Pluralist Showcase

As tax day approached, St. Francis College Economics Professors launched their first Economics Week with three days of guest speakers and student research. Randall Wray explains some basic principles of Modern Monetary Theory.

The chi-square distribution is used to test a hypothesis. Therefore, expected values are related to observed values using a chi-square distribution. Then using p-value tables the hypothesis is tested at a 5% significance level.

Nancy Fraser starts out by introducing the multidmiensional cirises of the 21st century. Three dimensions are especially alarming to her: the ecological, the financial and social aspects of the crisis. Fraser then revives the ideas of Karl Polanyi, which he first presented in his 1944 book "The great transformation". She …

Deforestation is estimated to be responsible for about 12-29% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This essay will explore ecological economics as an alternative lens through which to approach forest conservation and the acceleration of climate change.

One method of economic modelling that has become increasingly popular in academia, government and the private sector is Agent Based Models, or ABM. These simulate the actions and interactions of thousands or even millions of people to try to understand the economy – for this reason ABM was once described to me as being “like Sim City without the graphics”. One advantage of ABM is that it is flexible, since you can choose how many agents there are (an agent just means some kind of 'economic decision maker' like a firm, consumer, worker or government); how they behave (do they use complicated or simple rules to make decisions?); as well as the environment they act in, then just run the simulation and see what happens as they interact over time.

Steve Horwitz, professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, gives a concise account of Austrian approach and talks about how it relates to the various current public policy issues.