Steven Payson (Author of How Economics Professors Can Stop Failing Us: The Discipline at a Crossroads)

In this talk, Dr. Payson examines the incentive system that economics professors face in their work, and how that incentive system needs to improve in order to ensure the profession’s success overall, including its consideration and adoption of pluralism. Success in this regard refers to the contribution of discourse that is valuable to society, by advancing useful knowledge and providing the background for effective policies. His talk focuses on the differences between the scientific pursuit of knowledge and the competitive “publication game” that academic economists are compelled to play in order to advance their careers. The talk is based on Payson’s new book: How Economics Professors Can Stop Failing Us.

Speaker biography:

Steven Payson has 34 years of professional experience in economics, having worked as an economic consultant for over three years, as an associate at the Inter-American Development Bank, and, for the past 26 years, as a United States government economist. In the United States government Dr. Payson has worked at the National Science Foundation and the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Interior. In the U.S. Commerce Department, Dr. Payson served as Chief of the Special Studies Branch, and then Chief of Research, in the Government Division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the past seven years he has been a senior economic advisor in the Department of the Interior. For work he has performed in the U.S. government, Dr. Payson received a Bronze Award from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and a Gold Award from the Department of the Interior.

Find more information on our event page: https://www.soas.ac.uk/economics/events/27mar2018-economic-education-adverse-incentives-and-pluralism.html

Speakers: Steven Payson (Author of How Economics Professors Can Stop Failing Us: The Discipline at a Crossroads), Ioana Negru (SOAS)

Event Date: 27 March 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Jan Toporowski (SOAS), Geoffrey C. Harcourt (Cambridge), Victoria Chick (UCL), Jerzy Osiatynski (Polish Academy of Sciences & National Bank of Poland)

Launch of Jan Toporowski’s book “Michal Kalecki: An Intellectual Biography, Volume II: By Intellect Alone 1939–1970”

“This volume of intellectual biography records the work of Michał Kalecki’s maturity: his work on monetary economics and the theory of profits; his work on the problems of socialism and developing countries; and the extension of his theory of capitalism to define his work in relation to Keynes and previous political economic principles. Kalecki had, by 1939, laid out the essential elements of his theory of the business cycle in capitalism. This book begins at Oxford where, at the Institute of Statistics, he worked on the economic planning and financing of World War Two, as well as extending and detailing the particulars of his theory and examining the conditions for full employment in the post-War international monetary and financial system. Kalecki would then work for the United Nations on full employment, inflation, and developing countries. He departed from the United Nations in 1955, and returned to Poland to extend two new directions of his ideas – on the economics of developing countries and his theory of growth in the socialist economy, alongside further work on business cycles. This book is essential reading for all those who want to understand Kalecki’s lasting contribution to economic theory and policy.”

Source: http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319696638

Speaker biography:

Jan Toporowski is Professor of Economics and Finance at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK, Visiting Professor of Economics and Finance at the International University College, Turin, Italy, and Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He has worked in fund management, international banking, central banking and financial and economic consultancy. He has published extensively on monetary and financial theory and policy and the history of economic thought. The first volume of this intellectual biography, Michał Kalecki: An Intellectual Biography – Volume I: Rendez-vous in Cambridge 1899–1939, was published in 2013.

Speakers: Jan Toporowski (SOAS), Geoffrey C. Harcourt (Cambridge), Victoria Chick (UCL), Jerzy Osiatynski (Polish Academy of Sciences & National Bank of Poland)

Event Date: 21 March 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Bronwyn Hall (Professor of Economics Emerita University of California at Berkeley).

(Lecture 2)

The Penrose Lectures were established in memory of Professor Edith Penrose who made an outstanding contribution to social science. Her work on innovation, international corporations, the theory of the firm, organisation and economic development have left a lasting legacy on the disciplines of economics and management. Penrose was also an inspirational teacher of students at all levels - undergraduate, postgraduate, PhD, MBA - and a major contributor to important public policy issues and debates. In keeping with her legacy, the Penrose Lectures have been established to honour her contribution. The lectures are held each year on a subject in economics, management or political economy. Edith Penrose was appointed to a Chair in Economics at SOAS in 1964 having previously held a joint Readership in Economics at LSE and SOAS. After retiring from SOAS in 1978 she was appointed Professor of Political Economy at INSEAD, Paris. As well as being a pioneer in the disciplines of economics and management, Penrose was also the rst woman to hold a professorial position in economics at SOAS. In recognition of her work and legacy, the Penrose Lectures provide a platform for outstanding scholars to communicate their research work to faculty, students, practitioners and the wider public.

