Nixon’s decision to delink the dollar from gold still hounds the IMF, South Africa and Africa

Wheat and oil prices were already rising before the Russian invasion, so what might be the effect for people in low-income countries of a war far away, that may have a secondary impact much closer to home? In this short video, Rabah Arezki Chief Economist & Vice President, African Development …

In the interview, Robert Skidelsky discusses the emergence of political influence of a certain school of economic thought and how the success of an economic theory depends on the power relations in the society. He introduces the historical example of Keynesian economics and its replacement by liberal economic theory and policy in the aftermath of the Great Depression, and transfers this historical case to the dominant paradigm of austerity policies in the Europe as response to rising public debts caused by the Financial Crisis. He contrasts austerity policies with a Keynesian approach. Furthermore, he relates the targets of policy to the underlying power structures, for example when not the reduction of unemployment but the protection of financial capital is politically addressed.

The goal of the class is to acquire familiarity with recently-published research in alternative macroeconomics with a focus on the distribution of income and wealth, cyclical growth models, and technical change.

In this tenth lecture in INET’s “How and How Not to Do Economics,” Robert Skidelsky argues that there are two main reasons why economists should study history.