Cicero’s children : The worth of economic history and economic thought for business students
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at ATEC 2009 : 14th Annual Australasian Teaching Economics Conference : What does the financial crisis tell us about teaching and learning economics?, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland : 13th-14th July, 2009 p. 156-167
- Full Text:
- Description: Despite talk about the first sightings of the ‘green shoots of recovery’ the Global Financial Crisis which began to unfold in August 2007 is likely to exert some impact upon the prevailing economic and political philosophy. The big question for economic and business instructors is to ponder whether it will lead to any significant changes in economic and business syllabus at Australian universities. The teaching of mainstream economics is durable and usually resistant to change. Yet the crisis has certainly caused rumblings in the teaching of first-year economics. As one ABC reporter recently asked ‘How do you teach economics at a time like this?’ There is certainly a great curiosity among the young about what went wrong. Moreover they wish to know why neoliberalism has failed and why state interventionism is resurgent. Young minds must be perplexed about the rapid revision of agenda from containing inflation in 2008 to coping with recession in 2008. To paraphase the lyrics to the old Talking Heads song ‘Once in a lifetime’ ‘You may ask yourself, well… how did we get here?’ This is what they and we are asking themselves. This paper argues that an introductory course in economic ideas could help tell them why.
- Description: 2003007357
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at ATEC 2009 : 14th Annual Australasian Teaching Economics Conference : What does the financial crisis tell us about teaching and learning economics?, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland : 13th-14th July, 2009 p. 156-167
- Full Text:
- Description: Despite talk about the first sightings of the ‘green shoots of recovery’ the Global Financial Crisis which began to unfold in August 2007 is likely to exert some impact upon the prevailing economic and political philosophy. The big question for economic and business instructors is to ponder whether it will lead to any significant changes in economic and business syllabus at Australian universities. The teaching of mainstream economics is durable and usually resistant to change. Yet the crisis has certainly caused rumblings in the teaching of first-year economics. As one ABC reporter recently asked ‘How do you teach economics at a time like this?’ There is certainly a great curiosity among the young about what went wrong. Moreover they wish to know why neoliberalism has failed and why state interventionism is resurgent. Young minds must be perplexed about the rapid revision of agenda from containing inflation in 2008 to coping with recession in 2008. To paraphase the lyrics to the old Talking Heads song ‘Once in a lifetime’ ‘You may ask yourself, well… how did we get here?’ This is what they and we are asking themselves. This paper argues that an introductory course in economic ideas could help tell them why.
- Description: 2003007357
The economist as gadfly : The machinations of Lord John Vaizey’s life
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 22nd Conference of the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia : 14th-17th July 2009
- Full Text:
- Description: It has been 25 years since Lord John Vaizey, the English economist and educationist passed away in July 1984. Today, Vaizey is almost a forgotten figure in modern British history and even more in the fields of political economy and economics of education where he first made his mark. His work is now rarely cited and, even in political histories of the Thatcher decade, or the travails of the Labour governments before then, his name rarely reappears. This paper reassesses his life, especially the last decade of his life when Vaizey, basked in the limelight, and enjoyed some of the glittering prizes. It was a decade when Vaizey took some major ideological turns, one of the most controversial being his decision to leave the Labour party after 30 years of membership. The paper revisits the reasons why Vaizey renounced democratic socialism, Keynesianism and, along with that, the beguiling promises of social science. It reflected his peculiar interest in political failure along with disillusionment in democratic socialism. The switch meant that this Cambridge-trained economist who described himself once as ‘a deeply flawed puritan, dedicated to work, self improvement, the cultivation of the intellect, goodness and truth’ had to convert, albeit reluctantly, to monetarism and ditch the post-war Keynesian consensus.
- Description: 2003007362
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 22nd Conference of the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia : 14th-17th July 2009
- Full Text:
- Description: It has been 25 years since Lord John Vaizey, the English economist and educationist passed away in July 1984. Today, Vaizey is almost a forgotten figure in modern British history and even more in the fields of political economy and economics of education where he first made his mark. His work is now rarely cited and, even in political histories of the Thatcher decade, or the travails of the Labour governments before then, his name rarely reappears. This paper reassesses his life, especially the last decade of his life when Vaizey, basked in the limelight, and enjoyed some of the glittering prizes. It was a decade when Vaizey took some major ideological turns, one of the most controversial being his decision to leave the Labour party after 30 years of membership. The paper revisits the reasons why Vaizey renounced democratic socialism, Keynesianism and, along with that, the beguiling promises of social science. It reflected his peculiar interest in political failure along with disillusionment in democratic socialism. The switch meant that this Cambridge-trained economist who described himself once as ‘a deeply flawed puritan, dedicated to work, self improvement, the cultivation of the intellect, goodness and truth’ had to convert, albeit reluctantly, to monetarism and ditch the post-war Keynesian consensus.
