There has been much recent debate also in the UK around the state of the economics profession. Prospect magazine published a piece by Howard Reed proposing that we need to ‘rip it (economics) up and start again’ with a rigorous response from Diane Coyle here. Following that Cahal Moran, one of the authors of ‘Econocracy’ gave his view. We also published an interview in the last issue of The Mint Magazine with Angus Armstrong who is seeking to rebuild macro-economics funded by Government research funding.
What are the issues? How big a problem is there? Instead of discussing theory, we will look at what a pluralist approach to economics might look like and why it matters, focussing as a case study on finance. We have a panel of experts to put there views and partake in a wide discussion.
Our experts are: Ann Pettifor, Author of “Production of Money”, PEP Trustee and Director of Policy Research in Macro-Economics; Leon Wansleben, sociologist at the LSE who has conducted extensive research into the financial analyst profession; and Alex Waite, Senior Consulting Actuary, who has contributed to recent work by the profession on their methodological underpinnings.