Economics Conference a Great Success

Despite the unfavorable weather conditions, attendance at the conference was high. Friday's snowstorm prevented one of the speakers, Richard Easterlin, from attending the event.The conference began with a summary of Easterlin's paper, delivered by conference organizer and MHC economics professor Fred Moseley. Easterlin's work addresses the future of economic growth in relation to human happiness. His optimistic belief that growth will continue without serious hurdles into the new century is accompanied by his conclusion that people could be destined to chase the ever-receding goal of satisfaction: "The more affluent the society, the higher the material aspirations," he wrote.

Elmar Altvater, a well-known German political economist, focused on the importance of some financial, natural, social, and political constraints to economic growth. Problems such as the substitution of human labor by new technologies, the corruption of the capital markets, and the depletion of natural resources were among some of the concerns raised by Altvater. He suggested that the deceleration of economic growth could be a solution to our ever-increasing ecological problems. "We have to consider alternatives to growth [projections] forever," Professor Altvater concluded.

Saturday's sessions opened with two talks on the challenges and opportunities of globalization. Amar Bhattacharya, a senior economist at the World Bank, examined the positive effects of globalization (faster growth, capital investment, and technology and knowledge transfers) as well as the remaining challenges of globalization (managing capital flows, reducing volatility, and solving environmental problems). He emphasized that ways must be found to help poorer countries grow faster and improve their living conditions.

Barbara Stallings '66, director of the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin America in Santiago, Chile, discussed the uneven impacts of globalization and liberalization on different regions of the world, with special emphasis on Latin America. She emphasized that the impacts are also quite different for various sectors and types of firms (e.g., large and small firms) within particular countries. Stallings suggested that policies must be devised to minimize the negative effects of globalization on individual countries, sectors, and firms.

The second session for the day addressed the problems of inequality on both a domestic and international level. Nancy Birdsall of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offered her perspective on the question of "Why does inequality matter?" by discussing the problems of developing countries. "Inequality inhibits growth and slows down poverty reduction," she commented. Birdsall also talked about the vicious cycle in which the poor and disadvantaged are caught and which, she believes, is "perpetuated by the inefficiencies of the market."

Patrick Mason focused on the problems of inequality in the United States economy. An engaging speaker, Mason explored the question of race and gender discrimination and expressed concerns about the reduction of the resulting inequalities in the next century. "True, the gap between the adjusted female-male wage inequality has been decreasing over the past few decades. [However] the reason for that is not the increase of female wages but rather the decrease in pay for males," he said.

The last session developed into an intellectual debate between the two speakers when David Colander stated: "Neoclassic economics is dead. It died in 1950." Colander spoke about the challenges for the economics profession and liberal arts education in the new century. He noted the importance of empirical work and economic models for the development of the field, as well as the possible transformation of college campuses into beautiful resort-type establishments, in an effort to oppose the potential competition of virtual education institutions.

The last speaker, Diana Strassmann, who is a founding editor of the journal Feminist Economics, spoke about the importance of incorporating social elements into economics textbooks. "Recent economics has been constructed by a very narrow group of people: white, middle-class, American men," she said. According to Strassmann, the autonomous, rational individual who is the main character of economic texts is not an accurate representation of reality.

Each of the talks was followed by questions from the audience. During the concluding session, an intriguing discussion between the participants, faculty members, and students covered an even deeper array of global economic problems and theories. The conference discussions between political economists, Marxists, radicals, and neoclassical economists were engaging and enlightening and continued over lunch and dinner, to which faculty and students were invited. "All in all, the economics department's change of format from a series of Morrison lectures to a weekend conference this year turned out to be quite a success," said Moseley.

 

photo by Fred LeBlanc

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