters were right; this status quo is insupportable, and too many of our fellow citizens are leading lives haunted by lack of income and opportunity. But the answer was never to blame the EU and immigration, the unholy if politically adept message of Leavers. Rather, our problems have been firmly minted at home by a succession of policy failures that go back decades.
Building on the themes of his most recent book Saving Britain: How We Can Prosper in a New European Future (with Andrew Adonis), in this lecture Will Hutton sets out an agenda to repurpose British companies and the financial system, to address inequality at root by re-enfranchising workers, to remake a shattered social contract and to rebuild the British polity around the principles of decentralisation, commitment to the creation of public value and genuine accountability. Only thus can Britain full-heartedly take its place as a full member of the EU – and seize the opportunities afforded by new technologies and globalisation.

Ann Pettifor "Can a British government regain control over the financial system - a great public good? Or are we doomed to more financial crises?"
2018-10-10 17:00 - 18:30 | University of Greenwich, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, United Kingdom
Seminar by Ann Pettifor on “Can a British government regain control over the financial system – a great public good? Or are we doomed to more financial crises?” on 10 October 2018, at the University of Greenwich, King William Court, room KW303, at 17:00-18:15.
The talk is part of the Big Picture Series of the University of Greenwich, and it is co-organised by the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre/ Institute of Political Economy.

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – “Fiscal Space: What have we learnt since the crises?" by Jagjit Chadha
2018-10-10 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday 10 October 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Jagjit Chadha
Talk Title:“Fiscal Space: What have we learnt since the crises?”
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.
Speaker
Jagjit Chadha is Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. He is on a full time absence of leave as Professor of Economics at the University of Kent and was a part-time Professor of economics at Cambridge. He was previously Professor of Economics at the University of St Andrews and Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge. He has worked at the Bank of England as an Official working on Monetary Policy and as Chief Quantitative Economist at BNP Paribas. He has acted as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and academic adviser to both the Bank of England and HM Treasury. He sits on the Research Committee of the Economics and Social Research Council and on the REF2020 panel. His main research interests are developing the links between finance and macroeconomics in general equilibrium models and he has published widely in economics journals. He has just completed a British Academy Grant to study fiscal data in the 19th century.
Talk Overview
Jagjit Chadha will talk on the traditional approach to fiscal policy, which involves respecting the simple notion of debt sustainability. This over-riding concern has led to considerable weight being placed on cutting public expenditure following a ballooning in public debt after the great financial crisis. We have also formulated a sequence of fiscal rules and around the world observe that Councils have been developed to support the credibility of fiscal policy under uncertainty. But have we done the right thing? Jagjit will consider a number of possible extensions to the standard response of seeking to reduce debt and limiting taxation. First, we shall examine how episodes of high public debt are successfully reversed? Secondly, we shall consider what links between monetary and fiscal policy that are overlooked, in particular by drawing on the experience of QE. Thirdly, how are the prescriptions for monetary and fiscal policy affected by market incompleteness? And finally what role does the debt management of maturity and debt instruments play setting fiscal policy? Jagjit will illustrate with examples from the past and from the recent crisis in the Euro Area and suggest that our current settlement of tight monetary-fiscal policy may be responsible for the economic trap of low growth.

Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

SOAS Money and Development Seminars: Trevor Evans 'The Economic Expansion in the US since 2009' - 11 Oct
2018-10-11 17:00 - 19:00
Trevor Evans (Berlin) will give the next Money and Development Seminar on ‘The Economic Expansion in the US since 2009’
Thursday 11 October at 17.00
In room SG35 (Paul Webley Wing, Senate House North Block)
SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street
London WC1H 0XG
nearest underground station: Russell Square

Economics for Campaigners event on 'What is finance for?'
2018-10-11 19:00 - 21:00 | University of Greenwich, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, United Kingdom
“Economics for Campaigners”
Free public event
Organized by Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre (GPERC), Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) & University of Greenwich (UoG)
Free public lecture for citizens and campaigners on “What is finance for?” on the 11th of October 2018, room Queen Anne Court QA075, 19:00, University of Greenwich.
Jeff Powell, Senior Lecturer in Economics, UoG
· How has the role of the financial sector changed over time, and why has it changed?
· How big should the financial sector be?
· How do we understand or even measure the costs and benefits of finance?
· What is financialisation? Are we financialised? (and could we be de-financialising?)
· What to do about all this? Does regulation work? What about ‘alternative finance’?
There will be an interactive discussion exploring difficult questions; we will debunk myths, challenge common misconceptions, and discuss alternatives to mainstream policies. The aim is to support citizens and campaigners to become confident in contributing to policy debates in their communities and organisations about the most urgent social and economic questions of our time. We assume no prior background knowledge and aim to introduce key concepts building on your experience as citizens or campaigners.
All events are scheduled for 19:00-21:00 to make it feasible to attend after work. Events are two hours per month including an introduction and lots of time for debate in a participatory format including group discussions and/or questions and answers.

