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The sum of squares and degree of freedom calculation from the previous videos are put into a ratio to calculate the F Value, on whose basis the null hypothesis is confirmed or rejected. If variance is higher between samples than within the null hypothesis is more likely to be rejected. The results of a numerical example are interpreted more abstractly and then tested with regards to a confidence interval and the corresponding F table.
ANOVA 3: Hypothesis test with F-statistic
The short clip gives a basic introduction to the concept of the market equilibrium and its graphical representation: taking the example of a market for apples, it presents supply and demand curves as well as scenarios how prices and quantities adapt, leading to an equilibrium.
Market equilibrium | Supply, demand, and market equilibrium | Microeconomics |
In the second video of the series Investigating International Finance, an alternative view on capital controls is given contrasting with the paradigm of classical trade theory suggesting that the removal of trade and capital barriers is associated with higher market efficiency. After explaining the conceptual mechanisms underlying capital controls, examples are introduced where countries actually apply capital controls and how these controls have been associated with a lesser exposure to international financial crises spillovers.
Capital controls - Investigating International Finance, Episode 2
Environmental catastrophe looms large over politics: from the young person’s climate march to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, increasing amounts of political space are devoted to the issue. Central to this debate is the question of whether economic growth inevitably leads to environmental issues such as depleted finite resources and increased waste, disruption of natural cycles and ecosystems, and of course climate change. Growth is the focal point of the de-growth and zero-growth movements who charge that despite efficiency gains, increased GDP always results in increased use of energy and emissions. On the other side of the debate, advocates of continued growth (largely mainstream economists) believe that technological progress and policies can ‘decouple’ growth from emissions.
To Grow or Not to Grow?
How countries achieve long-term GDP growth is up there with the most important topics in economics. As Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas put it “the consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.” Ricardo Hausmann et al take a refreshing approach to this question in their Atlas of Economic Complexity. They argue a country’s growth depends on the complexity of its economy: it must have a diverse economy which produces a wide variety of products, including ones that cannot be produced much elsewhere. The Atlas goes into detail on exactly what complexity means, how it fits the data, and what this implies for development. Below I will offer a summary of their arguments, including some cool data visualisations.
GDP Growth: It’s Complicated
David Harvey illustrates the five most common narratives on why the financial and economic crisis took place – from human frailty to policy failure.
RSA ANIMATE: Crises of Capitalism
How do we get our dinner? And who cooked Adam Smith's dinner? Starting with Smith's answer on the origin of a dinner, Katrine Marçal problematizes and illustrates how unpaid labour was and is still being ignored by economic theory and how the homo economics represents characteristics perceived as male.
How Economics Forgot about Women
Based on a critique on econometric and DSGE models (in particular in the context of the financial crisis), Doyne Farmer presents his current research programme that aims at building an agent-based model of the financial and economic crisis. It models heterogeneous agents and from there simulates the economy, firstly for the housing market. The interview gives a short insight in the research programme.
Macroeconomics From the Bottom Up
Sheila Dow discusses the concept of radical uncertainty and the failure of neoclassical economics to integrate it into its analysis. As to the implications for financial regulation that arise from the presence of radical uncertainty she argues for institutional overhaul, where the banks see themselves as a licensed partner of the central bank and where rules, values, and conventions would be subject to a cultural shift. Also, Sheila Dow advocates for a renewed focus on retail banking.
The Economics of Uncertainty
In this Ted Talk, Mariana Mazzucato argues against the juxtaposition of the state and entrepreneurial activities. By presenting examples of her research on the relation between innovation and (inclusive) growth, she shows how many innovations were led by states' initiatives. Mazzucato confronts the liberal narrative of the a state that merely provides the frame for the market.
Government - investor, risk-taker, innovator
Feminist economics is a key component of the movement for pluralism in economics and one that has, to some extent, been acknowledged by the mainstream of the profession. It seeks to highlight issues which affect women because (it claims) they have not traditionally been recognised in a field dominated by men. On top of this, it seeks to carve out a space for women in the discipline, both for intrinsic reasons of fairness and diversity and because it means that women’s issues are more likely to be highlighted going forward.
