Introductory Message for Inauguration of Center for Critical Peace Studies; see https://ccps.umt.edu.pk/ by Dr. Asad Zaman, Director, Uloom-ul-Umran (replacement for Eurocentric Social Sciences), Al-Nafi Online Educational Platform About 1 Billion live in poverty, under $2 per day. Eliminating poverty requires about $700 Billion (=2×365) per year.  US “Defence” Budget is over $700 Billion. Global Military… Read More The Importance of Peace

Video recording of talk at 3rd BANK INDONESIA INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON ISLAMIC FINANCE, Presented at Session 4: Macroprudential Policy Framework for Islamic Finance, Nusa Dua – Bali, Indonesia 30th & 31st May 2013. Video is followed by summary of talk 1       A Three-Dimensional Approach It is well-known that the Global Financial Crisis… Read More Islamic Regulation: Based on Character and Social Norms

Introduction: The dark underside of leading lights of the European Enlightenment has been skillfully concealed. Nearly all major enlightenment thinkers held abhorrent views about slavery, race, democracy, women, and equality. Even though their views are public, easily available in major works, there is a conspiracy of silence, and suppression of dissent. Even though there is… Read More Kant: Misogynist & Racist

This material is taken from first 15 minutes of Michael Hudson’s Webinar: a 4000-year perspective on economy, money and debt. Shortlink: http://bit.ly/MHudson4000. These are real-world economics lessons, not found in textbooks. A ten-minute video wrap-up is followed by a 1400 word writeup/summary. Loans to 3rd World Meant for Control Michael Hudson’s First Wall Street Job… Read More What they don’t teach in economics textbooks

Most economists are committed to Friedman’s methodology which advocates a nominalist philosophy of science. Theories do not aim to discover hidden real structures which explain the observations. Instead, they aim to “save the appearances”: provide a good match to the observations. Although a small minority of voices has advocated a realist methodology – Bhaskar Roy,… Read More Hockey Stick or Growth Illusion?

In previous posts/articles, I have argued that the fundamental problems at heart of economics lie in a hopeless methodology which is systematically incapable of reaching the truth; see How Economic Models Became Substitutes for Reality and The WHY of Crazy Models. This is also aligned with views of Tony Lawson and others who offer critical realism as… Read More Why Newton Matters?

Invited Lecture at Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, on 22 Apr 2021. ABSTRACT: A materialistic approach to life locates problems in external reality, and attempts to find technological, political, or economic solutions. This represents a misdiagnosis which makes cures impossible to find. The anthropocene was brought about by the spiritual stunting now widespread across the… Read More Becoming the Change You Want to See

{bit.ly/RSIA10A} In previous lectures (Causal Explanation of Autonomy & Invariance of Regression Relationships ), we have seen the essential importance of analyzing the causal structure of the variables under study via path diagrams. In this lecture, we study one aspect of this which creates serious problems for understanding and interpreting regression results. This is the problem… Read More Spurious Regressions

As discussed by Hoover in “Lost Causes”, the concept of causality was dropped from econometrics for many decades, although it is currently making a resurgence. Nonetheless the revolution launched by Judea Pearl in the 1990’s has not percolated to econometrics textbooks. As a result, satisfactory definitions of key concepts required to make sense of regression… Read More Causal Explanation of Autonomy & Invariance of Regression Relationships

Defining Feature of Real Econometrics: {bit.ly/RSIA10C} We can define “Real Econometrics” as being the search for causal relationships within a collection of variables. There exists an enormous amount of confusion about what exactly is a causal relationship. We will take a simple and practical approach, developed by Woodward in his book on “Making Things Happen”.… Read More Causal versus Positivist Econometrics