Cambridge Realist Workshop – Tony Lawson - How should economics be changed (if at all)?
2018-10-15 19:30 - 21:00 | Newnham College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Tony Lawson
Talk Title: ‘How should economics be changed (if at all)?’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – ‘Scientific Macroeconomics and the Quantity Theory of Credit’ by Richard Werner
2018-10-17 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday 17 October 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Richard Werner
Talk Title: ‘Scientific Macroeconomics and the Quantity Theory of Credit’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.
Speaker:
Richard Werner is Professor and Chair in International Banking at the University of Southampton (since 2005), and is founding director of the Centre for Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development. He is a Member of Linacre College, Oxford, Convenor of the Association for Research on Banking and the Economy (ARBE), and member of the ECB Shadow Council. He is also the founding chair of Local First, a community interest company establishing not-for-profit community banks in the UK, starting with the Hampshire Community Bank. Richard previously was a Professor of monetary, macro and development economics at Goethe-University Frankfurt and assistant professor at Sophia University, Tokyo. In 1992, as European Commission Fellow at Oxford, Richard integrated the banking system in a macroeconomic model able to distinguish between the impact of bank credit on asset markets and economic growth (the ‘Quantity Theory of Disaggregated Credit’), and warned of the coming banking crisis and deep recession in Japan. In 1995 he advanced a post-banking crisis monetary policy to stimulate the economy, which he called ‘Quantitative Easing’ (followed in 1998 by ‘Enhanced Debt Management’). In 2003 he warned of the credit-driven asset bubbles and crises in the eurozone. Richard has published in journals and in books.
Talk Overview:
Alison in Wonderland was not an equilibrium economist: she only believed six impossible things before breakfast (equilibrium economists need to believe at least eight impossible things). Scientific research methodology is reviewed and it is proposed to also deploy it in economics. Doing this, key features of how actual economies work can be established. It is seen that all markets must be expected to be rationed (i.e. in disequilibrium). Scientific methodology also helps in identifying the link between the financial system and the real economy, including sustainable development, the role of interest rates, money and the existence and functioning of banks. It is seen how to predict and prevent boom-bust cycles, banking crises and subsequent recessions, as well as how to react appropriately once they happen, without burdening the tax payer. The role of central banks is also discussed, as well as their reaction to the empirical refutation of their longstanding preferred narrative.
Please contact the seminar organisers
Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (mk24@cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query

Cambridge Realist Workshop – Eckhard Rosenbaum - Institutions and mental models – Some reflections on the interplay of social reality and its representation
2018-10-29 19:30 - 21:00 | Newnham College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Eckhard Rosenbaum
Talk Title: ‘Institutions and mental models – Some reflections on the interplay of social reality and its representation?’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

'Growth and Crisis under Finance-dominated Capitalism: A Stock-flow consistent approach' - Professor Amit Bhaduri
2018-10-31 17:00 - 19:00
Professor Amit Bhaduri (Delhi) on Wednesday 31 October at 17.00
‘Growth and Crisis under Finance-dominated Capitalism: A Stock-flow consistent approach’
Discussant: Professor Jerzy Osiatynski (Polish Monetary Policy Committee)
Alumni Lecture Theatre (Paul Webley Wing, Senate House North Block)
SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street
London WC1H 0XG
nearest underground station: Russell Square.
Research on Money and Finance – RMF
www.researchonmoneyandfinance.org
To post to this group, send email to repemf@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/repemf?hl=en

