Heterodox Economics Newsletter
Issue 296 May 09, 2022 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory
I had a conversation with my plumber these days. He is a smart man, who often tells stories that help to sharpen my economic intuition. A few months ago he explained to me how his company began hoarding inputs to confront increased uncertainty about the reliability of provision through global value chains. While they never actually experienced a logistical bottleneck, simply accounting for the possibility of such a bottleneck occurring changed their expectations in a way that led to self-reinforcing effects as increased hoarding obviously puts additional pressure on the demand for such inputs. Similar to Merton's classic example of a bank run, such cases of self-reinforcing expectations in particular (and self-reinforcing effects in general) pervade economic processes and make them complex objects that can easily develop in unexpected, non-linear ways.
These days he told me that his phone is running hot constantly since the war in Ukraine started as people want to switch from gas and oil to alternative heating facilities. This is a big issue in Austria, my home country, as much heating relies on fossil energy and much fossil energy is imported from Russia. And indeed, my plumber's description clearly indicates that this is one of the rather rare cases, where supply cannot accomodate demand or at least cannot do so without significant lags of several months, in some cases even years. While this is an interesting idiosyncracy that informs us a little about how contingent the interplay between supply and demand actually is, the more depressing observation is that fear of Putin's aggression and an escalating conflict with the EU in terms of economic sanctions has accomplished what constant news about how our planet is burning could not do: namely motivate the Austrian population to undergo a large scale shift in preferences for alternative heating systems. While I, of course, appreciate the overall outcome in this case (bettter now than never!), I would have preferred a more enlightened and forward-looking approach by my fellow countrymen as an earlier strive for a shift would obviously have allowed us to more fully exploit the potential associated with such a large-scale reswitching of heating-facilities.
From all this we see that my plumber is somewhat similar to Elon Musk: both are a single persons that help us to sharpen our economic intuition for understanding the inner workings of capitalism. Elon does so very well currently – by simply buying Twitter he illustrates perfectly well how vulnerable private media can be to the private interests of those, who reside at the top of the wealth distribution ;-)
All the best,
Jakob
PS: In this issue I tried to incorporate some items – like information on a new journal on the Circular Economy or some books dedicated to innovation studies – that might be of relevance for getting the much-needed socio-ecological transformation going. In general we try to get a better grip on the expanding discourse of ecological economics, but we somewhat depend on researchers active in this area to submit more info – my feeling is, we currently miss too many nice events, journal-issues and conferences associated to ecological issues in general and ecological economics in particular. So please, if you should take note of something that should also be posted in the Newsletter simply forward it to newsletter@heterodoxnews.com!
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Table of contents
- Call for Papers
- Marxism 21: Special Issue on "Recent Developments in Marxian Value Theory"
- 15th History of Recent Economics Conference (HISRECO) (Lausanne, October 2022)
- 26th FMM Conference: Post-Keynesian Economics and Global Challenges (Berlin, October 2022)
- 28th Annual Conference on Alternative Economic Policy in Europe (London, September 2022)
- Call for book chapter contributions "Economic policy in transition economies - an institutional perspective"
- Celebrating Adam Smith at Journal of the History of Economic Thought (JHET)
- Dezernat Zukunft's Call for Papers: Waiting for Wages
- History of Economic Thought Society of Australia Conference (Melbourne, September 2022)
- International Conference on "Power and Knowledge from the 18th Century to Today" (Nancy, November 2022)
- International Financial Forum: Call for Papers on “The challenges facing financial markets under the uncertainties of the 21st century" (Grenoble, July 2022)
- Journal for Social Inclusion: Special Issue on "Indigenous Emancipation"
- Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination: Special Issue on "Applications of Complexity for resilient organizations, management and innovation systems"
- Marxism 21: Special issue on "Recent Developments in Marxian Value Theory"
- Second Young Scholars Conference on Structural Change and Industrial Policy in Africa (online, June 2022)
- WINIR 2022 Virtual Conference on "Polycentric Governance & the Challenges of the 21st Century" (Online, September 2022)
- Call for Participants
- SASE Panel on "Fractious Feminisms and Feminist Solidarities" (online, May 2022)
- 11th Post-Keynesian Economics Summer School (University of Greenwich, June 2022)
- 2nd International Workshop of the Structuralist Development Macroeconomics (Online, June 2022)
- 3rd ISEE Doing Ecological Economics seminar (Online, May 2022)
- 4th Webinar “Institutional and Organizational Economics” (Barcelona, June 2022)
- Contested Markets Conference (Paris, June 2022)
- HYPE webinar series on "The urgent need to build a new world order - a new international financial architecture - to tackle climate breakdown" (Online, May 2022)
- Political Economy of the European Peripheries Summer School (Portugal, July 2022)
- Progressive Economics 2022 (London, 11 June 2022)
- SMEIE - First Edition Summer Module on Economics and Institutions in Europe (Trento, September 2022)
- Summer School in Network and Data Science (London, June 2022)
- Conference Papers, Reports, and Podcasts
- Cultures of Expertise in Economics: In Conversation with Dr. Danielle Guizzo
- SDMRG Webinar with Professor Amitava Dutt
- Job Postings
- OECD
- Sheffield University, UK
- The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Netherlands
- The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), Germany
- UWE Bristol, UK
- Awards
- GAIA Masters Student Paper Award 2023: Call for Submissions
- Pierangelo Garegnani Thesis Prize 2022: Call for submissions
- Thandika Mkandawire Prize: Call for submissions
- Journals
- Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 42 (2)
- Economy and Society 51 (2)
- Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review 19 (1)
- Forum for Social Economics 51 (2)
- History of Economics Review 81 (1)
- International Journal of Political Economy 51 (1)
- Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 45 (1)
- Metroeconomica 73 (2)
- New Political Economy 27 (3)
- Review of International Political Economy 29 (2)
- Review of Radical Political Economics 54 (1)
- The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 29 (2)
- The Review of Black Political Economy 49 (2)
- Books and Book Series
- A Modern Guide to Post-Keynesian Institutional Economics
- Handbook of Economic Stagnation
- Handbook on Alternative Theories of Innovation
- Interest and Capital: The Monetary Economics of Michał Kalecki
- Measuring Innovation Everywhere:The Challenge of Better Policy, Learning, Evaluation and Monitoring
- Permanent Revolution: Reflections on Capitalism
- Property Will Cost Us the Earth
- Research Handbook of Innovation for a Circular Economy
- Temp: The Real Story of What Happened to Your Salary, Benefits, and Job Security
- The Great Inequality
- Heterodox Graduate Programs, Scholarships and Grants
- ISRF Political Economy Fellowship Competition: Call for applications
- URPE Dissertation Fellowship 2022
- Newsletters
- WEA Commentaries 12 (1)
- For Your Information
- New Journal: Circular Economy