ROUNDTABLE THIS WEEKEND! WEBINAR STARTS 2:30PM EST ON 2/26 CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR SPOT IN ZOOM AUDIENCE
People & Things in Motion: Economics and the Future
Saturday 2:30 PM EST
26 February 2022
The Dismal Science seems to analyze and involve most aspects of our lives. While traditional macroeconomics continues to concern itself with natural rates of inflation and unemployment, with tariffs and taxes, with supply and demand, at both the meso- and micro-levels, economics has productively linked with sociology, social history, anthropology, and psychology. The field of behavioral economics , having adopted the methodology of experimental psychology, is now a full-fledged subgenre within the field. Many of its fascinating and useful insights have in turn seeded new lines of investigation in these sister disciplines.
Now, less out of sheer academic exuberance and more by brute necessity, economics is applying its methods to recent natural and man-made disasters of global consequence. The triad of climate change, the mass migration of refugees, and the pandemic-driven disruptions of the supply chain has descended with alarming impact.
In response, economics examines the movement of peoples and things amidst these disruptive forces, assaying their ramifications from both a birds eye view and up close. The effects on inflation, unemployment, family structure, healthcare, education, poverty and productivity are varied and profound. Our roundtable will look at the current dynamics of economics , and ask where the field may move in the 21 st century.
This roundtable will also be streamed live and can be watched on Youtube (youtube.com/helixcenter) or on our website (helixcenter.org/videos)
The Participants
Nicholas Economides is an internationally recognized academic authority on network economics, electronic commerce and public policy. His fields of specialization and research include the economics of networks, especially of telecommunications, computers, and information, the economics of technical compatibility and standardization, industrial organization, the structure and organization of financial markets and payment systems, antitrust, application of public policy to network industries, strategic analysis of markets and law and economics.Professor Economides has published more than 100 articles in top academic journals in the areas of networks, telecommunications, oligopoly, antitrust, product positioning and on the liquidity and the organization of financial markets and exchanges. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a BSc (First Class Honors) in Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics. Previously, he taught at Columbia University (1981-1988) and at Stanford University (1988-1990). He is editor of the Information Economics and Policy, Netnomics, Quarterly Journal of Electronic Commerce, the Journal of Financial Transformation, Journal of Network Industries, on the Advisory Board of the Social Science Research Network, editor of Economics of Networks Abstracts by SSRN and former editor of the International Journal of Industrial Organization. His website on the Economics of Networks has been ranked as one of the top four economics sites worldwide by The Economist magazine.
Professor Economides is Executive Director of the NET Institute, http://www.NETinst.org, a worldwide focal point for research on the economics of network and high technology industries. He has advised or is advising the US Federal Trade Commission, the governments of Greece, Ireland, New Zealand and Portugal, the Attorney General of New York State, major telecommunications corporations, a number of the Federal Reserve Banks, the Bank of Greece and major Financial Exchanges. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Economist Intelligence Unit. He has commented extensively in broadcast and in print on high technology, antitrust and public policy issues.
Robert H. Frank is the HJ Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Cornell’s Johnson School of Management. His “Economic View” column has appeared in The New York Times since 2005. He received his B.S. in mathematics from Georgia Tech, then taught math and science for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal. He holds an M.A. in statistics and a Ph.D. in economics, both from the University of California at Berkeley.His books, which include Choosing the Right Pond, Passions Within Reason, Microeconomics and Behavior, Principles of Economics (with Ben Bernanke), Luxury Fever, What Price the Moral High Ground?, Falling Behind, The Economic Naturalist, The Darwin Economy, Success and Luck, and Under the Influence have been translated into 24 languages. The Winner-Take-All Society, co-authored with Philip Cook, received a Critic’s Choice Award, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and was included in Business Week’s list of the ten best books of 1995. He received the 2004 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, the Johnson School’s Stephen Russell Distinguished teaching award in 2004, 2010, 2012, and 2017, and its Apple Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005.
Richard Howarth is an environmental and ecological economist who studies the interplay between economic analysis and the ecological, moral, and social dimensions of environmental governance. His topical interests focus on the valuation and management of ecosystem services; theories of discounting and intergenerational justice; climate stabilization policy; the ethical foundations of voluntary pro-environmental behaviors; and the relationship between economic growth, environmental quality, and human well-being as mediated by endogenous social norms.
Professor Howarth graduated summa cum laude from the Biology and Society Program at Cornell University (A.B., 1985) and holds an M.S. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1987). He received his Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley (1990), where he collaborated with Richard B. Norgaard on the economics of natural resources and sustainable development. Before joining Dartmouth’s faculty in 1998, Professor Howarth held research and teaching positions at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1990-1993) and the University of California at Santa Cruz (1993-1998). Since January of 2008, he has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Ecological Economics.
Jennifer Jacquet is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Director of XE: Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement at NYU. She is also deputy director of NYU’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and Affiliated Faculty in the Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science. Her research focuses on animals and the environment, agnotology, and attribution and responsibility in the Anthropocene. She also author of Is Shame Necessary? (Pantheon/Penguin, 2015) about the evolution, function, and future of the use of social disapproval in a globalized, digitized world, and of The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World (Pantheon/Penguin) forthcoming in June of 2022 — a work of ‘epistolary non-fiction’ that makes the business case for scientific denial. She is the recipient of a 2015 Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship and a 2016 Pew fellowship in marine conservation.
David W. Schwartzman, Professor Emeritus, Howard University (Washington DC, USA), PhD in Geochemistry from Brown University, USA. In 1999 (updated in paperback in 2002), he published Life, Temperature and the Earth (Columbia University), in addition to many papers in Capitalism Nature Socialism (CNS) and other journals. His most recent books are The Earth is Not for Sale (2019) with his older son Peter and The Global Solar Commons (2021) (http://theearthisnotforsale.org). David serves on the advisory boards of Capitalism Nature Socialism and the editorial board of Science & Society. He is an active member of the DC Statehood Green Party/Green Party of the United States (International and EcoAction Committees) as well as several other community organizations. David has been an active member of the Global Greens COP26 Working Group.