I previously posted an invitation to join the World Economics Association, which was launched on May 16, 2011. Here is a progress report.
Dear Member of the World Economics Association,
The WEA is now two months old. So I thought I should give you a brief report on how things stand.
Membership is now over 6,000. Donations total nearly £13,000.
The Journals
Seven of the ten co-editorships of the WEA ’s two new journals have been filled. These are as follows.
Economic Thought
John Latsis , UK, Reading Univeristy
Annalisa Rosselli , Italy , Rome La Sapienza
Alejandro Nadal , Mexico , El Colegio de Mexico
World Economics Journal
Zhu Andong , China , Tsinghua University , Beijing
Jayati Ghosh , India , Jawaharial Nehru University
Norbert Häring , Germany , Handelsblatt
Michael Hudson , USA , University of Missouri at Kansas City
We have chosen and are in the process of purchasing an online journal software system for the WEA ’s three journals. It should be up and running by late August. When it is, you will be notified so that you can submit papers. We will also at that time be looking for volunteers to perform various tasks involved in the production of the journals. Meanwhile the editors of the World Economic Journal have already begun work at putting together the first issue. My WEA work commitments have delayed the publication of issue no. 57 of the real-world economics review, but it should be out soon.
Editorial Boards have been formed for the three journals and are listed here for the WEJ, here for ET, and here for the RWER.
Online Conferences: Volunteers needed
This link to our Guidelines for Conferences explains the anticipated conference setup. The Guidelines are open to amendment. We are currently investigating online conference software. It is likely that we will opt for a system that is a module of our journal software. In any case we need:
- 3 or 4 people to serve on the Conference Organisation Committee as described in the Guidelines,.
- Conference Leaders as also described in the Guidelines. This role especially concerns people who have a topic or set of topics that they would like to make the focus of a conference.
- one or more people with a bit of IT knowledge may also be needed.
Executive Committee
Progress with establishing the World Economics Association reached the point where it needed a top layer of formal structure in addition to its legal status as a Community Interest Company (CIC) under UK law. A formal constitution with procedures for electing officers and Executive Committee members is being prepared, but things are not yet far enough advanced for its adoption and enactment. Therefore we have recruited an interim Executive Committee. Its members are currently as follows.
Juan Carlos Moreno Brid , Mexico , UN Economic Com. for Latin America and the Caribbean
C. P. Chandrasekhar , India , Jawaharlal Nehru University
Ping Chen , China , Peking University and Fudan University
Edward Fullbrook , UK , Real-World Economics Review
James K. Galbraith , USA , University of Texas at Austin
Grazia Ietto-Gillies , Italy / UK , London South Bank University
Steve Keen , Australia , University of Western Sydney
Tony Lawson , UK , Cambridge University
Peter Radford , USA , Radford Free Press
Dani Rodrik , USA , Harvard University
Your ideas for the development of the WEA are welcome.
I and my co-organizers Peter Radford, Norbert Häring , Grazia Ietto-Gillies,Vicki Harris and Valerie Radford, who have worked hard for many months, thank you for your support. We hope that you will continue to spread the word among your colleagues and encourage them to join the World Economics Association. Six thousand members is an excellent beginning.
Edward Fullbrook
Looking good, I hope they can challenge the establishment at some point with these new journals. Some nice known names there too (Hudson, Galbraith, Keen).
ReplyDeletelooking forward to what sort of output is going to be in these journals and conferences, apart of usual economic macro discussion (neoclassical vs. orthodox schools) I hope there is space for biophysical economics, environmental, behavioural, complexity, econophysics, etc. economic discipline is such an amazing topic and complex (is like the epitome of complexity and connection between social and physical sciences) and yet almost all economic thought is reduced to finance and the money-cycle (and even there is really dysfunctional and dominated by big money and interests of the status quo).
In this century, along with the revolution on biology/genetics, cognitive sciences and IT & comm there MUST be a real revolution on economic thought and applying scientific method to it. Either that or we will be really fucked up.
Chaos, in my experience the fundamental problem with all economics reduces to understand the monetary system in terms of operations and policy options that follow from this. Without this understanding, economists fail to realize that the basic problem is that provision of real resource needs now and in the future is not constrained financially other than be inflation, and that there is no problem of "affordability."
ReplyDeleteThe problem is one of applying human and technological resources to energy resources and materials resources, negative externality, which are all real rather than financial. Funding in not an issue other than political. Through global coordinated governmental effort our challenges are resolvable. If we constrain ourselves with an erroneous notion of affordability, we and our offspring face the abyss. This is matter of survival, not only of progress. We have to progress to survive, and, as it war time, we can afford anything that is necessary for or contributes to this overarching goal.
I would like to see MMT spreading to these other fields and the WEA seems like a promising conduit. I hope all the MMT economists and allies join up.
This is unrelated to your post, but Congrats to beowulf, his Platinum coin idea has officially gone mainstream: CNN is running it as their headline.
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