- Description: 2003007362
The boom we did not have : Australian economics degree enrolments, 1990-2007
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 13th Australasian Teaching Economics Conference: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Learning and Teaching in Economics, University of Western Sydney, Parramatta Campus, New South Wales : 28th September 2008 p. 118-126
- Full Text:
- Description: Recently the Australian economy notched up seventeen years of uninterrupted economic growth. Not long after there was another burst of market turbulence following the shake out on Wall Street. Economic issues are never really off the front page and business economists appear almost every night on the TV news. One might think that with the preoccupation with economic news it would spell a greater student interest in economics. Australian university economists have been concerned with the decline in student interest in their subject since the mid 1990s and have now perhaps become acclimatised to it. This paper revisits the issue, updates the student enrolment data and ponders the future.
- Description: 2003007358
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 13th Australasian Teaching Economics Conference: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Learning and Teaching in Economics, University of Western Sydney, Parramatta Campus, New South Wales : 28th September 2008 p. 118-126
- Full Text:
- Description: Recently the Australian economy notched up seventeen years of uninterrupted economic growth. Not long after there was another burst of market turbulence following the shake out on Wall Street. Economic issues are never really off the front page and business economists appear almost every night on the TV news. One might think that with the preoccupation with economic news it would spell a greater student interest in economics. Australian university economists have been concerned with the decline in student interest in their subject since the mid 1990s and have now perhaps become acclimatised to it. This paper revisits the issue, updates the student enrolment data and ponders the future.
- Description: 2003007358
D.B. Copland and the aftershocks of the Premiers' plan 1931-1939
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the Australian Conference of Economists, 2005, Melbourne : 26th September, 2005
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Since Roland Wilson’s (1951) tribute to L. F. Giblin as ‘the grand old man’ or father figure of modern Australian economics there has been a tendency to underestimate the achievements and legacy of Douglas Berry Copland. It became fashionable, moreover, with the post-war generation of economists to belittle his contribution to interwar Australian economic thought especially that relating to stabilisation policy. Copland was quite aware of the chiselling away at his reputation. Commenting to a friend while reading Harrod’s biography of Keynes he wrote ‘Still reading Keynes and I remember most of the controversy and the discussion he was involved from the 1920’s onwards. A few of us had been working on similar lines and I have somewhere a set of memorandums to the government of NSW from 1932 to 1936 urging with all the persuasion I could muster an expansionist policy, but we could not get pass the Commonwealth Treasury. It would be fun to dig them out now and circulate for the younger brethren who still think we are past praying for. I’m sure he (Keynes) would disown Coombs and his school if he was with us now’. By that reflection Copland revealed not just his close dealings with Keynes but his fear that a hydraulic Keynesianism was taking hold within the Australian economics fraternity. It also showed Copland’s pride of the policy advocacy and controversies he had actively participated in during the 1930’s.
- Description: 2003001451
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the Australian Conference of Economists, 2005, Melbourne : 26th September, 2005
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Since Roland Wilson’s (1951) tribute to L. F. Giblin as ‘the grand old man’ or father figure of modern Australian economics there has been a tendency to underestimate the achievements and legacy of Douglas Berry Copland. It became fashionable, moreover, with the post-war generation of economists to belittle his contribution to interwar Australian economic thought especially that relating to stabilisation policy. Copland was quite aware of the chiselling away at his reputation. Commenting to a friend while reading Harrod’s biography of Keynes he wrote ‘Still reading Keynes and I remember most of the controversy and the discussion he was involved from the 1920’s onwards. A few of us had been working on similar lines and I have somewhere a set of memorandums to the government of NSW from 1932 to 1936 urging with all the persuasion I could muster an expansionist policy, but we could not get pass the Commonwealth Treasury. It would be fun to dig them out now and circulate for the younger brethren who still think we are past praying for. I’m sure he (Keynes) would disown Coombs and his school if he was with us now’. By that reflection Copland revealed not just his close dealings with Keynes but his fear that a hydraulic Keynesianism was taking hold within the Australian economics fraternity. It also showed Copland’s pride of the policy advocacy and controversies he had actively participated in during the 1930’s.
- Description: 2003001451
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