Today – the fourth anniversary of the Lehman’s collapse and the fifth of the run on Northern Rock – is the official publication date of [amazon_link id=”1907994041″ target=”_blank” ]What’s The Use of Economics? Teaching the Dismal Science after the Crisis.[/amazon_link] The idea behind the conference and essays was to get a start on reforming economics by going straight to the way future generations of economists are taught.
There are lots of good contributions in the book, including from Andrew Lo, Andy Haldane, John Kay, Alan Kirman, Bridget Osborne, Paul Seabright, Ben Friedman…. (I wrote the intro). There are links to reviews and also a comment I wrote in Research Fortnight on the book’s web page. The common underlying theme from a wide range of contributors (based in the US, UK and France) is that the crisis will not and cannot leave economics itself unchanged – although there are obviously quite a few economists, especially in the academic world, still heavily in denial about this.
[amazon_image id=”1907994041″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]What’s the Use of Economics?: Teaching the Dismal Science After the Crisis[/amazon_image]
If readers of this blog do read the book, I would love to get feedback, and suggestions for next steps, as we have a working group aiming to report next year.
did you have a chance to look at Acemoglu and Gabaix “Network Origins of Fluctuations” ? Seems if we combine that with Andy Haldane’s financial network story, and the agent-based modeling a la Kirman, we might actually be on our way to a 21st century macro, leaving behind the dinosaurs of Lucas and Prescott DSGE and Krugman ISLM
I’ve just downloaded it, and it looks excellent, so thank you for the reference and the reminder. I’m going to a conference on the future of macro early in October, so it will be very timely to have read this. Of course, these linkages are cross-border in some important sectors as well. Still, I’m sure the dinosaurs, whether brontesaurus or pteradactyl, will put up stiff resistance.