Speaker biography:

Bronwyn Hall is Professor of Economics Emerita at the University of California at Berkeley, Visiting Professor at MPI-Munich, a Research Associate at the NBER and IFS-London, and a Visiting Fellow at NIESR, London. She has published numerous articles on the economics and econometrics of technical change and innovation and is the editor of the Handbook of the Economics of Innovation in the Elsevier series. Her research includes comparative analysis of the U.S. and European patent systems, the use of patent citation data for the valuation of intangible (knowledge) assets, comparative firm level R&D investment and innovation studies, measuring the returns to R&D and innovation, and analysis of technology policies such as R&D subsidies and tax incentives. She has made substantial contributions to applied economic research via the creation of software for econometric estimation and of rm level datasets for the study of innovation, including the widely used NBER dataset for U.S. patents.

Speakers: Bronwyn Hall (Professor of Economics Emerita University of California at Berkeley)

Organiser: Penrose Committee

Event Date: 15 March 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Bronwyn Hall (Professor of Economics Emerita University of California at Berkeley).

(Lecture 1).

The Penrose Lectures were established in memory of Professor Edith Penrose who made an outstanding contribution to social science. Her work on innovation, international corporations, the theory of the firm, organisation and economic development have left a lasting legacy on the disciplines of economics and management. Penrose was also an inspirational teacher of students at all levels - undergraduate, postgraduate, PhD, MBA - and a major contributor to important public policy issues and debates. In keeping with her legacy, the Penrose Lectures have been established to honour her contribution. The lectures are held each year on a subject in economics, management or political economy. Edith Penrose was appointed to a Chair in Economics at SOAS in 1964 having previously held a joint Readership in Economics at LSE and SOAS. After retiring from SOAS in 1978 she was appointed Professor of Political Economy at INSEAD, Paris. As well as being a pioneer in the disciplines of economics and management, Penrose was also the rst woman to hold a professorial position in economics at SOAS. In recognition of her work and legacy, the Penrose Lectures provide a platform for outstanding scholars to communicate their research work to faculty, students, practitioners and the wider public.

Speaker biography:

Bronwyn Hall is Professor of Economics Emerita at the University of California at Berkeley, Visiting Professor at MPI-Munich, a Research Associate at the NBER and IFS-London, and a Visiting Fellow at NIESR, London. She has published numerous articles on the economics and econometrics of technical change and innovation and is the editor of the Handbook of the Economics of Innovation in the Elsevier series. Her research includes comparative analysis of the U.S. and European patent systems, the use of patent citation data for the valuation of intangible (knowledge) assets, comparative firm level R&D investment and innovation studies, measuring the returns to R&D and innovation, and analysis of technology policies such as R&D subsidies and tax incentives. She has made substantial contributions to applied economic research via the creation of software for econometric estimation and of rm level datasets for the study of innovation, including the widely used NBER dataset for U.S. patents.

Speakers: Bronwyn Hall (Professor of Economics Emerita University of California at Berkeley)

Organiser: Penrose Committee

Event Date: 13 March 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Liliann Fischer (University of Kent), Ben Fine (SOAS), Alfredo Saad Filho (SOAS)

Rethinking Economics takes action: The Open Economics Forum and SOAS Department of Economics will be hosting a book launch for the recently published reader "Rethinking Economics - An Introduction to Pluralist Economics". The book is among the very first to provide a concise overview of different schools of thought in economics. The book launch will feature one of the editors, Liliann Fischer (University of Kent), as well as Professors Ben Fine (Economics, SOAS) and Alfredo Saad Filho (Development Studies, SOAS) who contributed with a chapter on 'Marxist Economics'.

Speaker biographies:

Liliann Fischer has an International Relations background, recently graduating from her first Master’s degree in Global Conflict and Peace Processes at the University of Aberdeen and is now studying for a second degree in Political Psychology at the University of Kent, UK.

Ben Fine is Professor of Economics at the SOAS Department of Economics. He is the author of a number of works in the broad tradition of Marxist economics, and has made contributions on economic imperialism and social capital. He took his doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Amartya Sen.

Alfredo Saad Filho is a Professor of Political Economy at the SOAS Department of Development Studies. Alfredo has degrees in Economics from the Universities of Brasilia (Brazil) and London (SOAS). He has worked in universities and research institutions based in Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mozambique, Switzerland and the UK, and was a senior economic affairs officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). His research interests include the political economy of development, industrial policy, neoliberalism, alternative economic policies, Latin American political and economic development, inflation and stabilisation, and the labour theory of value and its applications.

Speakers: Liliann Fischer (University of Kent), Ben Fine (SOAS), Alfredo Saad Filho (SOAS)

Organiser: Organised jointly with the Open Economics Forum.

Event Date: 21 February 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Jane Harrigan (SOAS), Nicholas Vagen-Weeks (SOAS) and David Keen (LSE)

The dynamic inter-linkages between food security and conflict are increasingly being recognised as key issues in both conflict studies and work on food and nutrition security. Food and conflict have become intimately related in many conflict zones such as in current day Syria and Somalia and famine studies have long acknowledged the importance of war famine. Lack of food security and struggles over food-related natural resources such as land can be important sources and triggers of conflict whilst conflict itself usually worsens food and nutrition security. It does so in two ways. Firstly indirectly by threatening entitlements to food and increasing vulnerabilities, for example via the disruption of agricultural production and secondly, more directly when food is used as a weapon of war for example by withholding food or food aid from certain groups or plundering resources such as cattle and livestock. More recently, it has also been acknowledged that food issues are important in the transition from conflict and in rebuilding post-conflict societies and that this has to be approached from a political as well as a socio-economic perspective. This panel aims to draw together several papers on this topic making use of diverse country studies from both an academic and development practitioner perspective.

This episode features Panel 4 of the Workshop on ‘Political Economy Approaches to Food Regimes.’ This one-day workshop, was organised by the SOAS University of London Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Custer and brought together topics in contemporary food regime studies examined from a political economy perspective. Topics included inequality and food security, the state and food sovereignty, food regimes and the politics of conflict and financialisation of food.

Paper One: ‘Food Security in Palestine - The Effects of Occupation on Policy Space’ by Prof Jane Harrigan (SOAS University of London, UK)

Paper Two: ‘The Political Economy of Food in the Syria Crisis’ by Nicholas Vagen-Weeks (SOAS University of London, UK)

Paper Three: ‘Starving Them: Causes and Functions in Sudan, Syria and Yemen’ by Professor David Keen (LSE, UK)

Organiser: SOAS University of London Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Custer

Event Date: 19 January 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Hannah Bargawi (SOAS), Hassan Hakimian (SOAS), Susan Joekes (Independent Researcher) and Massoud Karshenas (SOAS)

Researchers at SOAS are leading a Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) that is intended on identifying innovative disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research agendas on female labour and dynamics of inequality in developing countries. This seminar is an opportunity to find out more about the network, its activities and avenues for future research. This network is concerned with gender and dynamics of inequality in three world regions, with specific focus on (a) the interplay of economic structures, policies and institutions as the determinants of women’s access to employment and (b) the patterns of women’s economic participation as key drivers of inequality.

Speaker biographies:

Dr. Hannah Bargawi is co-Investigator of the Dynamics of Gender Inequality in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia network. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London. Her recent research focuses on issues of gender and work in the Middle East and in Europe and she recently co-edited a volume entitled Economics and Austerity in Europe: Gendered Impacts and Sustainable Alternatives, published by Routledge.

Dr. Hassan Hakimian is co-Investigator of the Dynamics of Gender Inequality in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia network and is the director of the London Middle East Institute and Reader in the Economics Department at SOAS University of London. He was previously an Associate Dean at Cass Business School, London. His research focuses on MENA economies, specifically human resources and demographic change, labour markets, inclusive growth and the economics of Arab uprisings.

Susan Joekes is an independent researcher with special interest in trade, industrial organization and the economics of gender relations in the Middle East and North Africa. She has degrees in Persian with Arabic from Edinburgh University and in development economics from Oxford University, UK. Before becoming affiliated with SOAS, as a member of ESRC GRCF research network, she was a Senior Visiting Fellow of the LSE Gender Institute, 2016-2017. She was for many years a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK and also staff economist at the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), in Washington DC.

Prof. Massoud Karshenas is the principal investigator of the Dynamics of Gender Inequality in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia network and is Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London.

Event Date: 31 January 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS)

This paper analyses the revival of industrial policies from the late 2000 s in Japan and Korea and their limitations. The paper first adopts the perspective of historical institutionalism to focus on the relation between IPs and financial systems and study their evolution over the last 40 years. Second the paper mobilizes the concepts of institutional complementarities and hierarchy, and discusses the limits of this revival in a context of liberalized financial systems, to which government entities in charge of industrial policies have contributed. A major finding is that, in the context of financialization, past complementarities of the developmental state have weakened and contradictions have arisen. It has resulted in a restructuration of state capabilities to design and implement industrial policies, and to its inability to subordinate finance to its goals, despite the discourses and ambitions of governments. However, comparison between Japan and Korea also allows the identification of some significant differences in the initial institutional arrangements and in the process of institutional change, pertaining to sources of greater state capabilities in Korea than in Japan in the current period. This paper is one of the outcomes of INCAS, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions R.I.S.E funded project under the European Commission’s H2020 Programme.

