This Friday, 29th October the Young Economists will host the launch of John Quiggin’s much anticipated, and creatively titled, book, Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas still Walk among Us.
This is an opportunity to meet an interesting bunch of economists and young professionals in a social atmosphere and discuss some of the challenging ideas in Professor Quiggin’s book. All are welcome to this free event, and there are free drinks for Young Economist and ESA members.
There are prizes on offer for best dressed living dead economist, and best economic limerick (try here for some inspiration)
A PDF flyer is here.
Bad economic ideas don't arise by themselves. They are sought out and reanimated by interest groups which want to capture government policy.
ReplyDeleteEconomics in One Lesson: The Lesson
By Henry Hazlitt (1946)
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[edited excerpt] Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any subject known to man. This is no accident. The difficulties of the subject are great enough, and they are multiplied a thousandfold by the special pleadings of selfish interests.
Every group has interests antagonistic to all other groups. Some public policies benefit everybody in the long run. Other policies benefit only one group at the expense of all other groups.
The group that benefits by such policies has such a direct interest in them that they argue for them plausibly and persistently. It hires the best buyable minds to present its case. It will either convince the public that its case is sound, or so befuddle the argument that clear thinking becomes next to impossible.
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Fascinating... so, if voodoo economics returned to America, they would also be zombie economics.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, I am humbly pleased to provide limerick inspiration to the Young Economists.