 to everyone, to the online book launch of Recharting the History of Economic Thought, which is a textbook on the history of economic thought that has been co-edited by Kevin Dean and myself. My name is Elisora Meinberg. I am the co-head of the Economics Department at Soas University of London, a job that I share with my colleague and fellow contributor to the book, Hannah Bargale. We'll see her with us and who will speak later. So we are here to celebrate the tremendous achievement that is this edited textbook. And this is a tremendous achievement for two main reasons. First, the book has been very long in the making and it's truly wonderful to see finally in its physical form, here it is. And secondly, the book is the first in what will hopefully be a series of collective outputs that to emerge from the Re-teaching Economics Network. Re-teaching Economics was set up quite some years ago as a network of economic lecturers who sought to respond collectively to the economic students dissatisfaction with the state of their discipline and the teaching that they were accessing at universities. So Re-teaching Economics sought to formulate a response to the students' demands by creating a forum of exchange amongst like-minded economics teachers who were dissatisfied with mainstream economics. And the main aim is to use the forum as a way to devise strategies to strengthen heterodox traditions within economics teaching in universities. So the book Re-teaching the History of Economic Thought is then an important pedagogical resource to come out of that encounter and it seeks to support economics teachers across English speaking universities in their attempt to break the grips of mainstream economics over a university curriculum. The way it does that will be illustrated in detail by some of the contributors to the book during this webinar, during the launch. And with that, let me pass the floor to my colleague and co-editor Kevin Dean who will say a few words about the way in which the book project took shape and this will then be followed by brief interventions by some of the contributors to the book in which they will demonstrate how their chapters use the history of economic thought to highlight the limits of neoclassical economics in a particular core economic topic. Now, this will be followed by a Q&A. So please pop your questions in the chat box that you see on the right hand side of your screen as we go along and we will get back to them after the various presentations. Also, please note that this event is recorded. So with that, I hand over to Kevin who will say a few more things about how this book actually came about. August, do you have any? Cool, that's great. Thanks, Elise. And welcome everybody to our launch. Thanks for joining us. So yeah, just to give you some backgrounds. I mean, the idea for this book came about during my first year of teaching post-PhD. So imagine I'd left the heterodox comfort of so as after the end of my PhD I started a new role at the University of Northampton and this was about August 2013, I think. And on joining, I was asked to teach a brand new module on the history of economic thought. Now, this was a subject I'd never really formally studied myself. So naturally having been given that module to teach, I did what most academics would do. I looked at a range of different curriculum and textbooks on the history of economic thought and I put together a fairly standard chronological curriculum for the students. Basically starting with Adam Smith and going through a range of different economists from the history of economic thought in a fairly chronological order. Now, by about week six or seven, it was really clear that this was not interesting to my students. And so I actually had quite an honest discussion with him in the classroom. I basically sat him down and said, look, this isn't working. You're not finding this interesting. And I promised to think about how I could deliver this in a different way. And that's really where Alisa comes in. So following a number of conversations with Alisa around how I might change the way I taught this particular subject, we decided to, well, Alisa suggested to me that why don't I teach it in a thematic way and use this history of economic thought module as a vehicle for introducing some genuine pluralistic economics into what, apart from some international development modules was a very standard mainstream economics curricula. And so that's basically exactly what I did. So I said to the students over the Christmas break after semester one that I would go away, redesign the module. And I came back and we had a conversation in at the beginning of the second semester around the fact there aren't different economic approaches, different schools of thought that they were being taught. One specific version of economics that was being presented to them as the only version of economics. And I introduced this teaching approach. So the idea between by teaching the history of economic thought in a thematic way is to move this from a kind of chronological view about how ideas develop over time. So thinking about how can we use and draw upon different ideas across the history of economic thought and apply them to today. So the way that we did this, I brainstormed with the students a range of economic questions that they wanted answers to. Things like, for example, what causes the economic crisis and how do we get out of them, which has ended up being one of the chapters in the book. Because up to that point, and this was halfway through their undergraduate degree, our students had not had any discussion about the financial crisis in the rest of their standard economics, macro and micro and econometrics modules. So together we brainstormed a range of different questions, we edited them. And then for the second semester, every week was based around a discussion of a particular question to do with economics. And we approached that question in by doing three different things. So we looked at how neoclassical or mainstream economics would approach the answer to that question. We looked at some critical comments and then we looked at what a range of other economists in the history of economics would have to say about that question as well. So this was what I began the way I began to teach this at Northampton. And I did this for five years. This was supported by my colleague, Shkorki Arafi, who joined the unit. And a few years into that, we pitched this idea to the publishers as to turn this into a textbook and it all went on from there. So that's really where the idea came from. We then got a lot of our colleagues involved in writing different chapters. And I can actually put a list of the chapters up for you all to see. So this is the book's basically 15 substantive chapters with an introduction. And as you can see, each chapter is a question about economics and kind of divided roughly into two sections. So we have a range of questions that kind of get at some of the core economic concepts and issues and very much speak to the concerns raised by new classical economics, such as thinking about rationality, consumption, production, equilibrium income distribution and money and importantly value as well. Now we have, I guess, a second more applied set of questions that reflects not only the interest of myself and our authors, but also the interests of the students that I initially created this approach with. So that the book was commissioned probably about four years ago, maybe three and a half years ago. So it has been quite a while in the making, but we believe that this was worth it. And we hope that people who then, who do read the book will agree. As Elise was saying, this book is aimed at, I guess, two different audiences. We're hoping that students who are interested in pluralist economics will find this book interesting. And we also hope that academics who are teaching economics and want to introduce pluralism into their curricula will also find this book useful, either to build a history of economic thought module around this approach or by using this book as a compliment to other modules, macro, micro or development, for example, especially in settings where colleagues are expected to teach predominantly the mainstream approach. So that's really the backgrounds of the book and who we hope will find this interesting. I do have some thanks. This is from both Alisa and myself. We're very grateful to all our colleagues who contributed to this book. Everybody was really enthusiastic from the beginning and all the authors really embraced the idea behind the book, the approach that we're trying to take. And they delivered far better chapters than I personally would have been able to do. I'm not speaking for Alisa. I'm definitely speaking for myself in that respect. So we really thank you for that. And whilst I thought the book was a good idea, it's definitely turned out even better than I thought it would. We're grateful for Kingston University hosting and funding a workshop in the early stages to help us as a team talk through some ideas and how we might approach the book. And again, we're also very grateful for the support of our publishers, our Red Glow Press, Kirsty Reed, who's no longer there, was the editor that commissioned the book. And publishers have been very supportive from our first contact. And they understood enough about what we were trying to do to overlook some of the rather polemical reviews that we had for a mainstream economist in the early stages. So we're very grateful and we've had a lot of support of getting this over the line. We're also very grateful to Christina Lascaredes and Louise Villeneuve, who provided some research assistance, worked right at the end to really help us finalise things like the index and the list of economists at the front of the book. So we're very grateful for that. And finally, I'm certainly grateful to all the students at the University of Northampton that took my history, my history of economic thought module and was subjected to this approach but also gave us good feedback and engaged with it. And finally, just to re-emphasise, this is very much a team effort. Most of the contributors, but not all of them are members of our re-teaching economics network. And all royalties from the book will go to funding some expanded activities within the network. Okay. So I think that's basically the background and overview of the book. We have, well, we're very lucky to have eight of our authors here who will give a kind of short brief overview of their chapter. So if I'd like to invite Joe to kick us off talking about the chapter, how is income distributed? All right. Do you hear me? Yes. How long do I have? Five minutes? Yes. Okay. Thank you very much for the introduction. And I'm gonna try and give you a very quick overview of my chapter in five minutes. And I apologise. I'm probably not gonna be here for the Q and A because I have to go and look after my children, although I will try and rejoin, but I may or may not be able to get involved. So my chapter is called, how is income distributed? And it is an attempt to tell at least some of the story of the history of how this question has been tackled by economists over the last two or 300 years. I should say at the outset that implicitly, perhaps I should have been more explicit. Now, I look back. This is about the question of how income is distributed within a particular society, so within a country or a particular area. And I don't really engage with the question about global distribution, development, and all of those absolutely crucial topics. And so that probably should have been more explicit about that in the book. So I start, I mean, a key theme of the chapter is a distinction between surplus theories, classical theories of distribution and neoclassical theories of distribution. And I fairly predictably tell the story by starting with the classical approach of Smith, of Ricardo, of Marx, going through John Stuart Mill and then talking about neoclassical approaches, the early marginalist ideas of people like Jevons, and then talking about what I call the macroeconomics of distribution, and in particular ideas of people like Kalecki who developed an integrated analysis of aggregate demand and distribution, so a simultaneous distribution and output system. And then I talk about the, what I call the more recent, what I call them, modern economics of distribution. And this is where I try and get from about 1950 up to the present day. And I think I'm probably throwing my hands up and say, this is the part of the chapter that I'm probably least happy with. I would sort of like to do again. I think it really needs a chapter or probably a book in its own right. And I'm not sure I'm fully qualified to write this history, but really this section of the book goes from the solo model, the adoption of an aggregate production function through to really the current era, and I sort of bookend it with Piketty. So I sort of start with solo and end that section of the chapter with Piketty. So that's a very brief overview. I can see I probably used three or four minutes already. Let me just go back and pick up a few of the key points that I think might be worth emphasizing. So with Smith, we see the beginning of the discussion and the idea that competition will equalize certain types of income. So Smith's, one of Smith's key insights is the idea that competition between workers will equalize wage rates, competition between capitalists will equalize rates of profit. And from there, we get the question of, okay, competition will equalize types of income, but what determines the distribution between types of income, the three great income classes or social classes, profits, rents, and wages. And Smith has the idea that wages are essentially subsistence determined, so then the problem is to determine the division between rents and profits. Smith doesn't come up with a convincing answer to that. Ricardo picks up the problem and by introducing the idea of marginalism, by introducing the idea of diminishing returns in agriculture, is able to produce a complete system in which all three types of income are determined. Marx, I don't have time to say a great deal about, but he solves in one way, Smith's problem of how do we reconcile the fact that the worker is paid less than the output that the worker produces is sold for, i.e. where does profit come from? And Marx solves this problem by saying, well, it's to do with the unequal distribution of power between the capitalist and the worker. And I think really that is the basis for ongoing surplus theories of distribution of one kind or another. There's a big debate about how much Kilecki accepted or took on the labor theory of value, but I don't really find that discussion hugely important. I do think Kilecki and that macroeconomics of distribution is very much a continuation of this Marxian idea. I give a brief overview of the marginalist idea, which I think is fundamentally opposed to this Marxian surplus idea. And the punchline is different types of income are determined by the relative contribution of factors of production to the production process. So the wage, the real wage is determined as the marginal productivity of labor, the additional contribution of the final, so-called final unit of labor to production. And likewise, the rate of interest is determined by the marginal productivity of capital. So that determines the supply, the demand for each factor of production, not the supply, the supply is determined by an optimizing decision on the part of the worker between leisure and labor supply and on the part of the capitalist by how much are they willing to wait? How patient is the capitalist and therefore willing to wait for their return, i.e. the rate of interest? Let me jump ahead and can I use one more minute? Have I got a minute left, Kevin? Yeah, and say why I think this debate is still, in my view, very relevant. Throughout the sort of what I call the modern era, there was an attempt to reconcile this marginalist approach with empirical reality, particularly in the 90s and 2000s, it became clear that inequality was rising within societies. In the US and the UK, for example, inequality rose sharply from the 1980s onwards. And to try and reconcile this with the neoclassical marginal productivity theory, you have to come up with either a story about why different elements within factors of production, different units of labor are providing more or less to the productive process or something about why technology is changing. And we saw that culminate in what's called the skill-biased technological change hypothesis, which argued that this rising inequality was due to technological change, which favored more skilled workers and more skill was, of course, achieved by an optimizing trade-off over one's human capital and so on. And I think this broke down towards the end of the 2000s when it became clear that the data didn't fit this new theory. And this gets us to where we are now, which is the world of post-2008 crisis and now into the corona crisis, where we have secular stagnation, we have long-term declines in real interest rates, which are very hard to explain on the basis of these marginalist theories. And that's what people like Summers are trying to do with the secular stagnation hypothesis. And I think we're also seeing increasing acknowledgement that this kind of analysis, this kind of heterodox analysis, which draws on a surplus approach to distribution, does a better job. And I'll conclude by recommending a recent book by Pettis and Klein called Trade Wars Are Class Wars, something along those lines. And I haven't read it properly yet, and I've kind of skimmed to get a sense of the argument. And my sense is it takes a very heterodox, Kalecki and surplus type approach to distribution and applies it to the current situation. Okay, I will conclude. I'll just reiterate, I would like the section on the modern economics of distribution to be better. And I do hope that somebody else who's more qualified would write that book or write that paper so I can read it and then summarize it for a textbook. Okay, I think I'm out of time. So thank you very much for listening and I hand over to whoever's next or to Kevin to compare. That's great. Thanks very much, Joe. Really appreciate that. And yeah, if anybody has any questions, put them in the chat function. Although Joe has to shoot off, I'm sure somebody else from our author list will or our contributors will try and answer that question on his behalf. So thanks very much, Joe. Appreciate that. So our next presenter is Hannah, Hannah Bargawi. So I'll hand over to you, Hannah. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Great. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Kevin. And it's nice to see so many familiar faces including in the attendance list. So my chapter is chapter 13 in the book titled How has economics addressed the question of gender? So the history to this in terms of my contribution is the fact that we have for a few years now had a module in the economics department which is called gender economics. And that's offered primarily to our undergrads but shared among our post-grads. And that sort of covers some of the questions and issues I have in the chapter as well as more specific questions. And I think it's a particularly interesting one because I think for a lot of people, there's an assumption that when you ask that question, how has economics addressed the question of gender? People will often say, well, it hasn't across both neoclassical economics as well as through the history of economic thought. And I think this chapter allowed me to unpick that a little bit and to say, well, actually, there have been attempts. We can't say it hasn't, there have been attempts both from the more mainstream perspective as well as if we go back into the history of economic thought, it has been addressed perhaps not adequately but there are things that we can glean from that. And I think the main message I want to come across from the chapter is the fact that actually when we go back to the history of economic thought, it may have addressed questions of gender and that goes for issues of race, ethnicity. It has addressed them perhaps poorly but I think we can take something from the methods and from the approach in the history of economic thought that are useful for understanding those questions today. So I think that usual assumption that they haven't been addressed is one that we have to unpick with this chapter. So what I attempted to do was really start not by going back but starting with where we are now and what has mainstream economics had to say on gender. And for that, I think ostensibly, a lot of neoclassical economists would argue that they have addressed gender and in particular the new home economics, Gary Becker, Ted Schultz, their attempt to consider issues of gender, whether that's through topics such as marriage, divorce, the household itself, they would argue is their way of addressing questions of gender. And so what I wanted to do was show that that's clearly a very poor understanding of issues of gender. And in order to do that, the thing that this chapter does is focus on one particular area and that is the area of work. And that's where predominantly a lot of questions around gender keep on arising, whether that's the gender pay gap, occupational segregation, paid versus unpaid work. So it's a sort of a useful area to consider this question of gender in economics. So whilst neoclassical economists argue that they've ostensibly dealt with gender, I show in this chapter that that's a very poor understanding. And in particular, what it does is take traditional methods and approaches from neoclassical economics and deploy them to looking within the household in particular. And that leads us to actually a very poor understanding. So I think perhaps the most useful area that this is really highlighted is by looking at something like the gender pay gap and the causes of that. Where the argument for neoclassical economists will be, or we can understand the causes of that by the acquiring of human capital by individuals. The more human capital you acquire, the more education you have, this should allow you to have a higher income and ultimately to resolve the pay gap. Now, clearly we know that's not the case, that hasn't occurred. So neoclassical economics, actually they pour at answering these questions. So I think for that, what's then interesting is to revisit ideas. And I think there's two big areas that I look at in the chapter that allow us to look at this differently. And they are the old institutional economists. And then the political economists, particularly Marx, that allow us to bring in the kind of social reproduction approach to issues of gender. So I think a nice example of that, again going back to the issue of work, is to think about what causes pay gaps. Is it down to different human capital acquisition or actually are there other causes? So that institutionalists have brought issues of discrimination, for example, to the forefront. So a lot of feminist economists are, rather than relying on the tools and the methods that neoclassical economists have put forward, have gone back to history of economic thought to try and use alternative methods. So whether that's Barbara Bergman, for example, to revisit some of the ideas of the institutional economists or I think the big area that's really revisited now is questions of paid and unpaid work and whether we actually see the value in work. There was some really nice interesting works that's been done recently around why we are seeing, for example, the profession of coding, computer coding, software programming, having been traditionally, when you go back 50 years ago, a female-dominated profession having now become one that is male-dominated. And there was a really nice quote that I sort of wanted to share this with, which says, when men enter a female heavy field, perceptions of women don't improve, perceptions of the job do. And I think that really goes to show what has tended to happen and what we can glean from looking at issues, not using the neoclassical methods, but instead going back to the history of economic thought. So I think in that sense, yeah, the main message I really wanted to come across is the fact that whilst political economists themselves may have not had a huge amount to say, the fact that they see phenomena as socially embedded, the fact that they allow us to look at structures rather than at individuals, is something that a lot of feminist economists have picked up. So actually it's a really useful way of thinking about a particular issue. And I think as well as gender, this also allows us to think about other areas of inequality, whether that's race or ethnic or disability, the fact that there's something from history of economic thought around methods and tools and looking at a problem in a different way, I think that's really valuable. I'm not gonna take any more time because I know there's lots of other people who've got things to say, so I'll stop there. That's Hannah for that. Really interesting chapter and important issue. So our next speaker is Satoshi. And Satoshi will give us an overview of his chapter on rationality. Yeah, thank you very much. Sorry, go ahead. Okay, Elise and Kevin and hello everybody. So the chapter I contributed to this book is titled, Are We All Rational Optimizing Agents? And this chapter actually comes pretty much at the beginning of the book. This is just after the introduction and perhaps together with Rania's chapter, which I think she follows me in this webcast as well, is slightly different from the other chapters that you heard so far