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – ‘De-unionization and the growing Inequality’ by Ahmad Seyf
2018-11-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday 7 November 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Ahmad Seyf
Talk Title: ‘De-unionization and the growing Inequality’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.
Speaker:
Ahmad Seyf is currently a member of the Cambridge Centre of Economic and Public Policy (CCEPP), and has retired from the Department of Management and Human Resources at Regent’s University. Prior to Regent’s University, he taught at the Department of Economics at the University of Staffordshire. His main research interests are international business economics, globalisation and the economic and social history of the Middle East. Recent publications include, ‘Population and Agricultural Development in Iran, 1800-1906’ in Middle Eastern Studies, 2009, and ‘Iran and the Great Famine, 1870-1872’ in Middle Eastern Studies, 2010.
His books include Iran’s Contemporary Political Economy (2012), the Economy of Iran under Ahmadinejad (2012), Crisis in Despotism in Iran (2014), Capitalism and Democracy (2016) and The Great Recession, Iranian view ((2017, Anti-Neoliberalism (2018). His recent publications in English are, The Emerging Economies and the Great Recession (2016), and The Need for Relevant Policies to Tackle Inequality (2017).
Talk Overview:
This contribution examines the growing inequality and offers a brief historical examination as to its roots in the last four decades.
An important point to make is that this growing divide is not ‘an act of God or nature’ but has been initiated by policy decisions and laws made in the last four decades, e.g. reducing the power and influence of trade unions, enhancing the impact of the banks, keeping wages down, insisting on a rich-man-friendly tax reforms, which, in turn, were passed by legislators who were elected. It follows that if there is sufficient political will, things can change again through government or legislative action by those we care to elect to form the government.
Reversing some of the decisions on taxes and making them more progressive could help, but more fundamental reforms; especially on labour market institutions are needed. We need to tackle rising inequality in market income by strengthening trade unions which is of paramount importance as the recent history of inequality reveals. To enhance the impact, this measure must be supplemented by relevant fiscal policies to make our taxes more progressive and our social expenditures better targeted. This will be the focus of this contribution.

Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

The Insecurity Cycle Workshop
2018-11-08 13:00 - 17:00 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
CBR/PPSRI Workshop: The Insecurity Cycle
How far can ‘free’ markets serve the interests of society? Can labour and financial markets be brought into balance with each other? What drives the conventional wisdom that appears to set the parameters to public policy, and which might help to explain why it has been so difficult to bring about lasting institutional change following the global financial crisis? These are among the issues addressed by Sue Konzelmann, Simon Deakin, Marc Fovargue-Davies and Frank Wilkinson in their book, Labour, Finance and Inequality: The Insecurity Cycle in British Public Policy, published in April 2018. The Centre for Business Research (‘CBR’) and the Public Policy Strategic Research Initiative (PPSRI) will be holding a workshop on 8 November to discuss themes emerging from the book.
Date
Thursday 8 November 2018
Location
The Ramsden Room, St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge
https://www.caths.cam.ac.uk/about-us/visiting-college/maps
Schedule
Lunch will be served from 1:00 p.m. The Workshop will begin at 2:00 p.m. and conclude no later than 5:00 p.m.
Speakers
Simon Deakin, CBR, University of Cambridge
Ruth Dukes, University of Glasgow
Marc Fovargue-Davies, CBR, University of Cambridge
John Kelly, Birkbeck, University of London
Sue Konzelmann, Birkbeck, University of London, and the Progressive Economic Forum
Vicky Pryce, Centre for Economics and Business Research, London
Colin Talbot, CBR, University of Cambridge
John Weeks, SOAS, University of London, and the Progressive Economic Forum
Registration
If you wish to attend please send an email to Rachel Wagstaff (r.wagstaff@cbr.cam.ac.uk)
Publication details
https://www.routledge.com/Labour-Finance-and-Inequality-The-Insecurity-Cycle-in-British-Public/Konzelmann-Deakin-Fovargue-Davies-Wilkinson/p/book/9781138919723

Economics for Campaigners - Who earns and owns how much? Income, wealth, gender and race inequality
2018-11-08 19:00 - 21:00 | University of Greenwich, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, United Kingdom
Who earns and owns how much? Income, wealth, gender and race inequality
8 November 2018, 19:00
Rafael Wildauer, Lecturer in Economics, UoG and Prof Sian Moore, UoG
“Economics for Campaigners”
Free public events
Organized by Greenwich Political Economy Research Group / Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (GPERC/PEGFA)
University of Greenwich (UoG)
“Economics for Campaigners” is a series of free public events for citizens and campaigners, who want to understand economics to make an impact on economic policies and contribute to policy debates in their organizations and communities at the local, national or international level.
We will have an interactive discussion exploring difficult questions; we will debunk myths, challenge common misconceptions, and discuss alternatives to mainstream policies. The aim is to support citizens and campaigners to become confident in contributing to policy debates in their communities and organisations about the most urgent social and economic questions of our time. We assume no prior background knowledge and aim to introduce key concepts building on your experience as citizens or campaigners.
All events are scheduled for 19:00-21:00 to make it feasible to attend after work. Events last for two hours per seminar including an introduction and lots of time for debate in a participatory format including group discussions and/or questions and answers.
While the events are free, please register here for both events. All events are at the University of Greenwich, Park Row, SE109LS, Greenwich, London. The details of the programme and location are here.
Detailed information on getting to University of Greenwich.
Please visit our website for the Greenwich Papers in Political Economy, GPERC Policy Briefs, other publications, and forthcoming events.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Cambridge Realist Workshop – Geoffrey Hodgson - Why rumours of the death of Max U are exaggerated
2018-11-12 19:30 - 21:00 | Newnham College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Geoffrey Hodgson
Talk Title: ‘Why rumours of the death of Max U are exaggerated’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

Economics for Campaigners: Feminist economics: Gender equality and a caring economy
2018-11-15 19:00 - 21:00 | University of Greenwich, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, United Kingdom
Feminist economics: Gender equality and a caring economy
15 November 2018, 19:00
Sue Himmelweit, Emeritus Professor, Open University
“Economics for Campaigners”
Free public events
Organized by Greenwich Political Economy Research Group / Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (GPERC/PEGFA)
University of Greenwich (UoG)
“Economics for Campaigners” is a series of free public events for citizens and campaigners, who want to understand economics to make an impact on economic policies and contribute to policy debates in their organizations and communities at the local, national or international level.
We will have an interactive discussion exploring difficult questions; we will debunk myths, challenge common misconceptions, and discuss alternatives to mainstream policies. The aim is to support citizens and campaigners to become confident in contributing to policy debates in their communities and organisations about the most urgent social and economic questions of our time. We assume no prior background knowledge and aim to introduce key concepts building on your experience as citizens or campaigners.
All events are scheduled for 19:00-21:00 to make it feasible to attend after work. Events last for two hours per seminar including an introduction and lots of time for debate in a participatory format including group discussions and/or questions and answers.
While the events are free, please register here for both events. All events are at the University of Greenwich, Park Row, SE109LS, Greenwich, London. The details of the programme and location are here.
Detailed information on getting to University of Greenwich.
Please visit our website for the Greenwich Papers in Political Economy, GPERC Policy Briefs, other publications, and forthcoming events.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Post-Brexit Options for the UK: New Legal Analysis
2018-11-16 09:30 - 17:00
The UK is experiencing a crisis on many levels – economic, political and constitutional – as it faces up to the implications of Brexit. Since June 2016 there has been much speculation on the likely effects of Brexit, but a failure to focus on the institutional detail of different scenarios. In this conference we will bring to bear the latest legal research on the implications of Brexit for trade, competition and regulation; the UK’s devolution settlement; and its constitution. There will also be a discussion of options around a second Brexit referendum.
Peterhouse, Cambridge, 16 November 2018, 9:30-17:00
Provisional Schedule:
Public Opinion and a Second Referendum
Charlene Rohr, RAND Europe
David Howarth, University of Cambridge
Trade, Competition and Regulation:
Albertina Albors-Llorens, University of Cambridge
Simon Deakin, University of Cambridge
Michael Waibel, University of Cambridge
Devolution
Elisabeth Jones, National Assembly for Wales
James Wolffe QC, Lord Advocate for Scotland
Julian Ghosh QC, University of Cambridge
Constitution
Catherine Barnard, University of Cambridge
Martin Steinfeld, University of Cambridge
Alison Young, University of Cambridge
Location:
The Theatre, Peterhouse, Cambridge CB2 1RD
http://www.pet.cam.ac.uk
Registration
To reserve a place please email Carolyn Twigg (cmt28@cam.ac.uk) asap, no later than Thursday 8 November 2018.

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – ‘Time for Growth' by Lars Boerner
2018-11-21 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday, 21 November 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Lars Boerner
Talk Title: ‘Time for Growth’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.
Speaker:
Lars Boerner is Senior Lecturer in Economics at King’s Business School, King’s College London. He is an economist and economic historian who investigates the evolution and development of economies in the long run. He works in particular on the evolution of market and other allocation and clearing mechanisms, the effect of general purpose technologies for long run growth, and alternative ways to measure social and economic interactions in societies, i.e. comparing trade patterns and the spread of diseases. He has published, among others, in the Journal of Political Economy, Explorations in Economic History, and The Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. He has earned his PhD in Economics at the Humboldt Universität Berlin and has been affiliated with the Department of Economics of the Freie Universität Berlin, Stanford University, the European University Institute, and the Department of Economic History of the London School of Economics and Political Sciences.
Talk Overview:
Lars Boerner will present on the impact of the early adoption of one of the most important high-technology machines in history, the public mechanical clock, on long-run growth in Europe. Qualitative research as shown in terms of the introduction of clocks had an impact on coordination, productivity, and discipline and order in societies.
However, these insights have not yet been linked to any research agenda in economic growth and development. Based on a quantitative analysis, Lars Boerner shows that the early adoption and diffusion of the new technology had an impact on economic growth in adopting cities and countries with high diffusion rates. Lars Boerner finds significant growth rates between 1500 and 1700 in the range of 30 percentage points in early adopter cities and areas. In the econometric analysis Lars Boerner avoids endogeneity by considering the relationship between the adoption of clocks with two sets of instruments: distance from the first adopters and the appearance of repeated solar eclipses. The latter instrument is motivated by the predecessor technologies of mechanical clocks, astronomic instruments that measured the course of heavenly bodies.
Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

Cambridge Realist Workshop – Lynne Chester - Title tbc
2018-11-26 08:00 - 17:00 | Newnham College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Lynne Chester
Talk Title: TBC
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar - ‘Fiscal Consequences of Unconventional Monetary and Credit Policies’ by Yaprak Tavman
2019-01-16 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Yaprak Tavman
Talk Title: ‘Fiscal Consequences of Unconventional Monetary and Credit Policies’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.
Speaker:
Yaprak Tavman is a Lecturer in Economics at the New College of the Humanities (NCH) London. Before joining NCH, Yaprak Tavman worked as a Lecturer in Economics at Newcastle University for 2 years. She has obtained her PhD in Economics from the University of York, where she has also worked as a Teaching Fellow. She has completed her MSc in Economics and Finance with distinction at the University of York and was a Jean Monnet Scholar during her postgraduate studies. Prior to her teaching career, Yaprak Tavrman had worked as a specialist at HSBC Bank plc, and following her graduation from Middle East Technical University, Turkey.
Her main area of research is macroeconomics, with specialisations in financial markets and the macroeconomy, macroprudential regulation and financial stability, central bank policies, and political economy of finance. She has recently published her article titled ”A Comparative Analysis of Macroprudential Policies” in Oxford Economic Papers.
Talk Overview:
The severity of the 2008-09 global financial crisis forced policy-makers, particularly in advanced economies, to adopt a range of unconventional monetary and credit policies. Although the effectiveness of such policies in stabilizing the economy has been extensively studied, there is as yet no systematic analysis of the real costs of enacting unconventional measures. In this paper, utilizing a New Keynesian general equilibrium model with financial frictions and distortionary taxation, we provide a comparative cost-benefit analysis of two such policies; credit easing and bank capital injections. We note that the use of bank capital injections has a greater stabilizing effect on the economy, at the expense of higher costs. We also show that evaluation of unconventional policy based on lump-sum taxes overstates the benefits of policy interventions. However, our results reveal that both credit policies are welfare improving even with distortionary taxes. Bank capital injections generate higher welfare gains, under both lump-sum and variable tax rates.
Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

Cambridge Realist Workshop - Clive Lawson - Technology and a Speeding up of the Social
2019-01-28 19:30 - 21:30 | Newnham College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Clive Lawson
Talk Title: ‘Technology and a Speeding up of the Social’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

Cambridge Realist Workshop - Heikki Patomäki - Reflexivity of Anticipations in Economics and Political Economy
2019-02-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Newnham College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Heikki Patomäki
Talk Title: ‘ Reflexivity of Anticipations in Economics and Political Economy’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar - 'The Changing State and the 2019 Spending Review' by Paul Johnson
2019-02-13 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday, 13 February 2019
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Thomas Pope
Talk Title: ‘’The Changing State and the 2019 Spending Review’’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College
The next St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar in the series on the Economics of Austerity, will be held on 13 February 2019. Thomas Pope will give a talk on “The Changing State and the 2019 Spending Review”. The seminar will be held in the Ramsden Room at St Catharine’s College from 6.00-7.30 pm. All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Cambridge Judge Business School.
Speaker:
Thomas Pope is a Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Thomas works in the tax sector. His main areas of interest include firm investment and the effects of the tax system on large and small businesses. He also works on the public finances
Talkover:
Later this year we should hear the outcome of the spending review – arguably the most important non-Brexit related decision of this parliament. A decade after the financial crisis we are still experiencing its consequences in much lower living standards than we might have expected and also in much lower levels of government spending. After facing the biggest deficit in peacetime history, since
2010 the government has implemented the biggest set of spending cuts since at least the 1940s. Yet in many ways governments since 2010 have followed exactly the priorities of previous administrations such that health is taking an ever growing fraction of all spending. Thomas Pope will trace the changes in public finances and public spending, set out some of the options and challenges in the forthcoming spending review, as well as looking at opposition policy. He will argue that future pressures on public spending are unlikely to be accommodated unless the size of the state finally grows or our demands on it change dramatically.

Please contact the seminar organisers
Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (mk24@cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query
