Dirk Philipsen on GDP

In this lecture, Prof. Israel Kirzner presents a historical overview of the development of the Austrian school. The talk covers a timespan from the beginnings of the Austrian School in the early 1870's till just before the more recent 'revival' of the School in the mid-1970's.

Carsten Dreher starts with a historical perspective on the development of evolutionary economics by mentioning the difficulties of neoclassical economics to explain economic growth and by referring to the work of Joseph Schumpeter. Then some concepts such as business cycles, path dependencies are shortly explained. Dreher continues by introducing two different approaches in evolutionary economics, a micro centred approach that is associated with Nelson and Winter's work and a macro institutional and historical approach that has been pursued amongst others by Chris Freeman. Lastly the policy implications of treating economies as innovation systems are discussed and a summary of the differences of neoclassical and evolutionary economics is provided.

In spite of the manifold critique about the state of economics in the aftermath of the financial crisis, an even increasing presence of economists and economic experts can be observed in the public sphere during the last years. On the one hand this reflects the still dominant position of economics in the social sciences as well as the sometimes ignorant attitude of economists towards findings of other social sciences. On the other hand this paper shows that the public debate on politico-economic issues among economists is dominated by a specific subgroup of economists, tightly connected to an institutional network of “German neoliberalism”. This group of “public economists” (i) is dominant in public debates even after the financial crisis, (ii) reproduces the formative German economic imaginary of the Social Market Economy in a German neoliberal interpretation and (iii) has a good access to German economic policymaking, rooted in a long history of economic policy advice.

The dossier first discusses the impact of colonialism on introducing foreign plants and thus disrupting ecosystems. Subsequently the case of the knotweed, a plant introduced from Japan to the UK and now considered a threat to biodiversity is explored. The complex economy built around the plant consisting of regulations, pesticides, experts, and landowners is then explored.