Earlier this month George Soros created an “Institute for New Economic Thinking,” and sponsored an inaugural conference with the aim to kick start a re-thinking of macroeconomics. Click here and below for video interviews with Soros, Joseph Stigltiz, and Robert Skidelsky who share some of their thoughts at the conference.
What are your thoughts on this project and these proposals? Is this the new economic thinking we need to prevent future crises?
I think it’s at least a worthy start. The troubles I have with the conference are:
(1) The line-up: Not very promising. No renegades? Why’s that? Luckily they didn’t invite the mainstream hardcore ideologues and liers from economics like Barro, Mankiw, … and from central banking the BuBa gangsters.
(2) Nothing about economic education? That’s definitely not the way to go! As long as the undergraduate is brainwashed with Mankiw and friends nothing will change. These guys will eventually die some day and their fantasy world should be put to rest with them.
(3) It was all about on the one hand and on the other. Turner: We need radical new thinking. But we must be very careful and gradual. By doing so you don’t start any revolution. Thoma: I’m thinking to modify my irrelevant DSGE models. More cleverness is needed? But maybe we need other models? Who knows?
Certainly some excellent thinkers were party to this conference. But really new, “new economic thinking,” requires involving far more people of diverse backgrounds, disciplinary training, experience, nationalities, genders, and world views. Not that many outsiders are listed as among the conference participants, so that might explain why at least many of the papers–which certainly look interesting and rigorous from the website–don’t seem that “out of the box.”
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