The World Economy in the 21st Century: MHC Conference February 18 and 19

 

Eight economists--who hail from around the globe and from such prestigious organizations as the World Bank and the United Nations--will provide their perspectives on the world economy in the twenty-first century when they deliver papers on campus as part of the economics department's "millennial" conference. Included among the speakers is Barbara Stallings '66, director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago, Chile.

Titled The World Economy in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities, the conference is set for February 18 and 19. See the CSJ calendar for specifics about conference sessions. The conference is sponsored by MHC's economics department and the Morrison Endowed Lecture Fund with support from Five Colleges, Inc., and the economics departments at Amherst and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts.

"This conference will provide an opportunity for the Five Colleges and for the entire Pioneer Valley community to learn from some of the world's top economists and to discuss with them the major economic challenges and opportunities in the century ahead," says economics professor Fred Moseley. "We hope that many people will take advantage of this unique opportunity."

The conference will consist of four sessions on the following topics: growth and crises, globalization and development, poverty and inequality, and the future of economics as a social science. A concluding session will be a general discussion that summarizes and explores further the major economic trends in the century ahead.

For further information on the conference and speakers, visit www.mtholyoke. edu/acad/econ/world_economy.htm. The papers to be presented at the conference will also be posted on the Web site in early February.

 

ABOUT THE ECONOMISTS

 

Richard Easterlin

University of Southern California

Richard Easterlin is a leading economic historian with specialties in economic growth and population growth. He recently published a major historical study titled Growth Triumphant: The Twenty-first Century in Historical Perspective (1996). He has also served as an editor of the Journal of Economic History.

 

Elmar Altvater

Free University of Berlin

Elmar Altvater is one of the top political economists in Europe, with more than a dozen books on a wide range of subjects, including the world economic system, crisis theory, theory of the state, the Third World debt crisis, and global environmental constraints. Five of his books have been translated into English, including The Future of the Market (1993). He is the coeditor of the journal Prokla.

Amariendra Bhattacharya

World Bank

Amariendra Bhattacharya is a senior adviser in the division of development economics at the World Bank and has recently been a senior member of the World Bank team focusing on the Asian crisis. He has also coauthored a recent book titled The Road to Financial Integration: Private Capital Flows to Developing Countries (1997).

Barbara Stallings '66

U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America

Barbara Stallings is director of ECLA in Santiago, Chile. She has published numerous books on development economics, especially on Latin America. Her most recent book is Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development (1995).

Nancy Birdsall

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Nancy Birdsall is a senior associate for CEIP, where she directs economics programs. She is the author of numerous publications on labor market, human resources, and other development issues. Her most recent book, a study of the relationship between economic growth and income distribution, is titled Beyond Trade-Offs: Market Reforms and Equitable Growth in Latin America (1998).

Patrick Mason

University of South Florida

Patrick Mason is a leading authority on interracial economic inequality in the United States. His recent work has examined the historical trends of black/white wage differentials and gender inequality. He has also served on the editorial board of the Review of Radical Political Economics.

David Colander

Middlebury College

David Colander is the author of dozens of books and articles, mostly on macroeconomics and economic methodology. He is also the author of several popular textbooks. One of his recent collection of essays is titled "Why Aren't Economists as Important as Garbagemen?" He has also been editor of the Eastern Economic Journal and is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Diana Strassman

Rice University

Diana Strassman is a leading feminist economist and is the founding editor of the new journal Feminist Economics. She also specializes in economic methodology, particularly the insights of the feminist perspective for economic methodology. Several of her recent articles have characterized economics as "storytelling."

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