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Talk on Karl Polanyi to the Civil Service Fast-Streamers' Seminar, 'Exploring Economics'

On February 13th 2020 I delivered a talk to the Civil Service Fast-Streamers' Seminar on 'Exploring Economics'. I was asked to talk to them specifically about the work of Karl Polanyi and the most important insights from his Great Transformation. More generally, though, they were interested in what I could tell them about economics that they had not found out when until recently they had been studying the subject at university. The discussion focused on Polanyi's concepts of the economistic fallacy, fictitious commodification and the double movement, especially in relation to some of the more pressing public policy dilemmas of the post-Brexit transition.

I was told that I would be invited back very shortly to talk about David Ricardo and his theory of comparative advantage.