Rethinking the Market » Activities and Outputs (tag [blog post])

Institute of Art and Ideas blog post on the philosophical limits of mathematical market models

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 18:28:22 GMT

On October 17th 2024, I published an article on the Institute of Art and Ideas blog site called 'Why maths alone cannot predict the economy: Mathematical proof is not economic fact'. It provides a brief philosophical account of the main claims of my recent book, False Prophets of Economics Imperialism. The most sophisticated proof-makers in mathematical economics, I argue, were clear right from the outset of their endeavour that they were not talking about the world as it is actually experienced. They were engaged instead in creating epistemic artefacts that could act as the spur to further thinking, but only on the realisation that the world that appeared in their models was a parallel universe to the world in which everyday life is lived. In other words, they were conducting thought experiments, primarily about what might go wrong if the market systems represented by series of equations were treated as something more than the mathematical notation of which they are comprised. Contemporary practices of economics imperialism fall into precisely this trap. They have to first pretend that complexly layered social situations are really markets at heart, before they can then use their mathematical market models to define the essence of those environments. As I show, though, there is no philosophical justification for proceeding in such a way. The whole project of economics imperialism thus falls down.

SPERI Comment Blog Post: Conservative Fantasies of 'the Market'

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 11:39:23 GMT

Philip Hammond has recently made a rather startling confession for a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer: that 'the market' is currently failing fairness tests in the distributional outcomes it is producing in the UK. However, his solution saw him quickly restored to partisan type, idealising 'textbook' market institutions and setting as the future goal returning to the way market outcomes are 'supposed to' operate. This SPERI Comment blog post highlights the continued reification of ideal-typical market constructions within Conservative Party political rhetoric. 'The market' is still capable of producing the best possible outcomes, Hammond seemed to be saying, even if the Government of which he was a key member had found it impossible to secure the conditions under which this might be so.

LSE Blog Post on Michael Gove's 'History Wars'

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 16:55:01 GMT

On June 7th 2019 I had a post published on the LSE's British Politics and Policy blog site. It is called 'Michael Gove's War on Historians: Extreme Whig History and Conservative Curriculum Reform'. It follows closely the argument in my recently published British Politics article which looks at the controversial role of imperial 'heroes' in the most recent national curriculum in history. It asks whether white settlers and their often brutal means of settling are really the most appropriate role models for children in a modern multicultural society, as well as how far access to the character of the country these children call home is restricted when treating Empire simply as a symbol of British greatness.

LSE Blog Post - Machonomics: George Osborne's Legacy to UK Macroeconomic Governance

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 09:15:53 GMT

George Osborne was a purveyor of machonomics, an approach to economic policy-making revolving around seemingly bottomless reserves of macho self-confidence. In this blog post for the LSE British Politics and Policy blog site, I argue that Osborne modelled himself in this way on the optimal policy-maker of the so-called time consistency problem of abstract economic theory.

This post showcases the analysis contained in my recent British Politics article on the same theme. It is available in open access view-only format from Springer Nature's Shared It facility.

SPERI Comment Blog Post: Economic Uncertainty and Economics Imperialism

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 11:14:01 GMT

The question of why uncertainty does not feature more prominently as an economic ontology requires answers that are rooted in intellectual history. This post, the sixth in the SPERI series on uncertainty, searches for them by looking at how economic history has become increasingly colonised by economic theory, and economic theory by mathematics.

SPERI Comment Blog Post: 'Paul Romer on Mathiness and Orthodox Economics Methodology'

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 11:03:09 GMT

Recent criticisms of the mathiness of many economists has raised the question within the blogosphere of whether a fundamental fault-line has now punctured economics orthodoxy.

http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2015/09/16/paul-romer-on-mathiness-and-orthodox-economics-methodology/

Firesouls Blog Post: A Conversation with Professor Matthew Watson, Part 1

Sat, 11 Mar 2017 08:41:36 GMT

In July 2016 I was invited to the Firesouls office in London by Dan Ebanks, the company's co-founder and CEO. Firesouls has built the Social Value Exchange, an e-auction that enables community groups to bid for resources that might have a transformative effect on the way in which life is lived locally. Dan recorded the conversation that we had about my project research, in the hope that my work on the market concept might serve as useful background information for what Firesouls is trying to do with its Social Value Exchange. The first part of that conversation was posted on the Firesouls blog site on March 7th 2017, with a further part to come.

https://medium.com/firesouls-newsreel/a-conversation-with-professor-matthew-watson-part-1-18a600111654#.vwxbdgip1

Oxford University Press Blog Post on Brexit: Part 2

Fri, 07 Oct 2016 14:11:52 GMT

This is the second of the two-part blog post that OUP published on its website on October 6th 2016 to accompany the release of the seventh edition of Baylis, Smith and Owens's The Globalization of World Politics. It is entitled, 'Brexit and Article 50 Negotiations: Why the Smart Money Might be on No Deal'.

http://blog.oup.com/2016/10/brexit-article-50-no-deal/

Oxford University Press Blog Post on Brexit: Part 1

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 13:19:09 GMT

In August 2016 I was invited by Oxford University Press to do some filming for their website, answering questions on Brexit. This was to help them in their advertising for the seventh edition of Baylis, Smith and Owens's The Globalization of World Politics, to which I am a contributing author for the chapter on Global Trade and Global Finance. These are two dimensions of the modern-day phenomenon of economic globalisation that will definitely be impacted on by the UK's decision to withdraw from the European Union.

As a follow-up to my afternoon filming, I was then asked to write two blog posts for the OUP website. The first was published on September 25th 2016, and is called, 'Brexit and Article 50 Negotiations: What it would take to strike a deal'. This post, along with the accompanying film, can be found via the following link.

http://blog.oup.com/2016/09/brexit-article-50-negotiations/

Fools' Gold Blog Post on Friedrich List's Role in the Pre-History of Modern-Day Competitiveness Thinking

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 21:30:35 GMT

Friedrich List never once mentioned competitiveness directly by name, but he nonetheless remains an important figure in the pre-history of the Competitiveness Agenda. It would be impossible to present a comprehensive account of the rhetorical structure underpinning that agenda without at least some discussion of his National System of Political Economy. It was List who first made the case in the 1840s for collective national sacrifice in the interests of stronger future macroeconomic performance. There is no plausible philosophical mechanism in his work to explain why people should agree to the privations following from this sacrifice, in much the same way that no plausible philosophical mechanism operates in the modern-day Competitiveness Agenda to explain why the population should remain passive in the face of a race to the bottom. His argument for choosing national economic champions in the name of future society-wide enrichment therefore looks like an unsubstantiated assertion, and the same surely also applies to the Competitiveness Agenda.

http://foolsgold.international/friedrich-list-pre-history-modern-day-competitiveness-thinking/