University of London 'Keynes's Bretton Woods vision, Global Monetary Disorder, and the US Dollar today' Joerg Bibow
2017-10-19 17:00 - 19:00 UTC
Joerg Bibow (Skidmore College and Levy Economics Institute) will speak on
”Keynes’s Bretton Woods vision, Global Monetary Disorder, and the US Dollar today’
at the Money and Development Seminar on Thursday 19 October at 17.00
in Room 116, Main Building,
SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street
London WC1H 0XG

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – ‘How corporate governance is central to economic policy’, Ciaran Driver
2017-10-25 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday 25 October 2017
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Ciaran Driver
Talk Title: ‘How corporate governance is central to economic policy’
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 October, 2017 – Ciaran Driver will give a talk on ‘How corporate governance is central to economic policy’. 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:
Ciaran Driver is Professor of Economics in the School of Finance and Management at SOAS University of London. His research interests include capital investment, industrial economics, innovation and corporate governance on which he has published widely. He has held visiting posts at the Australian National University and Stellenbosch University, has had attachments to several global business schools, and has advised various national and international public bodies. He co-authored with Paul Temple The Unbalanced Economy: a policy appraisal, Palgrave-Macmillan (2014) Beyond Shareholder Value (2013), with colleagues at the TUC and NPI; and he contributed a chapter on innovation and finance to the Sage Handbook on Corporate Governance (2012). An edited compendium on corporate governance (with Grahame Thompson) will be published by OUP in 2018. Recent journal articles deal with the effects of corporate governance on R&D (Research Policy 2012); the economics of advertising (Journal of Economic Surveys 2015) and the perverse effects of high-powered executive pay (Industrial and Corporate Change 2017). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Trustee of the New Economics Foundation. Full publications and further information can be found on Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ciaran_Driver
Talk Overview:

This talk concerns the economic effects of corporate governance systems in advanced countries and how the design of governance interacts with economic policy. It starts off with a reprise of recent trends in corporate governance theory, distinguishing the arguments for shareholder value (including agency theory), from critical stakeholder perspectives such as organization theory; property rights approaches; and externalities. The implications of the governance form for the economy are then discussed in terms of forward commitments such as capital investments and R&D and the time-horizon over which these are assessed; pay-out in the form of dividends and buybacks; and effects on labour and work commitment. The evidence for corporate governance effects on macroeconomic performance is assessed with reference to country studies and the variety of capitalism literature. Changes to the corporate governance system are considered by discussing which particular problems of economic policy are responsive to chosen governance reforms, ranging over: managerial approaches; dual-class shares; engagement of investors; and stakeholder representation.
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 Society for Economic Pluralism – Women as Economic Victims
2017-10-26 17:00 - 19:00 | Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, Silver Street , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB2 1RL, United Kingdom
26 Oct
Speakers: Catherine Hakim & Ben Southwood
Location: Room 4, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms

Cambridge Realist Workshop – Nuno Martins - The Nature of Value: Smith, Marx and Marshall
2017-10-30 19:30 - 21:00 | Latimer Room, Clare College, Clare College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Nuno Martins
Talk Title: ‘The Nature of Value: Smith, Marx and Marshall’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

Growth and Income Distribution Workshop
2017-11-01 16:30 - 19:30 | Greenwich University
There is a workshop on Growth and Income Distribution at the University of Greenwich, Queen Anne Court room QA080, at 16:30 until 19:30, on the 1st of November 2017.
The event is co-organised by the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre (GPERC) and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS).
The Keynote Lecture will be by Professor Marc Lavoie (CEPN, Universite Paris 13).
Speakers also include:

Professor Engelbert Stockhammer (Kingston University)
Professor Ozlem Onaran (GPERC)
Dr Maria Nikolaidi (GPERC)
Dr Rafael Wildauer (GPERC)
Dr Cem Oyvat (GPERC)
Dr Sakir Devrim Yilmaz (Kingston University)

Please find here the programme and RSVP details.

Economic growth, inequality and finance in historical perspective workshop
2017-11-02 09:30 - 17:30 | Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston, Surrey, , KT1 2EE, United Kingdom
Economic growth, inequality and finance in historical perspective
Thursday, 2 Nov 2017, 9.30-17.20
Kingston University, Penrhyn Road Campus, JG3010
This workshop is part of the INET project ‘Income Distribution, Asset Prices, and Aggregate Demand Formation, 1850-2010: A Post-Keynesian Approach to Historical Macroeconomic Data’ and is organised by the Political Economy Research Group and CResCID. The project utilizes long-run macroeconomic and financial data (100+ years) to explore the interactions of inequality, distribution between capital and labour, growth regimes, asset prices, and debt.
The workshop will take place on Thursday 2nd November at Kingston University, London. The aim is to create an opportunity for thorough discussion on the possibilities of historical data and historical perspectives in macroeconomic analyses of the nexus of inequality, economic growth and the financial sector. This is a growing and promising field and we believe that to gather a small group of researchers active on those themes, will facilitate advances in the field, cross-fertilization of research projects, and branch new research ideas.
Registration is required. Register here http://www.kingston.ac.uk/events/item/2818/02-nov-2017-economic-growth-inequality-and-finance-in-historical-perspective/
9.30-10.00: Registration and coffee (room 3013)
Engelbert Stockhammer & Erik Bengtsson – Introduction to the workshop + project
10.00-12.00: Session I
Erik Bengtsson (Lund University): “Wage-led and profit-led growth in Scandinavia since 1875” (co-authored with Engelbert Stockhammer)
Eoin McLaughlin (St Andrews): “A Sustainable Century?: Genuine Savings in developing and developed countries, 1900-2000” (co-authored with Matthias Blum and Cristián Ducoing)
12.00-13.00: Lunch
13.00-15.00: Session II
Engelbert Stockhammer (Kingston University): The effects of income distribution and private wealth on consumption and investment, 1855-2010 (co-authored with Joel Rabinovich and Niall Reddy)
Lucio Baccaro (Max Planck Institute for Study of Societies), “Unhinged: Industrial Relations Liberalization and Capitalist Instability” (co-authored with Chris Howell)
15.00-15.20: Coffee
15.20-17.20: Session III
Natacha Postel-Vinay (LSE), “The Impact of Fiscal Policy on Interwar British Growth: A Narrative Approach” (co-authored with James Cloyne and Nicholas Dimsdale)
Giorgos Gouzoulis (Kingston University): Testing Minsky’s business cycle theory with historic data: The cases of USA (1929-2015) and UK (1850-2015) (co-authored with Engelbert Stockhammer)

China's shadow banking: New growth model or the next Lehman Brothers? Debate
2017-11-02 16:00 - 17:30
A debate between Christopher Balding and Daniela Gabor, moderated by Jo Michell
Thursday November 2nd, 4-5.30pm
Faculty of Business and Law building Room 2×242 UWE Bristol, Frenchay Campus All welcome, registration not required.
Since the global financial crisis, shadow banking in China has grown rapidly as a result of financial repression, macro policy, and the politics of local-central government relationships. Is this the financial Wild West, the escape valve of a financial system repressed by the long hand of the state or a carefully engineered process to bring market forces into the financial system? How successful are China¹s policies to transform shadow banking into securities-market based finance? Have they really addressed concerns about implicit state guarantees? And how do reforms fit with the need for deep and liquid securities markets if Reminibi internationalisation is to succeed?
Christopher Balding is an Associate Professor in Business and Economics at the HSBC Business School of Peking University Graduate School in Shenzhen, China. One of the leading experts on the Chinese economy and financial markets, he is a Bloomberg View contributor and advises governments, central banks, and investors around the world. He has contributed to Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, BBC, CNBC, and Al-Jazeera. He tweets at @BaldingsWorld
Daniela Gabor is Professor of Economics and Macrofinance at UWE Bristol. Her research project ŒManaging shadow money¹, funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking since 2015, explores shadow banking in the US, Europe and China. One of the project papers, ŒGoodbye (Chinese) shadow banking, hello market-based finance¹, will be published in Development and Change in December 2017. She is finalising a book manuscript on Shadow Money. She blogs at criticalfinance.org <http://criticalfinance.org/> and tweets at @DanielaGabor <http://twitter.com/danielagabor>
Jo Michell is Associate Professor in Economics at UWE Bristol. He has a PhD in Economics on from SOAS University of London, written about the Chinese banking and financial system. His research interests include macroeconomics, money and banking, and income distribution. He has published on macroeconomics and finance in peer reviewed journals including the Cambridge Journal of Economics and Metroeconomica. He co-edited the Handbook of Critical Issues in Finance with Jan Toporowski (Elgar, 2012).

Cambridge Society for Economic Pluralism – Behavioural Economics: The Final Frontier of Economics
2017-11-02 17:00 - 19:00
2 November
Speakers: Dr Alain Samson & David De Cremer
Location: tbc

The International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy Training Workshop
2017-11-08 10:00 - 17:00
IIPPE Training Workshop SOAS London 8 November 2017
The International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) announces its next Training Workshop at SOAS (Brunei Gallery, Room B102), London on 8 November 2017 (registration from 9.30am).
The focus of the Workshop will be on *Anglo-Saxon capitalism since the financial crisis*. In the morning session, (10am to 1pm), Trevor Evans will survey economic and financial developments in the *United States*. In the afternoon session (2pm to 5pm) Simon Mohun will consider the performance of the *United Kingdom* economy in historical perspective.
This Workshop will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, junior academics and activists who have a particular interest in acquainting themselves with the relevance of Marxian political economy to the contemporary world.
*Pre-registration is essential because of room capacity constraints. If you wish to attend, please send a note to that effect as soon as possible to Simon Mohun (s.mohun@qmul.ac.uk)

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – 'The Political Economy of Brexit' Michael Kitson
2017-11-08 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday 8 November 2017
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Michael Kitson
Talk Title: ‘The Political Economy of Brexit’
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 8 November 2017 – Michael Kitson will give a talk on ‘The Political Economy of Brexit’. 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:
Michael Kitson is a University Senior Lecturer in global macroeconomics at the Judge Business School, Cambridge; Assistant Director of the Centre for Business Research, Cambridge; and Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. Michael Kitson’s research interests include: economic policy, regional economics, corporate performance, innovation and the commercialisation of science. His current work is concerned with new developments in innovation policy and assessing the factors that drive regional competiveness and 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.

CAMBRIDGE ALLEN & OVERY ANNUAL LAW LECTURE 2017: "THE EVOLUTION OF VICARIOUS LIABILITY", Simon Deakin
2017-11-08 18:00 - 20:00
This year’s Allen & Overy lecture is to be delivered by Professor Simon Deakin on the increasingly topical (and difficult) issue of vicarious liability. His lecture promises a different take on various issues in play.
“THE EVOLUTION OF VICARIOUS LIABILITY”
8 November 2017, Law Faculty, 6.00pm, followed by a drinks reception in the Atrium – all invited
Registration is essential – the link is here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cambridge-allen-overy-annual-law-lecture-2017-tickets-38821888313
Further details: The common law of vicarious liability has evolved rapidly in the past two decades as a result of a greater use by appellate courts across several jurisdictions of functional

Cambridge Realist Workshop – Geoffrey Hodgson - The Pathology of Heterodox Economics and the Limits to Pluralism
2017-11-13 19:30 - 21:00
Speaker: Geoffrey Hodgson
Talk Title: ‘The Pathology of Heterodox Economics and the Limits to Pluralism’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

Goldsmiths Economics Seminars: 'The King was in his counting house counting all his money'
2017-11-15 16:30 - 18:00
Speaker: Mathew Fright, University of Cambridge, UK
Date: 15-–Nov-2017, 16.30 pm
Room: Laurie Grove Baths G3, New Cross, London SE14 6NW
Title: The King was in his counting house counting all his money

Cambridge Society for Economic Pluralism – Colonial Legacies
2017-11-15 17:00 - 19:00
Title: Colonial Legacies: How does Colonialism shape today’s development challenges
Speakers: Dr Shailaja Fennell (University of Cambridge) and Dr Jason Hickel (London School of Economics)
Location: tbc

Goldsmiths Economics Seminars: ‘Preferences over allocation mechanisms’
2017-11-21 16:30 - 18:00
Speaker: Uzi Segal, Boston College, USA
Date: 21-Nov-2017, 16.30 pm
Room: Deptford Town Hall G2
Title: Preferences over allocation mechanisms

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – "From austerity to immigrants as ‘significant others’, Liliana Harding
2017-11-22 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday 22 November 2017
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Liliana Harding
Talk Title: ‘From austerity to immigrants as ‘significant others’ in economic policy changes’
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 22 November, 2017 – Liliana Harding will give a talk on “From austerity to immigrants as ‘significant others’ in economic policy changes”. 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:
Liliana Harding is a lecturer in Economics at the University of East Anglia (UEA), in Norwich. Dr Liliana Harding has a long-standing research interest in the political economy of migration, while her teaching is focussed in the areas of labour economics and European economies. She is currently the convenor of the East Anglia Research Migration Network, an interdisciplinary research group at the UEA designed to facilitate participatory action research in topics related to international migration. Her research interests further extend to the development of economic systems, regional economies and the implications of public arts and culture for wellbeing and urban economies.
Talk Overview:
In the same way as the resolution of the financial crisis has been sought through austerity across the board, migration policy beyond the Great Recession has focused on downward revisions of ‘acceptable levels’ of immigration. And as concerns about the implications of austerity on rising inequalities and general access to public services are rising, limitations to migrants’ access to the labour market and the welfare system are now sold as localised patches to society-wide challenges. In this context, this talk proposes to explore the extent to which a long period of austerity has warranted the call for more restrictive immigration policies, and explores the significance of distributional effects of immigration. It reviews the economic effects estimated for the UK from migration and its expected restriction linked to Brexit, and stresses the role of skill in the economic migration debate. Finally, the talk reflects on the significance of mass migration flows for economies experiencing it at various points in time, and makes a brief reference to the recent refugee crisis in Europe.

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

Goldsmiths Economics Seminars: ‘The Impact of Financialisation on the Everyday Life of UK households’
2017-11-29 16:30 - 18:00
Speaker: Ariane Hillig, Open University, UK
Date: 29-Nov- 2017, 16.30 pm
Room: Laurie Grove Baths G3
Title: The Impact of Financialisation on the Everyday Life of UK households

A European Future for Brexit Britain? by Lord Roger Liddle
2017-11-29 17:00 - 19:00 | Greenwich University
29 November 2017: A European Future for Brexit Britain?
Lord Roger Liddle will discuss the current state of the Brexit negotiations; whether it is clear what Britain really wants from Brexit; a realistic set of Brexit options for Britain and Britain’s European future. The lecture is part of the University of Greenwich Big Picture Lecture Series and it is co-organised by GPERC and FEPS.
Location: University of Greenwich, King William Court room KW303.
Time: 17:00-19:00.

CBR seminar: “Japan’s corporate governance and value creation via equity spread”, Dr. Ryohei Yanagi
2017-12-05 12:00 - 14:00
Date: Tuesday 5th December 2017
Time: 12:00 noon
Venue: Ground Floor Meeting Room, 10 Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1QA
Speaker: Dr. Ryohei Yanagi
Dr. Ryohei Yanagi will give a presentation entitled “Japan’s corporate governance and value creation via equity spread”. The focus of this presentation will be the urgent need for Japanese businesses to have greater awareness of cost of capital, which traditionally has been overlooked in favour of simple operational profitability. His view is that lack of understanding of this key principle is damaging the whole Japanese economy and hindering the revival that the Abe administration seeks.
Dr. Yanagi is the CFO of Eisai, one of Japan’s leading pharmaceutical companies, which has established a reputation for its innovative corporate governance. While working as Eisai’s CFO, Dr. Yanagi holds posts at two Japanese universities as a visiting lecturer and has been campaigning for greater financial awareness among Japanese management for many years. His work as a member of various expert committees gives him a special insight into the debates underlying current efforts to refocus Japanese corporate governance practices.
Space is limited so to secure a place please email Rachel Wagstaff at r.wagstaff@cbr.cam.ac.uk

"The Economic Impact and Causes of Income Inequality- the shifting views of the international financial institutions" by John Evans
2017-12-06 17:00 - 19:00 | Greenwich University
Lecture by John Evans (Secretary General, TUAC) on “The Economic Impact and Causes of Income Inequality- the shifting views of the international financial institutions“, on the 6th of December, at 17:00-19:00 at 2017 at the University of Greenwich, King William Court, room KW303.
To find out more about our events, please visit our events page.

SOAS Money and Development Seminar: 2 papers on The International Role of the Euro
2018-01-18 17:00 - 18:30
SOAS Money and Development Seminars
Thursday 18 January at 17.00
The International Role of the Euro papers by
John Grahl (Middlesex) ‘Financial Policies: Dollar Hegemony and the Subordination of European Finance’
and
Costas Lapavitsas (SOAS) ‘Estimating the cost of currency redenomination in the EMU’.
in the Brunei Gallery Room B102
SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street,
London WC1H 0XG

nearest underground station: Russell Square

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – ‘How Did the Economics Profession Get it Wrong on Brexit?’, Graham Gudgin & Ken Coutts
2018-01-31 18:00 - 19:30
Date: Wednesday, 31 January 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speakers: Graham Gudgin and Ken Coutts
Talk Title: ‘How Did the Economics Profession Get it Wrong on Brexit?’
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 31 January, 2018 – Graham Gudgin and Ken Coutts will give a talk on “How Did the Economics Profession Get it Wrong on Brexit?”.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.
Speakers:
Graham Gudgin is currently Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. He is also Chief Economic Advisor at Policy Exchange, London, visiting Professor at the University of Ulster and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre. He was senior Economic Advisor at Oxford Economics from 2007 to 2015 and was director of the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre from 1985 to 1998 when he became Special Adviser to the First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly until 2002. Prior to this he was economics fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge and a member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group under Wynne Godley. He is the author of a large number of books, reports and journal articles on regional economic growth in the UK, the growth of small firms and electoral systems. He is currently working with Ken Coutts on a macro-economic model and forecasts for the UK economy and on the economic impact of Brexit.
Ken Coutts is Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School , Emeritus Assistant Director of Studies in the Faculty of Economics, and Life Fellow in Economics, Selwyn College, at the University of Cambridge. A member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group in his younger career, led by the late Wynne Godley, his main interests are in macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal policy, trade, capital flows and balance of payments. He has published widely in these areas. He has also written extensively on the pricing behaviour of manufacturing industries in the UK and Australia. He is currently working with Graham Gudgin a macro-economic model and forecasts for the UK economy and on the economic impact of Brexit.
Talk Overview:
This contribution examines in detail the predictions of professional economic forecasters on the economic impact of Brexit. It shows how these were flawed, and speculates on why they are no longer quoted. It begins with the frequently repeated claim, that membership of the EEC/EU has been good for economic growth in the UK. This is followed by a brief reprise of our critique of the gravity model work of HMT and OECD. The approach of the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE, uses a different approach, but again, in our view, is flawed. All of this work predicts that the volume of UK trade with the EU will fall substantially after Brexit, with no offsetting gains in trade with non-EU countries. Around half of the predicted declines in GDP, come from a calculation that trade losses will have a major negative knock-on impact on productivity. Our update of their evidence suggests that for advanced economies no such link exists between trade and productivity.
This is not an argument in favour of Brexit. It is instead to question the ability of the economics profession to provide high quality policy analysis on issues of national importance.
Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (mk24@cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

SOAS Money and Development Seminar: Payments Clearing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories'
2018-02-07 17:00 - 18:30
Wednesday 7 February at 17.00
Priscilla Toffano (IMF and London School of Economics) ‘Payments Clearing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories’.
in the Alumni Lecture Theatre
Senate House Paul Webley Wing
SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street,
London WC1H 0XG
nearest underground station: Russell Square

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – ‘Global Imbalances and Greece's Exit from the Crisis’, Dimitrios Tsomocos
2018-02-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday, 7 February 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Dimitrios Tsomocos
Talk Title: ‘Global Imbalances and Greece’s Exit from the Crisis’
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 07 February, 2018 – Dimitrios Tsomocos will give a talk on “Global Imbalances and Greece’s Exit from the Crisis”. 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.
Speakers:
Graham Gudgin is currently Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. He is also Chief Economic Advisor at Policy Exchange, London, visiting Professor at the University of Ulster and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre. He was senior Economic Advisor at Oxford Economics from 2007 to 2015 and was director of the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre from 1985 to 1998 when he became Special Adviser to the First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly until 2002. Prior to this he was economics fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge and a member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group under Wynne Godley. He is the author of a large number of books, reports and journal articles on regional economic growth in the UK, the growth of small firms and electoral systems. He is currently working with Ken Coutts on a macro-economic model and forecasts for the UK economy and on the economic impact of Brexit.
Ken Coutts is Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School , Emeritus Assistant Director of Studies in the Faculty of Economics, and Life Fellow in Economics, Selwyn College, at the University of Cambridge. A member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group in his younger career, led by the late Wynne Godley, his main interests are in macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal policy, trade, capital flows and balance of payments. He has published widely in these areas. He has also written extensively on the pricing behaviour of manufacturing industries in the UK and Australia. He is currently working with Graham Gudgin a macro-economic model and forecasts for the UK economy and on the economic impact of Brexit.
Talk Overview:
The global capital imbalances constituted a primary factor for the Eurozone debt crisis and amplified the divergence between the core countries and the periphery. For the case of Greece there exist three ‘alternative’ mainstream explanations of the crisis and the subsequent recession: The Greek (political and institutional inefficiency), the European (institutional incompetence and extended corruption) and the I.M.F. (debt overhang, necessity of “hard” budget constraints, public investments and expansionary monetary policy). The two academic strands that dominate the debate are the one of the importance of debt overhung and rational expectations and the one of heterogeneous general equilibrium models. We argue that the exit from the crisis warrants:
1. Debt restructuring and nationalisation of N.P.L.s
2. Reduction of public sector profligacy and institutional efficiency
3. Public investments and investments for internationally traded goods
4. Tax relief (corporate and property taxation); 5. Re-stabilisation of market expectations and creditworthiness.
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 – Łukasz Hardt – 'Classical economists as advocates of economics without laws'
2018-02-12 07:30 - 21:00 | Latimer Room, Clare College, Clare College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Łukasz Hardt
Talk Title: ‘Classical economists as advocates of economics without laws’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.
Cambridge Realist Workshop (Lent Term) – Łukasz Hardt – Classical economists as advocates of economics without laws

Cambridge Realist Workshop – Paul Lewis - Ontology and the History of Economic Thought
2018-02-25 19:30 - 21:00 | Latimer Room, Clare College, Clare College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Speaker: Paul Lewis
Talk Title: ‘Ontology and the History of Economic Thought?’
Drinks available from 7:30 pm, talk starts at 8pm.

St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar – ‘Technological Unemployment: Myth or Reality’, Robert Skidelsky
2018-03-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday, 7 March 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Robert Skidelsky
Talk Title:‘Technological Unemployment: Myth or Reality’
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 07 March, 2018 – Robert Skidelsky will give a talk on “Technological Unemployment: Myth or Reality”. 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:
Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University. His three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes (1983,1992, 2000) won five prizes and his book on the financial crisis –Keynes: The Return of the Master – was published in September 2010. He was made a member of the House of Lords in 1991 (he sits on the cross-benches) and elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1994. How Much is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life, co-written with his son Edward, was published in July 2012. He is also the author of Britain in the 20th Century: A Success? (Vintage, 2014) and editor of The Essential Keynes (Penguin Classics, 2015). His most recent publications are as co-editor of Who Runs the Economy? (Palgrave, 2016) and Austerity Vs Stimulus (Palgrave, 2017).
Talk Overview:
This contribution’s starting point is Keynes’s little essay of 1930, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren: ‘technological unemployment…means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour’. Two questions arise: will the future be different from the past, when we were always able to absorb labour displaced by machines? There is no agreed view. There are many estimates of the jobs ‘at risk’ from automation by 2030, ranging from 30% to 50%. There is no agreement on whether, or how soon, the jobs displaced will be replaced, i.e. whether there will be a net job loss. The majority view is that there will be transitional job losses, but no permanent ones. Most of the discussion treats automation as not just desirable, but irreversible: part of the scientific momentum, which defines modern civilisation. This needs challenging, since it appears to leave the human future to machines. Second, it is generally agreed that, as in the past, automation will enable a reduction in hours worked. However, the argument that this will be consistent with maintaining or increasing median income needs to be challenged. Evidence is that median incomes have been stagnant and even falling, as most productivity gains go to the rich. Extra leisure will surely be unwanted if it means lower real incomes. The response to automation cannot be left to the market. It requires a social decision concerning the speed and type of automation, and a social response to the problems it creates.
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 – ‘‘Bank Credit Rating Changes, Capital Structure Adjustments and Lending’’, Claudia Girardone
2018-03-14 18:00 - 19:30 | Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, cb21rl, United Kingdom
Date: Wednesday, 14 March 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Claudia Girardone
Talk Title:‘Bank Credit Rating Changes, Capital Structure Adjustments and Lending’
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 14 March, 2018 – Claudia Girardone will give a talk on “Bank Credit Rating Changes, Capital Structure Adjustments and Lending”. 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:
Claudia Girardone is Professor of Banking and Finance at Essex Business School of the University of Essex. She is also Director of the Essex Finance Centre (EFiC) and the School’s Director of Research. Professor Girardone has published over 50 articles on various aspects of banking and finance in books and peer-reviewed international journals. She is a co-author of the textbook Introduction to Banking (FT Pearson Education, 2015). She is currently on the editorial board of several journals including the Journal of Financial Economic Policy and The European Journal of Finance. Her current research areas are on banking sector performance and stability, bank corporate governance, the industrial structure of banking and access to finance.
Talk Overview:
This contribution examines the causal effect of bank credit rating changes on bank capital structure decisions. Banks adjust their capital structure following a credit rating downgrade. Adjustments involve: leverage, rating sensitive liabilities and lending. Rating upgrades do not affect capital structure activities suggesting that banks target minimum rating levels. In our study, we also exploit the asymmetric impact of downgrades of banks based in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal during the EU sovereign debt crisis. This asymmetric effect leads to greater capital adjustments, reductions in long-term funding and lending of banks from those countries relative to other banks. Our results are consistent with the expectation of discrete cost (benefits) associated with rating changes.
Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (mk24@cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.

The Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics (CTNTE) Conference
2018-03-22 | Senior Combination Room (SCR), St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
The Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics (CTNTE) annual conference has a title of ‘ Inequality: trends, causes, consequences, relevant policies’
The conference will be held on Thursday 22 March, 2018 at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, UK
The CTNTE 2018 conference will bring together a carefully selected set of eight papers by renown academics across Europe on inequalities in economic systems. Inequality has been considered a problem by many academics and policy makers for a long time now and recently there has been some evidence of increasing inequalities in the society. Our speakers will focus on the causes and consequences of inequality along with the importance of tackling inequality and recommend potential policies to reduce it, for example, tax reforms. The talks will cover different aspects of inequality – from income to gender – and explore links between inequality and economic growth or financialisaton and financial crisis.
Detailed information regarding the conference programme, speakers and papers is available online at http://www.neweconomicthinking.org/prog_March2018.htm.
The standard conference fee is £139, but a special rate of £54 is available for academics and not-for-profit organisations. We also offer a number of FREE places for postgraduate students, which are granted on first come, first served basis.
The places are limited, so please register quickly by filling in a registration form at http://www.neweconomicthinking.org/register_2018.htm

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 | 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.
