Gabriel Porcile (ECLAC)
There is important news from the economics front line. I strongly encourage everyone to look at both the CORE project directed by Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin, and the new book on development economics authored by Jaime Ros.
Samuel Bowles and Carlin Soskice need no introduction. They do solid and rigorous economic theory, while at the same time are open-minded, creative and committed to work with the big questions of our profession – how to ensure growth with equality, how to find social arrangements that allow for cooperation and positive sum games, how we can put the analytical prowess of economic theory to serve useful, ethical purposes.
Sometimes one feels that economists have got it wrong. Just to cite a couple of examples: economists strenuously defended the efficiency of the financial markets even in the light of catastrophic global financial crises; for many, many years they taught that the big trade-off in economics is between equality and growth in spite of massive evidence pointing in the opposite direction. These misleading myths are evaporating, but why did it take so long for the economists to change their views and learn from the evidence?
Samuel Bowles and Carlin Soskice need no introduction. They do solid and rigorous economic theory, while at the same time are open-minded, creative and committed to work with the big questions of our profession – how to ensure growth with equality, how to find social arrangements that allow for cooperation and positive sum games, how we can put the analytical prowess of economic theory to serve useful, ethical purposes.
Sometimes one feels that economists have got it wrong. Just to cite a couple of examples: economists strenuously defended the efficiency of the financial markets even in the light of catastrophic global financial crises; for many, many years they taught that the big trade-off in economics is between equality and growth in spite of massive evidence pointing in the opposite direction. These misleading myths are evaporating, but why did it take so long for the economists to change their views and learn from the evidence?