Speaker biography:

Sébastien Lechevalier is Professor at the EHESS (Paris), in charge of the chair "Asian capitalisms". He is also founding President of the Fondation France. Being an expert on the Japanese economy, he was previously a visiting researcher at the Maison Franco-Japonaise in Tokyo, Hitotsubashi University, the University of Tokyo, Waseda University and Kyoto University. His research interests includes institutional change, innovation and industrial economics, inequalities and welfare. Among his numerous publications, one may cite: The Great Diversity of Japanese Capitalism (Routledge, 2014), Lessons from the Japanese experience. Towards an alternative economic policy? (ENS Ulm, 2016, in French). His next book Innovation beyond technology: Science for society and interdisciplinary approaches is forthcoming in 2018 from Springer.

Speakers: Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS), Helen Macnaughtan (SOAS)

Organiser: SOAS Japan Research Centre, SOAS Department of Economics and Japan Economy Network

Event Date: 7 February 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Susan Newman (University of the West of England), Sophie van Huellen (SOAS), Joseph Baines (King's College London) and Tania Salerno (University of Amsterdam)

Deregulation of commodity futures markets in the early 2000s precipitated a growing interest of financial investors in commodity derivative markets, including food. This ‘financialisation’ of commodity markets arguably fuelled price volatility and speculative bubbles. The link between financial markets and food prices has served as one of the main transmission channels of the financial meltdown in 2008 to world trade and the real economy, with severe consequences for food security and income for some of the world’s poorest. At the same time, liberalisation of domestic markets paired with soaring and volatile food and fuel prices over recent decades have fostered an increasing dominance of large corporations in agri-food sectors with implications for the distribution of income across stakeholders. This panel aims to draw together several papers that shed light on the complex and multitude of linkages between finance and food.

This episode features Panel 3 of the Workshop on ‘Political Economy Approaches to Food Regimes.’ This one-day workshop, was organised by the SOAS University of London Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Custer and brought together topics in contemporary food regime studies examined from a political economy perspective. Topics included inequality and food security, the state and food sovereignty, food regimes and the politics of conflict and financialisation of food.

Paper One: ‘Financialisation Along Agro-Food Chains - Towards an Analytical Framework’ by Dr Susan Newman (University of the West of England, UK)

Paper Two: ‘How Financial Investment Distorts Food Prices: Evidence from US Grain Markets’ by Dr Sophie van Huellen (SOAS University of London, UK)

Paper Three: ‘Profiting from Food Crisis? Farmers, Commodity Traders and the Distributional Dynamics of Financialization’ by Dr Joseph Baines (King's College London, UK)

Paper Four: Cargill’s ‘Global Acquisition Agenda’: Increased Control Through Financialisation by Dr Tania Salerno (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Organiser: SOAS University of London Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Custer

Event Date: 19 January 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast

Lorena Lombardozzi (Open University and SOAS), Merisa Thompson (University of Sheffield) and Mark Tilzey (Coventry University)

The panel discusses the relations between Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty from three different lenses. In particular, speakers look at recent debate on economic sovereignty and the role of the state in addressing issues of food security, nutrition and power relations between actors within the food provision system. The first paper by Dr. Mark Tilzey (University of Coventry) analyses and discusses the assumptions and definitions of Friedman's food regime approach under a theoretical perspective. The second paper by Lorena Lombardozzi (panel convenor, Open University and SOAS) looks at the case of Uzbekistan to assess the role of the state in food self-sufficiency. The third paper by Dr Merisa Thompson (University of Sheffield) analyses the political discourse around food security and food sovereignty in the Anglophone Caribbean.

This episode features Panel 2 of the Workshop on ‘Political Economy Approaches to Food Regimes.’ This one-day workshop, was organised by the SOAS University of London Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Custer and brought together topics in contemporary food regime studies examined from a political economy perspective. Topics included inequality and food security, the state and food sovereignty, food regimes and the politics of conflict and financialisation of food.

Paper One: ‘Food Regimes, the State, and Food Sovereignty: Friedmann and McMichael Revisited ‘ by Dr Mark Tilzey (Coventry University, UK)

Paper Two: ‘Perspective of wheat self-sufficiency policy: The case of post-Soviet Uzbekistan’ by Lorena Lombardozzi (Open University-SOAS, UK) and Nodir Djanibekov (IAMO, Germany)

Paper Three: ‘Searching for (Food) Sovereignty in the Anglophone Caribbean’ by Dr Merisa Thompson (University of Sheffield, UK)

Organiser: SOAS University of London Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Custer

Event Date: 19 January 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast