1000 word summary of Quaid-e-Azam Lecture at PSDE 33rd AGM held on 14th Dec, 2017 at Islamabad. Published in Express Tribune & the Nation 13th Jan 2018. 43m Video Lecture on YouTube: The main thesis of our lecture is that our quest for prosperity has failed to deliver the sought-after goals because we have misunderstood the meaning of prosperity , and looked… Read More Prosperity as Human Development, not Wealth
Throughout 2016, many countries around the world keep on competing for market share in high-wage, innovation-based industries. Indeed, these countries have turned to “innovation mercantilism” by imposing protectionist policies to expand domestic production and exports of high-tech goods and services. In this setting, innovation mercantilist policies are being oriented to high-value tech sectors such… Read More Protectionist trends
Prior to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC 2007), many senior economists and policy makers expressed confidence that they had finally solved the problem of business cycles, booms and busts, that plagues capitalism. Because of this over-confidence, early warnings of a looming crisis by Nouriel Roubini, Ann Pettifor, Peter Schiff, Steven Keen, Dean Baker, and Raghuram… Read More A Crisis-Prone & Fragile Financial System
{bitl.ly/KRMCR} Post 4/4 about Economic Methodology Before Keynes, Classical Economic Theory (CET) was based on three principles. The First Principle is that Unemployment is automatically eliminated by the free market. The Second Principle is the Quantity Theory of Money, which states that money supply makes no difference to real economic outcomes. The Third Principle is… Read More The Keynesian Revolution and the Monetarist Counter-Revolution
In our PhD Economics program at Stanford, we learnt nothing about the history of major economic events of the twentieth century. Instead, we were taught the rather arcane and difficult skill of building models. In order to analyse what would happen in an economy, we learnt that you have to construct an artificial economy, populated… Read More The Education of an Economist
The anniversary of his birth on 24th Feb 1934 is an appropriate occasion to remember Mahbubul Haq, our unsung national hero. The depth of his achievements remain vastly under-appreciated, especially in his own country. Virtually single-handedly, he changed the direction of the development discourse from a single-minded and harmful focus on wealth production, towards attention… Read More Honouring Mahbub ul Haq
While money and banking plays an extremely important role in the economy, economics textbooks teach the opposite. According to the quantity theory of money (QTM), money plays no role in the economy at all; it is a veil which covers the workings of the real economy. An increase or decrease in the money supply will… Read More The Swiss Referendum on Sovereign Money
reprinted from Express Tribune, 8th June 2015 {bit.ly/AZHunt} We live in a world awash with money. Not only can the banks create 20 times more money than the amount they receive as deposits, but an enormous shadow banking system has come into existence which creates massive amounts of credit without any regulatory restrictions. At a… Read More Speculative Financial Attacks
The target of economics education is the comprehension of the reality in its economic dimensions, that is to say, the understanding of the practices and ideas that support the evolution of the reproduction of material life. However, following John Kenneth Galbraith, we can say that economics is overwhelmed by an “uncorrected obsolescence”. Consequently, each generation… Read More Public policies, corporations and social needs: rethinking development
Defects of fractional reserve, and advantages of shifting to 100% reserve banking.… Read More The Iceland Plan for Monetary Reform
WEA Pedagogy Blog 