No less a thinker than Adam Smith suggested that the division of labor in society was dependent upon the existence of markets, or, as he puts it, upon man’s “propensity to barter, truck and exchange one thing for another.” This phrase was later to yield the concept of the Economic Man. In retrospect it can… Read More »
ECAS 4 – Africa Engagements: On Whose Terms? Panel Title: Engaging the Francophone/Anglophone divide in researching Africa Panel Proposers: Ms Amy Niang, Politics and IR, University of Edinburgh Scotland Ms Muriel Cote, Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh Like other scientific disciplines, African studies are situated within specific knowledge/institutional configurations; this is perhaps most… Read More »
From a commentary on Owen Barder’s comment on Bob Zoellick’s speech on development discourse: … if we really want to democratise the development discourse we should also publish, say, the minutes of Bank board meetings and other relevant internal documents to understand how ideas and statistics are translated into ‘reality’ through powerful interlocutors like the… Read More »
Delivered at Gresham College, London. The summary: Professor Niall Ferguson offers an evolutionary approach to financial history. He questions the impeding of ‘natural selection’ by keeping the financial dinosaurs alive through the life support of monetary injections: “without creative destruction, our economic system cannot be a healthy one.” The view that financial history could be… Read More »
From NEXT: Nigeria’s consumer inflation eased to 10.3 percent year-on-year in June from 11.0 percent the previous month, its lowest level for more than two years, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday. Growth in food prices, which form the bulk of the inflation index basket in Africa’s most populous country, also eased, to… Read More »
… called Baobab. The description in the current edition of the newspaper: …it will delve into politics, econoics and culture, and comment on the successes of Africa’s peaceful elections and foreign investment as well as on Africa’s troubles. This is hoping that the language in which the discussions and analyses are framed will not be one… Read More »
Gary Becker, the economics Nobel laureate who is probably most famous for his application of economics (in his case, rational choice and utility maximisation) to subjects such as racial discrimination, patterns of family organisation and drug addiction, has recommended the creation of a market in immigration. From The Economist: As with any price, one for… Read More »
A new book by Milford Bateman, who is described as “a freelance consultant specialising in local economic development policy, particularly in relation to the Western Balkans,” is described in the following terms on the publisher’s website: Over the last thirty years or so, microfinance has risen to become one of the most high-profile policies to… Read More »
The idea is that standard economics is often too simplistic: But in most economic analysis, the decision makers’ point of view is quite narrow. It starts with what people like and don’t like. People may have a taste for oranges or bananas, or a preference for enjoying life today instead of saving for the future.… Read More »
Institutional analysis has been successfully used to study changes in property rights and the negotiation of the collective-action problem inherent in managing common-pool resources under a variety of property regimes. It is particularly well-suited to the analysis of socio-ecological systems, and is compatible with theories coming out of ecological and economic anthropology. Yet despite the… Read More »