Why Feminist Economics is Necessary
What influence do changes in tax policy or state decisions on expenditure have on economic growth? For decades, this question has been controversially debated.
What is the fiscal multiplier and why is it so controversial?
Economic sociology is an entire subfield and one could write an series on it, so I’m going to stick to probably the most prominent economic sociologist and the founder of ‘new economic sociology’, Mark Granovetter.
Economic Sociology: the Contributions of Mark Granovetter
The most successful multialternative theories of decision making assume that people consider individual aspects of a choice and proceed via a process of elimination. Amos Tversky was one of the pioneers of this field, but modern decision theorists – most notably Neil Stewart – have moved things forward. At the current stage the theories are able to explain a number of strictly ‘irrational’ but reasonable quirks of human decision making, including various heuristics and biases. Not only this, but eye movements of participants strongly imply that the decision-making process depicted in the theories is an accurate one.
The Quirks of Human Decisions, Explained
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.
Economics and Political Power during the Crisis
First some terminology is explained. Then the interpretations of the coefficients and constants of the function are discussed. Afterwards the zero conditional mean assumption regarding the residual is problematized. Lastly, a graphical representation of a regression line is given and the least sum of squared errors is introduced and the equation for the coefficient of the linear function as well as for the intercept is given.
Econometrics // Lecture 2: "Simple Linear Regression" (SLR)
Esther Duflo discusses the fact that in social policy one cannot check the big questions, i.e. whether development assistance as an aggregate is helpful, because there is no counterfactual. She then suggests to focus on smaller questions such as what prevents or incentiveses people from immunizing their kids or whether mosquito bednets should be distributed for free. These questions can be answered by using randomized control trials as in the medical sciences. Thus, she argues, by bringing the experimental method to social policy analysis better decisions as to where allocate funds can be made.
Social experiments to fight poverty
In this radio interview, Andrew Sayer first outlines some features of neoliberalism and policies that are associated with it. Then a difference between wealth creation via investment and wealth extraction by means of lending money to those deprived of it or by acquiring property such as real estate or financial assets on the secondary market as absentee owner is established. In this context reference is made to J.A. Hobson's concept of "improperty." Finally, there are some words on the power dynamics associated with capitalism and its relation to climate change.
Why We Can’t Afford the Rich
In both economics textbooks and public perceptions central banks are a fact of life. On the wall of my A-level economics classroom there was the Will Rogers quote “there have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking”, summarising how many economists view the institution. There is a widespread belief that there is something different about money which calls for a central authority to manage its operation, a view shared even by staunch free marketeers such as Milton Friedman. This belief is not without justification, since money underpins every transaction in a way that apples do not, but we should always be careful not to take existing institutions for granted and central banking is no exception. In this post I will look at the idea of private or free banking, where banks compete (and cooperate) to issue their own currency.
Whither Central Banks?
In this lecture Ben Fine aims at stimulating interest for and explaining the relevance of Marxist Political Economy. Ben Fine dedicates the first half of his comprehensible lecture to the question on how mainstream economics became the way it is by explaining its key concepts and how those evolved during the past 150 years. While critically reflecting those concept he also emphasizes that mainstream economics does not consider historical processes. This is the point of departure on his presentation of the core terms and crucial categories of Marxist Political Economy: e.g. the production process and class relations (Part 1). Part 2 examines the consequences of the capitalist mode of production and its propensity to crises. Ben Fine illustrates this Marxist analysis with the example of the current crisis and explains current conditions for the accumulation of capital.
Introduction to Marxist Economics (Part 2)
In this keynote speech, Roger Backhouse gives a historical overview of theories on secular stagnation: how it evolved from a description of the economic situation, especially in the U.S. of the 1930s to an analytical tool and then lost importance until its current revival. Backhouse touches upon the contributions of J. A. Hobson, Alvin Hansen, Evsey Domar and Paul Samuelson.
Theories of stagnation in historical perspective
In this lecture Ben Fine aims at stimulating interest for and explaining the relevance of Marxist Political Economy. Ben Fine dedicates the first half of his comprehensible lecture to the question on how mainstream economics became the way it is by explaining its key concepts and how those evolved during the past 150 years. While critically reflecting those concept he also emphasizes that mainstream economics does not consider historical processes. This is the point of departure on his presentation of the core terms and crucial categories of Marxist Political Economy: e.g. the production process and class relations (Part 1). Part 2 examines the consequences of the capitalist mode of production and its propensity to crises. Ben Fine illustrates this Marxist analysis with the example of the current crisis and explains current conditions for the accumulation of capital.
Introduction to Marxist Economics (Part 1)
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
A Time for Precaution
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.
Agents, agents everywhere
In this radio interview, Philip Mirowski, author of the book "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste" presents several differences between neoclassical economics and neoliberalism. Apart from a historical outline, Mirowski primarily discusses different perceptions of markets and the role of the state. Mirowski further reflects on the role think tanks ("part of the "neoliberal thought collective") and the entrepreneurial self (the "neoliberal agent") in the spreading and fostering of the neoliberalism.
How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown
Stiglitz answers the question why globalization and world trade has not delivered on its promise of increased well being as much as classical economists thought, by pointing to the power asymmetries: firstly, between industrialized nations and developing nations and secondly, between special corporate interest and social interests. In his analysis, developed countries and MNCs were able to extract the benefits, while shifting the costs (i.e. pollution) to states and communities with lesser power. Amongst many other historical examples the pharmaceutical and the mining industry are discussed to some length.
Stiglitz on globalization, why globalization fails? The trade agreements
Does Karl Polanyi's work “The Great Transformation” serve to analyse the current multiple crisis and social movements? Nancy Fraser revises Polanyi's concept of a double movement to capture social forces in the aftermath of the economic crisis of the 1930s – on the one side marketization and on the other hand social protection. Fraser proposes to talk about a triple movement and to account for emancipatory struggles. In the lecture, she discusses interactions as well as conflicts between those three forces, in particular conflicting aims of social protection. The lecture presents the content of her paper “A TRIPLE MOVEMENT? Parsing the Politics of Crisis after Polanyi“ in the New Left Review (2013).
Crisis of Capitalism, Crisis of Governance: Re-reading Karl Polanyi in the 21st Century
Galbraith first explores the social darwinism of Herbert Spencer and others that served as apology for the highly unequal distribution of wealth in the US at the end of the 19th century and naturalized differences in wealth by appealing to the concept of natural selection of the fittest. Then some instances of the unscrupulous business practices (i.e. robberies) of the American railroad tycoons and other business magnates are recounted. Lastly, Galbraith lines out some of the arguments of Thorstein Veblen, who delegitimized and ridiculed the business and leisure activities of the rich by putting them in the same category as predatory and ritualized practices of primitive or ancient societies.
The Age of Uncertainty Episode 2 - The Manners and Morals of High Capitalism
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Economic Impact and Possible Disruptions
An essay of the writing workshop on Nigeria’s Readiness for and the Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Role of Women in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
In this keynote lecture during the conference „The Spectre of Stagnation? Europe in the World Economy“, Till van Treek presents research on how changes in income distribution lead to macroeconomic instability and crisis, focusing on currents accounts. Treek presents the relative income hypothesis in contrast to other mainstream and Post-Keynesian explanations. The relative income hypothesis proposes that aggregate demand increases and savings decrease with rising personal income inequality due to upward looking status comparison – but effects depend on the quantile where income inequality increases. Treek points to the importance of accounting for both income and functional income distribution and underlines his arguments with data comparing different pattern in Germany and the U.S.
Macroeconomics of inequality & instability - Inequality, imbalances and the crisis
Silvia Federici outlines the content of her book „Caliban and the Witch - Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation“. Departing from a critique of the Marxist blindspot on reproductive labour, Federici aims at researching the historical process by which the exploitation of women and the construction of the unproductive housewife has been established. Federici points to the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production and explains how the gender specific prosecution (witch hunt) was linked to necessity of control over bodies and the sexuality in the great transformation. Federici also presents arguments why this research is highly relevant for the analysis of women's situation in current capitalism.
Caliban and the Witch
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