and you will hear afterwards in that rather than focusing on a particular topic, this chapter focuses on some of the fundamental mythological approaches in new classical economics and tries to locate them in contrast with different schools of economic thought. So in particular, this chapter is concerned with the assumption of mythological individualism and the choice theoretic framework based on instrumental rationality, which are two of the key guiding principles of new classical economics. The chapter opens by outlining these assumptions in new classical economics and how this leads to a particular conceptualization of the actions and behavior of individual economic agents. And I then bring in some of the critiques to the narrowly defined new classical economics approach from within the mainstream as well, including those by behavioral economists. And behavioral economics have focused on different cognitive processes that challenges the assumptions of rational agents in new classical economics. And then the chapter brings in some of the classical political economists, such as Adam Smith, who is often attributed with the idea of the invisible hand and the notion that a self-interested private individuals optimizing decisions lead to a socially optimal outcome in spite of their intentions. But when we bring in Smith's other writing that focuses on moral philosophy, a more nuanced picture emerges that deals extensively with various motivations beyond self-interest that shapes human behavior. I also bring in Karl Marx approaches to class relations which is located in his materialist conception of history. And again, while Marx is often understood or interpreted as representing a deterministic reading of history in which human agency is undermined, the chapter shows that how Marx analysis indeed emphasizes individual agencies actively shaping material conditions as much as they are shaped by them. Nevertheless, for Marx, for how production or consumptions are organized and hence how people behave must be explained by examining the structure and historical specificity of the social system. Rather than merely understanding these outcomes as a result of individual choices and optimizing exercises. The chapter also covers the institutionalist approach by Thomas Webelen and his conception of human actions which is shaped by habits, traditions, conventions, cultures, and not crucially by preferences or rational choice as assumed in neoclassical economics. And finally, the chapter brings in John Maynard Keynes and his argument that economic agents interact with one another in such a way that generates its own dynamics that cannot be reduced to models of atomized agents. I also contrast Keynes' rendering of probability theory as inadequate as a guide to model economic decision-making under uncertainty in contrast to the neoclassical approach to risk. And overall the purpose of introducing these different authors and approaches is not just to learn them just for the sake of it as Kevin introduced at the beginning. Very much the motivation of the book is to kind of speak to particular issues and concerns in the contemporary world. It's really to kind of highlight how these differences reflect different kinds of assumptions they make about the behavior of individuals but also crucially about how the relations between agents and broader economic systems and social sphere can be theorized. So I think the conclusion, the chapter outlines how these differences might lead to different ways to understand what goes on in our world and how we can act or act against it. And I think having a broader perspective of understanding the opportunities, constraints and capacities as individuals in shaping the economy and society is extremely important at this moment in thinking about the host COVID world. So thank you very much and I'll hand over to the next person. Yeah, an important chapter that's right at the beginning of the book and is followed by a chapter on the role of mathematics in economics and I'll hand over to Aranya for that. Brilliant, thank you very much for this. You can hear me, right? Yeah, very good. Yes, so my chapter follows from Satoshi's and it is similar in the sense that it doesn't focus on one particular theme but it rather deals with these kind of like broader methodological issue about the mode of analysis and the formalization of the antiquity, if you will. The premise of this chapter is to essentially challenge the claim that lies at the heart of mainstream economics in both teaching and research in the sense that the discipline is a technical discipline whereby mathematics offers the correct formalism for economic investigation as it is the only means for it to be understood as scientifically rigorous. So this is a chapter that is using history of economic thought in two distinct ways, let's say. The first way is by following the evolution of the mathematician within the actual history of economics and it does so by essentially showing how historically when and how the mathematician formalism takes over the discipline and in so doing, it also breaks away from the unsubstantiated historical account that we usually see that actually understands this mathematician as part of a cumulative natural process that is synonymous to progress. This is essentially the process of the discipline that is of course as an account both a historical and historically inaccurate. So it starts historical evolution part, starts from the classical political economy epoch to then leads us through the modernist revolution to then the post-war Americanization, if you will, of the discipline together with the formalism revolution in the 50s to then kind of show how the mathematician took place together with a series of different historical movement and changes ideological as well. And the second way in which this chapter uses history of economic thought is by then looking at through this historical account, first look at the implications of what it means to become more mathematical. So what is actually being, how essentially the substance or the content or the history or the social are being displaced by the form of neoclassical and later on what we're gonna call mainstream. But the second of incorporating history of economic thought is essentially using particular examples, particular authors from classical political economists until Cain's to then have a look at how one can move away from the mathematical formally together with the methodological individualists that Satoshi was talking about of the neoclassical to then show different modes of analysis that essentially are much more inductive as opposed to deductive. And what elements, these different distinct modes of analysis like Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Cain's bring on the table as opposed to the mathematical formalism. And I think I'm going to leave it at that. Yes, so these are the two main elements of this chapter. Thank you. So our next two chapters addressed again, two key issues and aspects of neoclassical economics. We have the production and consumption. So we're gonna first start with Mary who's gonna talk to us about the chapter on consumption followed by Susan who's gonna talk to us about chapter on production. Over to you Mary. Okay, hi everyone. Oh, can you hear me? My computer seems to have frozen. Yeah, it's good. Okay. So consumption. Consumption is an interesting one because in the chapter I argue it's both ubiquitous in and completely absent from mainstream economics. Ubiquitous both because consumption is the ultimately the end goal of all economic activity. It's very hard to think of an economic activity that isn't ultimately underpinned in some way by meeting needs, wants and desires of people. And it's ubiquitous because neoclassical consumer theory is in many ways the foundation stone of all mainstream economic theory. And yet it's absent, I argue, because consumer theory isn't really about consumption. It's a theory of choice according to which choice is made on the basis of preferences which are underpinned by a set of assumptions. These assumptions that produce a technical apparatus which can then be applied to all sorts of choices, many of which go beyond or have nothing to do with consumption. So I'll start by looking at the roots of this theory of choice, neoclassical consumer theory in utilitarianism and the two core assumptions that make up that theory. First is that individuals are utility maximizers. They will always pave in a way to maximize their own utility. I think it's interesting here to note the elision or slippage from what is in utilitarianism, a value claim. The morally good society or the morally good state of affairs is one in which total utility is maximized to what is effectively a descriptive claim or an ontological claim about individuals. We'll always make decisions on the basis of what will maximize their utility. And then the second assumption is that individuals are instrumentally rational in pursuing their own activity. There's some overlap here with Satoshi's section. I think it sort of illustrates the ubiquity of neoclassical consumer theory. So instrumentally rational, they'll always use the best available means to achieve their ends with the implication being that they're both perfectly rational and have perfect information. So together, those two assumptions give us the model of utility optimization subject to a budget constraint which every economic student from first year will be familiar with. So start by setting that out as the core of mainstream economics is what mainstream economics has to say on consumption. And then look for alternatives. And I divide the alternatives into two categories. One of which is sort of, accepts the broad framework of neoclassical consumer theory accepts the reduction of consumption to choice but challenges particular assumptions. So to run through some of the ones that I cover, questioning whether people are actually utility seekers or whether human desires are more complex challenges to perfect rationality. So an example of this is Akolov-Spenson Stiglitz is Information Theoretic Economics. Another is Karnam and Tursky's work on uncertainty. Notable that both of those sets of authors won Nobel prizes for their work challenging or adapting the theory of the assumption of perfect rationality. Another example is those who argue that preference formation is interdependent rather than fixed and exogenous. And then there's a few more that I consider but I think the sort of the takeaway from that section is really about the flexibility of the core theory and its ability to incorporate and adapt to these challenges. So it has already made answer, for example to the claim that people aren't really utility seekers or aren't really selfish optimizers. They may have other regarded desires. The theory can simply be redrawn to include other regarded desires as a form of utility maximization and it fits into the same theory. I argue that information theoretic economics while it's adapted the framework hasn't fundamentally challenged it. So the core theoretical framework that technical apparatus is highly, highly adaptable, highly resilient to those kinds of challenges. This isn't the case for a second set of alternatives which, well, I'd say break completely from that choice framework but it's not so much break completely from that choice framework so much as a drawn from other disciplines. Mostly, not entirely. So one example is behavior economics which starts from cognitive psychology and psychological experiments to show how things like rules of thumb, loss aversion and so on are all features of how people actually behave but they don't fit into the framework of a rational optimizer. A second one, Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption. So according to this, the working class seek to emulate the consumption patterns of the leisure class and they do this even when it's to their detriment. So what's significant here is that Veblen sees consumption as a cultural phenomenon, fundamentally a cultural phenomenon, something that's constitutive of identity and the way that we consume isn't necessarily always in our best interest. We're not always doing what's right for us. It may be contrary to our best interests. You see the same kind of approach in Marx's theory of commodity fetishism. So, and this is Marx, is very specifically talking about consumption in the context of a capitalist system of production and exchange, so the essentials of life are produced by and large as commodities. And the key thing for Marx here is the exchange value dominates, use value which he argues these commodities to appear as if they're independent of the social relations that underpin them, in particular, independent of the exploitation of the worker, the very worker in producing them that ends up consuming them. And the kind of ideas of commodity fetishism, conspicuous consumption have found no place in mainstream economics and have tended to evolve through disciplines such as marketing. So in contemporary marketing departments in university, you'll see the study of the manipulation of ideas through advertising, for example, which is one of the kind of central features of the discipline. Sheds who's allowed huge amounts of light on how we actually consume things, how we make decisions about what we consume, how that affects us, how that affects the wider economy, how this is factored into how things are produced. Very, very informative about how the real world economy functions, but doesn't fit at all within that near classical choice theory framework. And then the last alternative, in the second set of alternatives that I look at is the systems of provision approach, which I argue is an attempt to bridge the gap by between a theory of consumption that focuses on the material features of commodities or goods that we consume and more cultural approaches that focuses on the meanings that we attach to goods by looking at the entire material chain of provision, how goods are produced from start to finish, including how that production shapes the meanings that end up being attached to goods which in turn shape our consumption. So those are the main sections of the chapter. I think one of the main takeaways or probably the most important takeaway is what it says about economics and interdisciplinarity. So on the one hand, you've got this near classical consumer theory, which has ended up being the driving force of what's called economic imperialism. So this very flexible, very adaptable choice framework, which we've seen through things like free economics be applied well beyond the realm of consumption to explain all kinds of human behavior, all kinds of academic disciplines, criminology, anthropology, really detached from consumption, but I think the term economics imperialism is really important here because it's very one-sided interdisciplinarity. It's not disciplines learning from each other, it's economics imposing its own worldview, its own theoretical framework on other disciplines. So that's one sort of vantage point and interdisciplinarity. The other is that in looking for alternative approaches to consumption and looking for other ways to shed light on actually existing consumption to better understand how we make decisions about what we consume, how that affects us, how that shapes how things are produced and so on. We were forced to look outside of economics and into other disciplines, sociology, marketing, and so on. So I think that really highlights the contrast between the potential for economics in learning from other disciplines, where it's had a very, very narrow worldview and the dangers of economics imposing its own view on other disciplines. And thanks, I'll leave it there. Great, thank you, Mary. It's a very nice way for ending, thinking about this contrast between learning and imposing. So thanks for that. So our next speaker is Susan. Susan's going to talk about the other key element of neoclassical economics, not the other, but one of the key element which is production. I hope to you, Susan. Thank you. Thanks. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, great. Thank you very much for organizing this and for organizing the project itself. It's really great to be reunited with many of you here. So yeah, this chapter is titled How Are Things Produced? One of the exercises I sometimes conduct with new students to economics is to try and ascertain what the base of their knowledge and understanding of the field is. So one of the first things I would do is to, might be to ask them whether to define economics or to come up with what they think are three economic variables. And you can imagine GDP pops up almost every time. So GDP grossed domestic production. It's the most widely used measure of an economy. It measures the size of the economy according to its approach as a sum of all the goods and services produced within that economy. So given the centrality of production. I see, and I think we've lost Susan there. We've lost your audio, Susan. Yeah. Yes, we can hear you now. Yeah, great. I apologize. I don't know where I got up to, but yeah, I was just basically trying to make a point that even the question of how things are produced does not enter the minds of neoclassical economists. Are you now still having trouble hearing me? Hello, what about now? If this stops again. We can hear you. So if this stops again, shall we move to somebody else and I'll come back? Okay. Yeah. We can hear you well. Okay, thank you, thank you. So yeah, so that's a big question. Given how important, thank you, Georgie, for that, how important production is, why it's not even sort of dealt with. And it's not accidental, actually. If you open the standard neoclassical textbook and you look at producer theory and theories of industry, just as Mary has said now, produce theory has nothing to do with production itself. In fact, it's really consumer choice theory inverted. That's not accidental. That's been produced to make the theory of market exchange and the technical apparatus deployed work, right? So in this way, production is itself just depicted as a mathematical function with some inputs, X1 and X2, as I'm really sorry, my daughter's just come into the room. Nina, I'm speaking in a meeting at the moment now. I'll come back very soon. Hey, do you wanna have a look at everyone? Why don't you have a look at everybody while I've just finished talking and then we'll come back, yeah? Do you wanna do? I'm so sorry. Sorry, failed deployment of other parents. This is typical that nothing happens and then when I'm presenting, right. Okay, I'm so sorry about that. So yeah, so how can a phenomenon so central exist? Susan, we've lost your voice again. Susan, your voice has gone again. I think you mute yourself by accident. You tell her, how about that? Now we can hear you. Hello? Yeah, we can hear you. I'm sorry, there is a sign here that's saying we might have audio issues, but yeah, I'm sorry. Maybe we have to decide when to give up on me. So this chapter. Kevin, I think we have lost Susan. Yes, I think we've lost Susan. I think let's move on then, I think. Sorry, I'm back. Okay, give up on me. No, please finish your point, Susan. We can hear you, we can't hear you, that's fine. Okay, if it cuts out again, I'll just stop, okay? Okay, yes. Thank you. The thing in which I've tried to organize this chapter is to both sort of look at different theories from history of economic thought, from neoclassical producer theory to contractual theory and competence-based theories. And I look also at Adam Smith and Marx and then more recently at various value chain approaches. And the way in which I've tried to organize this is first, it's not only to try and sort of critique each of these according to their internal logic. So I try and explicitly note what the main units of analysis are, the analytical focus, the analytical approach and what the central orienting concepts are. But also I've tried to discuss a bit how particular ideas gain purchase as a production, as production itself becomes restructured at different levels of the global economy. So this is really just to try and relate both historical change in which we theorize and which ideas become popular. So if we look at the 1930s, there was a very clear attempt to critique by way of critiquing neoclassical economics to open the so-called black box. It was a recognition that neoclassical theory, the firm, whilst the firm was the unit of analysis, actually said nothing about predict. It was one of these, what they call a sausage machine. The inputs go in, you turn a crank and something comes out. And there's nothing in there about the way in which production itself's organized, what the origins of technological change might be, where productivity gains come from. So a number of authors did come, you know, Susan, I think we've lost you again. So perhaps Kevin, we should move on to Nina. Sorry, Susan. Yes, let's do that. Sorry, you're just getting going again as well. Sorry about that. Okay, so we'll hand over to Nina who's chapters on the role of money in the economy. Nina, over to you. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, okay, cool. So thanks very much for this. I've just come out of my maternity leave. So this is my first webinar. I'm reemerging to this new world of virtual things. I hope everything goes right. And yeah, I'm trying to speak with our audience, which is odd. So this is a joint paper with my colleague Peter Hughes at Leeds. And our task was to talk about money and the role of money in different scores of thought. And what we have done in this chapter is in a way a kind of a hybrid form, a combination of things we have on the one hand, look at the key scores of economic thoughts and their approach to money. And within these three kind of key scores of economic thought, which we chose to analyze, we've also tried to adopt slides. Okay, we've tried to adopt a history of economic thought approach, although at the emphasis was probably more on analyzing the different forms of money. But what we tried to do in these individual or when analyzing these different school of economic thoughts, we tried to ask three main questions. The first question which we thought, and we tried to analyze it, parallel to each score to tease out one of the main tenants of money to then come to the implication. So our first question was, well, why do we need money in these approaches? What are its functions? It's quite a complex thing. It often goes wrong. It's always different. So why do we need money in the first place? Or why do different economic approaches think why do we need money? The second question we asked is, well, what is actually money? What is its form? Can we look at it? What, you know, what is its actually physical object of it? And then the final question we asked was, well, how does it emerge? Where does actually money come from? And of course these different questions were linked and are not always that easy and a little conceperably, but it kind of gave us an idea or a way of structuring the different economic approaches. And what are coming then from these different ways or these three questions, we then tried to tease out the implications, the answers to these questions had in these approaches. And particularly we're interested in the implications this had for the way we look at banks and the financial systems. The role of the state, so how does the state govern or not govern money? And finally, what is the nature and effectiveness of monetary policy in these three different approaches? And the approaches we looked at, sorry, I should have said that from the beginning is on the one in neoclassical economics. Then we've looked at schools of thought which built on Keynes and Schumpeter and are now very broad-ified, classified as path-post-Keynes in economics. And then we looked at Marxist economic thought and the nature of money in Marx. So I just wanna say very briefly in my remaining three minutes, just maybe very, very shortly, how these three questions, so what are the functions of money? What are the forms of money and how does it emerge? How have these questions been answered in these different schools of economic thought and what are the implications then for banks, the state and monetary policy? Right, in neoclassical economics, which really kind of faces itself on classical economics, so Hume, Ricardo, Smith, and most prominently developed by Jeven and Zemenga in the 19th century, the basic function of money is basically the facilitated exchange. So what money does is it makes sure that we don't, and also that's how it emerges, is that we don't have to kind of engage its inefficient barter, where we have the lack of the coincidence of wants, so the fact that I want a barter exactly the same as you want a barter, and in order to remove that potential in a fish or lack of coincidence of wants and to make market exchange more efficient, we need money, because money then allows us to kind of trade this thing without actually having to wanting the same. And so this is the kind of the function of money, the function is to facilitate exchange, the mergers of money is out of this private meeting of individuals trying to kind of exchange objects, and the final thing is then what the form of money, the nature of money is basically in your classical economics is commodity money. So what then actually becomes money, emerges out of this private exchange and money will be one commodity, which has certain properties, which we discussed in the chapters, in the chapter which then emerges to be the money in the system, but it is fundamentally commodity. Now, what does that mean for our big question? Well, the first thing is that, given that this comes, money emerges out of the private exchanges, means there's no role for the state whatsoever in money. The state doesn't govern money, it's a private, it's a private and object. The second thing is that given that it's a commodity, also banks have nothing to do with it. So banks by themselves are not important for the supply or the role of money. And finally, that also means that the amount of money is exogenously determined by the central bank and any change in the money supply will need to an equivalent increase in the price level. So this is the quantity theory of money. So just to summarize, so there is, the money is there to facilitate exchange, it emerges out of this facilitation of exchange and it's primarily commodity money. Now in POSCIN economics, this is very, very different. So in POSCIN economics, my clock tells me we've got five minutes, in POSCIN economics, money emerges out of the passing of time. So there's real time which creates uncertainty, which creates the need for money. And for the two main fathers of this approach, if you want to, for Schumpeter, money is necessary or emerges out of the need to finance production. Because we have four to two episodes, we need money to get the production process going. For Keynes, money is really there to deal with the fundamental uncertainty which emerges from the passing of time. So we need a store of value which allows us to transition from one period to the other. And money, so money then becomes, as a money fundamentally, so money is there in the passing of time and money is there to allow us to meet, is there to kind of act as a means of settlement and allows us to transfer a means of payment in the course of time. So the form of money is basically or fundamentally credit money. So money is not so much a commodity, but it's a debt-to-credit relationship between agents in the economy. And it emerges at least in the kind of mature capitalist system out of the private activities of banks. So what does that mean for three questions? Well, the first means that in postkins in economics, there's a fundamental role of banks in credit activities and in the supply of money or in influencing the monetary dynamics. The second thing is that there's also fundamental role for the state to govern the supply of money, but also to kind of govern the financial system as the key agent in supplying money. And then finally, we have Marxist political economy, which is in a way in very broad terms, a slight of a hyper hybrid between the neoclassical view of money and the postkins view of money because it's both in a way, a commodity view of money or a credit view of money. But Marx ontologically takes a slightly different approach and really starts with the emergence of money. And he says money emerges as the universal equivalent, which brings together use value and exchange value together. And for Marxist or for Marxist political scholars, in the historical materialist approach, the form of money is not so much whether it's credit money or commodity money on the one hand or the other hand, but it really the form of money depends on the specific historical materialist conditions and the economic structure, which means that in today's capitalist economies or financial capitalist economy, the form of money we see as mostly credit money. And that also in Marxist political economy gives a fundamental role to banks, the financial activity, and of course in this approach also the instability which banks in money create. So this is in a very nutshell our overview of the different approach of money embedded in the history of the economy thought approach reflecting on the country's contributions. Thank you, and I'll stop there. That's great, thanks very much, Nina. So just to remind everybody, if you want to ask some questions then do add them into the chat function. Elise and I will be monitoring that. And as we have our last speaker now, Shaqib, who will talk about the chat on growth. So I'll hand over to Shaqib, but yeah, do think about some questions and add them in the chat function. Okay, over to you Shaqib. Are you okay, can you hear me? Yeah, so the chapter that we published, I published it with Elise, probably offered them your honor. It's chapter on growth theories in economics. Now we aim to go beyond the usual count of growth theories that you see presented, which focus on the near classical growth theories. And we present the count of the classics, what the classics said about growth. And then we go on to Keynesian counts of growth and Schimpeter and evolutionary's. Throughout the chapter, we focus a bit on the role of the steady state balance growth path in the growth theory and on the understanding of the conception of time that underpins the analysis. So just to summarize the structure of the chapter, we first start off by providing an overview of conceptions of time in economics. So difference between historical time and logical time that underpin the distinct, the dichotomy or the very kind of macroeconomics and growth theory. And the reason why we explore this is because we feel it's something that's really explored when we discuss in economics. It's kind of at the base of it. So once we explore these concept, we then go on to a historical account of the development of near classical economic growth theory. So we go through on the Haradaymar model and then talk about how the knife edge problem within that led to the solar model, which tried to collect and then how the exogenous technological change led to emerge the metogenous growth theory. Throughout this, we focus on the role of the SSBG and present allotus on the critiques of these methodologies such as a Cambridge capital critique and the return of the knife edge issue in a new growth theory. After we do this, we provide an overview of the classics focusing on the works with Smith, Ricciardo and Marx. And then we go on to post-Kentzian economic growth theories. And we contrast how the knife edge problem was solved in the knife edge of the Haradaymar model was solved in post-Kentzian economics compared to neoclassical economics through use of the savings ratio in the Kaldur-Passenacian model. And we emphasise the role of aggregate demand in post-Kentzian economic growth theory. Throughout that section, we focus a bit on the works of Kalecki. So for the reasons why aggregate demand is important in economic growth. And also the debates of the wage versus profit-led growth attempt to relate some of the, relate how the short run and long run are connected in some of the post-Kentzian works by exploring how the actual rate of growth can change technological change in the works of Kaldur. Then after we've done this, we then produce, go into looking into the works of Schumpeter and we emphasise how Schumpeter focus upon innovations as the role for understanding the economic growth and aspects such as creative destructions which aspect of creative destruction and the role of monopoly profits in his analysis and also the roles of financial markets in development. Upon after presenting Schumpeter, we then go on to the evolutionary theory of development which builds upon this work with Schumpeter showing the connections. And we talk about how these focus on understanding the innovation process and how the understanding of knowledge for innovation arises and emphasise the perpetration of all this literature and how it's meddling on historical time. That's it. And I was a bit short, but I thought we'd be short in time. So I just really wanted to make a quick summary. We can't hear you, Kevin. We can't hear you, so I'm not sure you're speaking. I can see you now, so maybe... Yes, we can hear you again. Can you hear me now? Sorry, was I rambling on without you being able to hear me? Yes. Okay, sorry. I was just picking up on the... Well, encouraging some questions, but just commenting on the comment by Fawa in the chat function. And so, yeah, absolutely acknowledging, yeah, that definitely the next step for this would be to engage with forces from the Global South and incorporate those into this teaching approach. So thanks for that contribution. Do you have any other questions or contributions? There is another question by Leslie on which textbook to use for someone starting to teach basic principle of economics. I don't have an answer to that. Perhaps anyone else from our presenters want to say something to that, but my suggestion would be to have a look at this particular book because I think it quite nicely, perhaps not for basic principles, but it's quite apt to accompany any teaching in economics at from second year undergraduate level onwards as it critically dissects those core topics of rationality, so the methodological issues of individual rationality, mathematics, and then the topical issues of consumption, production, money, growth, distribution, et cetera. So I think it's a very good resource for any economics teacher to fall back on even when they start teaching economics at basic principles as it will allow teachers perhaps to make sense of how neoclassical economics navigates particular issues and how it fails to actually allow us to understand properly why economic phenomena present themselves in the way they do. So this is, yes, another shout out to invite you to have a look at the book and see how it can contribute to a better teaching in economics as well as a better student experience. I see a long question from Achilya's for Satoshi and Urania. So Satoshi and Urania, can you engage with Achilya's question, please? Perhaps if Satoshi wants to go first. Sorry, I'm still in question, so. Urania, you can go first. Yeah, I'm still in the middle of reading it. Sorry. So I'll read it for everyone. There seems to be a pattern where neoclassical economists always managed to respond at least partially to teach no social classes. They add reconditioning and reconditioning households. No money. They add in making us money. No bubbles. They add funds for this. No distribution effect. They're adding from distribution effects on effective demand. Rational expectations, then we have near-rational and learning. And to link this with Urania's pattern, no endogenous crisis. They recently started adding limit cycles in New Keynes in DSG models. So what do you think is a way to move forward? Should we beat them in their own game by building better models? Or should we try to fill the gaps, focusing on less formal approaches at the fringes of academia? How can we take over the profession? So this is a great question. Thank you, Achilya's. And I will let Urania and Satoshi go first. But I think any of the contributors to the book is welcome to respond to this particular question. Yeah, so thank you, Achilya, for this wonderfully hard question. No, I think that's really the central question for all of us who are trying to kind of challenge the mainstream. I guess in broad terms, the way to go about is not to challenge in their game and beating them, but actually to promote economics as a social science and try and promote the learning and research of economics as a pluralist subject. But obviously that may be the principle of how we want to move the debate forward, how we do this through the embedded institutional mechanism within the academia in economics and so on, I think is a more kind of question of strategy and tactics. So I'm sure there are spaces in which we can challenge the internal inconsistency within the classical economics on its own turf, while also try to curve out spaces where possible in promoting economics as a broader social science subject. Thank you, Satoshi. And before I hand over to Rani, I just want to say also that I think that within retouching economics and within the contributors to the book, there will be multiple opinions in terms of how to answer that question. Because I think some of us would be strong advocates of modeling for the better, while others amongst us would not see that as the best way forward in an attempt to restore economics as a social science. But I will hand over to Rani. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything that Satoshi and Elisa just said. And indeed, this is a very beautifully difficult question. But before going on how to move forward, I mean, I think as part of how to move forward, it is important to distinguish how things are being brought back in, yes. So indeed, mainstream economics does show that it is very, it has this ability to adapt and expand and open up to new ideas or criticism. But how this is actually being brought into their own framework and setting is in very many occasions very distinct on how it is done. For instance, in heterodox approaches, like for example, endogenous money in DSG, is very different than endogenous money in post-kentium, so this is the one element. The other one, I think we can go forward both ways as you're saying, yes. We can move away from these very rigid math divide because also what I mean, I also tried to show in the chapter is that maths is a technique, right? It can be used by different approaches, that can be used by different epistemologies and methodologies, but it does have a set of limitations, right? Then different types of maths have different types of limitations, which then brings in the pluralistic aspect Satoshi was also talking about, I think we can tackle it from all sides, right? Using different modes of analysis and inquiry, including more mathematically formal and more non-soul, right? More political approaches. Yes, I'm going to stop here. Thanks, Rania and Satoshi. I'm wondering whether any of the other presenters do want to contribute to this discussion on whether we should model more or less? What do we lose? What do we gain? When we translate our theoretical propositions in a model, what's the difference between a model and a theory? I think these are questions that animate us and on which we have quite different, as I said earlier, we have quite different views on that. So I'm not sure if anyone else wants to say something to that, to compliment Rania's and Satoshi's contributions. No. Perhaps I can hand over again to Kevin to close the, there is no further questions and we've been here since four, which is great, I think it's been a great moment to see so many of you participate, both contributors and to have so many participants show up at this very exciting book launch. So I hope those that haven't contributed will all go out and look at the book and of course ask their libraries to buy the book and use it as a resource as we continue to teach or as we continue to try to understand what is economics as a discipline? What does it try to teach us? What are its strengths and its weaknesses and how various traditions continue to be very much alive and continue to actually hard back to ideas that have been with us since quite some time across the history of economics. So yeah, over to Kevin. So thanks again everyone for joining. So I'll hand over to Kevin to perhaps see the last word. Okay, well, I mean, just a thanks again to all our contributors who've given a very short and challenging overview to their chapters. I know that it's not easy to do this in five or seven minutes, but yeah, hopefully that's given everybody else a flavor for the sorts of things that we cover in our chapters and the different approaches taken. And thanks to everybody who's logged in, joined us for this webinar. I think we hope to do a few more events. So watch out for those. And yeah, hopefully this is, as we've kind of hinted at, this is the first step in hopefully what will be a growing number of resources produced by colleagues, not just us, but also colleagues in our wider reteaching network. If anybody wants to do a second version of this book, they're welcome, I'm not gonna do it. And we also hope that even this teaching approach, people can use the chapters or apply this approach in their teaching to arrange a different subjects in the economics that go beyond the 15 chapters. Obviously we couldn't cover everything. There was some other potential topics that this approach could be applied to. I'm certainly thinking about things like trade and unemployment, so there's lots of potential to expand what we've done here. Yeah, so thanks to everybody. And should we call it a day there? Okay, have a nice evening and take care, everybody. And just to say that we should reconvene physically one day and celebrate the massive achievement that is this book. So thanks, everyone, and see you soon. Thank you, bye. Okay, you're still there. I'm still here. I'm just checking through the chats. There is just a few participants left, everyone is dropping off. I've just put my email in. Great. I think we have a few more people there that are dropping off. But that was nice. Well done, Kirin. Yes, well, well done, T2. I think it was nice. It's so hard to do an overview of those chapters in five minutes. I think everyone did really well, actually. Yeah, I think it was very good because we got the real gist of what the book does across those various contributions. So great. Good. Yes. I'm going to sign off. Yes, brilliant. All right. Yeah, take care. Speak to you soon. Take care. See you very soon. Bye-bye. Bye.