BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar - 'Why there will Never
  be a Complete Consensus in Macroeconomics: A Tale of Group Thinking and P
 aradigms'\, by - John McCombie - John McCombie
DTSTART:20180425T170000Z
DTEND:20180425T183000Z
UID:TALK104341@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Philippa Millerchip
DESCRIPTION:*Date:* Wednesday 25 April 2018 \n*Time:* 18:00 -19:30\n*Speak
 er:* John McCombie\n*Talk Title:* 'Why there will Never be a Complete Cons
 ensus in Macroeconomics: A Tale of Group Thinking and Paradigms'\n*Locatio
 n:* Ramsden Room\, St Catharine's College\n\n*Speaker*\nJohn McCombie is E
 meritus Professor in Regional and Applied Economics\, and Senior Emeritus 
 Fellow of the Department of Land Economy. He is a Fellow of the Academy of
  Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association. John is
  Director of the Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy\; Emeritu
 s Fellow in Economics\, Downing College\; Director of Studies in Land Econ
 omy\, Christ’s College\, Downing College and Girton College. He was form
 erly a lecturer in Economics at the University of Hull and at the Universi
 ty of Melbourne. His interests are regional economics\, post Keynesian mac
 roeconomics\, the causes of variations in national and regional growth rat
 es\, income inequality\, trade and economic geography and the methodologic
 al implications for macroeconomics of the Great Financial Crisis. He is a 
 consultant to the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank and was a Spec
 ial Advisor to a House of Lords Subcommittee inquiring into the EU regiona
 l funds. He was a founding co-editor of Spatial Economic Analysis and a fo
 rmer editor of Regional Studies. He has recently published (with Jesus Fel
 ipe) a book entitled The Aggregate Production Function and Technical Chang
 e\; ‘Not Even Wrong’. This presents a fundamental criticism of one of 
 the central concepts of neoclassical macroeconomics. He is currently resea
 rching into the economic and philosophical issues (including Rawls’ ‘J
 ustice as Fairness’ and the concept of ‘Just Deserts’) concerning th
 e optimal degree of income inequality.\n\n*Talk Overview*\nAfter the acrim
 onious debates between the New Classical and Keynesian economists in the 1
 980s and 1990s\, a complacent New Macroeconomic Consensus was achieved and
  by 2006\, according to its adherents\, all the major theoretical problems
  were deemed solved. The sub-prime crisis exposed fundamental flaws in thi
 s approach and for a time there was a return to the putatively discredited
  Keynesian Economics of fifty years ago. Using this as one example\, this 
 seminar looks at the broader question as to why competing schools of thoug
 ht can\, and have persisted\, almost indefinitely in macroeconomics. This 
 is notwithstanding the emergence of a dominant\, or mainstream\, approach.
  This contribution draws on Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm and the sociol
 ogy of knowledge to understand why previous debates re-emerge and why some
  economists question whether there has been any meaningful progress in mac
 roeconomics over the last thirty years. It also considers the strange case
  of the aggregate production function\, which is at the heart of both appl
 ied and theoretical neoclassical macroeconomics. This is in spite of the f
 act that it is logically impossible to derive the production function from
  micro-foundations (the aggregation problem) and why it is always possible
  to obtain a near perfect statistical fit to the putative production funct
 ion\, although the estimates tell us nothing about the underlying economy.
  This raises some further important methodological issues for macroeconomi
 cs.\n\nPlease contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.
 uk) and Michael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.
LOCATION:The Ramsden Room\, St Catharine's College
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR