Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Economics Hijackers Could Do With A History Lesson, Simon Ville

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Behind every economic policy initiative lies a narrative justifying that course of action: immigration increases unemployment; public debt is unsustainable; manufacturing is interminably declining; city growth is out of control.

We have many “narrators” driving these discussions of economics – the media, political parties, public sector bodies, business and indeed universities – each with their own set of interests and values.

Unfortunately, among these claimants, the voice of economic history has remained largely silent or selectively galvanised to prosecute a triumphalist or doomsayer interpretation: “the clever country’s many successes in policy and business”; or “the lucky country’s history has been …

Environmental Economics And Ecological Economics: The Contribution Of Interdisciplinarity To Understanding, Influence And Effectiveness, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper reviews developments in both environmental economics and ecological economics with respect to their progress towards environmental interdisciplinarity and towards providing solutions to environmental problems. The concepts, methods, theories and assumptions of each field of knowledge are reviewed and the extent to which they depart from the dominant neoclassical paradigm of economics is assessed. The contribution that interdisciplinarity has made to the success of each field is analysed in terms of understanding, influence and effectiveness and the constraints that it has imposed upon that success. Environmental economics has adopted the dominant economic neoclassical paradigm, including the power of the …

Development Economics: From Classical To Critical Analysis, Susan N. Engel

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

When development economics emerged as a sub-discipline of economics in the 1950s its main concern, like that of most economic theory, was (and largely remains) under-standing how the economies of nation-states have grown and expanded. This means it has been concerned with looking at the sources and kinds of economic expansion measured via increases in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the role of different inputs into production (capital, labor, and land), the impact of growth in the various sectors of the economy (agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors), and, to a lesser extent, the role of the state. These concerns are at …