Cambridge Judge Business School Discussions on Economics & Policy

Is the globalisation which has shaped our world over recent decades slowing or even moving backwards in the wake of the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Donald Trump as US president, asks the first podcast in the Cambridge Judge Business Debate series.

Students at business schools should think like biologists, according to acknowledged advertising authority Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy & Mather UK. Conventional economic theory is extraordinarily narrow, blind to ethics, psychology, path-dependence and to marketing. Adopting aspects of evolutionary biology, psychology and behavioural science will create binocular vision and a different way of looking at problems.

As pressure again mounts in the Eurozone leading Cambridge economist Michael Kitson says the euro might 'stagger on' for a few more years but eventually it will collapse. Policy makers have been papering over the cracks in the Eurozone and causing major problems for many member countries which are trapped by tight fiscal rules.

As the European Parliament sets about reforming the EU Emission Trading System that is at the centre of Europe's climate policy, Dr David Reiner says it does work but has suffered in the recession and economic downturn.

Alexander McLean, Founder and Director General of the UK-based charity The African Prisons Project (APP), talks about the work it is carrying out and the part played by Cambridge Judge Business School’s General Management Programme. APP’s initial focus was to improve education and health in prisons by refurbishing libraries and medical facilities. Now, having worked with over 20,000 prisoners in Uganda, Kenya and Sierra Leone, attention is switching to leadership development for senior and middle management in African prison services.

When austerity policies are linked positively to structured measures and discipline at a macro-economic level, the strategy works. However, just rapid and deep austerity cuts do not. Dr Christos Pitelis warns that austerity measures on their own forces governments to simultaneously take steps to improve economic competitiveness, causing output to fall followed by a failure to revive economies. Austerity measures alone are widely seen as a bad move.

Michael Kitson calls 2010-2020 a lost decade for the world economy. What is needed now, he argues, is a high level of aggregate demand and continued investment in new technology and innovation coupled with a major shift in economic thinking.

Michael Kitson compares the current global recession to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and feels that austerity is here for a long time unless there is a change in economic policy globally as we well as in the UK.

Dr Loretta Napoleoni discusses the themes from her latest book Maonomics - Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do. China, she says, has reaped the benefits of Western-invented globalisation and deregulation, yet its economic development offers lessons to the West as the West stumbles from crisis to crisis.

As the government prepares to announce an overhaul of the UK's immigration policies, Michael Kitson says raising controls now may negatively affect the country's innovation and long-term future growth.

Acclaimed economist and commentator Professor Paul Krugman expects the Greek government to default on its enormous debts and would not be surprised, in the aftermath, if the country withdraws from the Euro.

Leading figures from the world of Islamic finance - Baljeet Kaur Grewal of KHR Research, Farmida Bi of Norton Rose and Richard Thomas of Gatehouse Bank - explored some of the contemporary issues with academic staff and other industry professionals.

New research into relationships between the arts and humanities and the UK economy has revealed far greater interaction than expected

Academics, investment professionals, philanthropists, directors of not-for-profit organisations and the charity sector are an under-serviced segment of the market which the School's unique week-long Endowment Asset Management programme will seek to attract as it expands its international direction.

Dr Munir says that at a time when economists struggled to explain market behaviour, business schools should have grasped the chance to provide a new theoretical understanding of how markets work based on behavioural and historical evidence rather than untested assumptions.

So what's fairer: an 'honest' vote for the party you support, a 'tactical' vote in a system you understand, or a vote cast under AV where a 'tactical' vote is harder to make? Dr Lionel Page's new research reveals that 'sophisticated' 'tactical' voting cost the Conservatives their UK General Election victory in 2010. So will AV be any fairer when tactical voting is more difficult?

Japan's markets will continue to fluctuate until the nuclear crisis is resolved says Dr George Olcott

A change of policy is needed to generate growth, monetarism won't work by itself argues Michael Kitson

As world leaders pin their hopes on innovation to 'jump-start' their economies, there's a stark warning from Michael Kitson that it could take decades

Why "tomorrow's regulators" involved in providing public goods will need more partnerships, less red tape, and more customer feedback through social media

Academics from Cambridge Judge Business School have raised doubts about whether the size and speed of George Osborne's cuts will dampen the country's economic recovery and whether volunteers under the banner of working in a "Big Society" can really take on jobs previously performed by public sector workers. Boni Sones OBE reports.

Ken Warwick believes the prospects are good as long as we rebalance the economy.

It's a case of not "if" but "when". Crises and cycles, says Professor Lord Desai, are recurring events, every solution inevitably creates its own problems.

Author, economist and political analyst Loretta Napoleoni has been tracing the intertwined roots of the world's monetary systems and the business of terrorism

As 2008, a year that shook the world and began the restructuring of the global economies, draws to a close, we take a look at the year ahead. Which economies are likely to find it easiest to ride out the current recession and what management tools and skills should opinion formers and business leaders draw on to ensure they provide the right climate for firms to do well? Strangely, not all the news is bad news, as we have been finding out in the Window on the World series of interviews with academics and associates from Judge Business School.

As 2008, a year that shook the world and began the restructuring of the global economies, draws to a close, we take a look at the year ahead. Which economies are likely to find it easiest to ride out the current recession and what management tools and skills should opinion formers and business leaders draw on to ensure they provide the right climate for firms to do well? Strangely, not all the news is bad news, as we have been finding out in the Window on the World series of interviews with academics and associates from Judge Business School.

Nick Butler, Chairman of the Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies, is formally launching The Keynes Society this Spring, a concept inspired by the urgent need for some new economic thinking at this critical time. It will involve a non partisan group of people from around the world who are interested in economics and in policy. The aim would be to open up discussion rather than to replace one orthodoxy with another and given Keynes' breadth of interests there is no reason to set boundaries on what it will cover - the economics of science, climate change, higher education and the arts could all do with some radical thinking. Nick Butler explains the lessons Keynesian economics has for us today.

The International Labour Organisation has forecast a rise in unemployment by 20 million world-wide, by the end of 2009. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has forecast a loss of up to 10 million jobs within the OECD group of countries, and up to 25 million jobs world-wide between 2008 and 2010. However, would a strategy of cutting wages as opposed to cutting jobs in the face of this recession create the conditions for economic recovery? Dr Paul Kattuman believes it would.

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences: the maxim of the 'self fulfilling prophecy'. Forecasts that are sufficiently believed, cause people to act in ways that make the prediction come true. Forecasts about the economy can have this self-fulfilling character. Prognostications of popular media commentators on the economy form a large part of the basis of everyone's beliefs about future economic circumstances; if 2009 turns out to be a dreadful year for the economy, to a large extent it will be because people believe it will be. Dr Paul Kattuman explains the phenomenon of the way media forms beliefs and the role it is playing in driving economic behaviour.

Dr Noreena Hertz, Associate Director of CIBAM, on why in an interconnected world an open source form of capitalism is what is required for longer term viability.

Survival of the most adaptable - how the recession can lead to a change for the better: As the global recession sinks into becoming a deepening global depression, and new financial measures such as "quantitative easing" are brought in to try and stabilise markets, Judge Business School's podcast series has been talking to its academics to find out how business can best cope with the changing financial climate it now finds itself in. Boni Sones reports on this positive advice from the experts. The Producer is Aislinn Ryan.

Survival of the most adaptable - how the recession can lead to a change for the better: As the global recession sinks into becoming a deepening global depression, and new financial measures such as "quantitative easing" are brought in to try and stabilise markets, Judge Business School's podcast series has been talking to its academics to find out how business can best cope with the changing financial climate it now finds itself in. Boni Sones reports on this positive advice from the experts. The Producer is Aislinn Ryan.

Senator Yves Leterme, Former Prime Minister of Belgium, compares the Anglo-Saxon and the Rhineland models of socio-economic development. The current economic crisis, he believes, stems from an overpurification of neo-liberalism, which saw many economies move from over-regulation, to de-regulation, to self-regulation to non-regulation. The cure? A blending of the best of the Anglo-Saxon and Rhineland systems. Senator Leterme explains how.

According to Michael Kitson, the recession will be deeply protracted and U-shaped, leaving permanent scars on the economy in the form of lost economic capacity. The financial sector will not fully recover to be as significant a share of the economy as it was pre-shock; the adverse effect on long-term investment will reduce productive capacity in the future and the country will not be allowed to draw in as much import as previously. The challenge, he explains, will be to produce strategies to replace this lost capacity.

It all began with the collapse of the sub-prime housing market in America, and the rest, as they say, is now history. The 2008 and 2009 recession saw consumption fall for the first time in 20 years, and that slow-down in America spread to countries as far apart as the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, China, India and New Zealand. However, while some were officially in recession having experienced two consecutive quarters of negative growth, others such as India and China avoided it. Australia even managed positive growth. All year experts at Cambridge Judge Business School have been offering advice to those affected by the "slump". Here Boni Sones reviews what they said.

It all began with the collapse of the sub-prime housing market in America, and the rest, as they say, is now history. The 2008 and 2009 recession saw consumption fall for the first time in 20 years, and that slow-down in America spread to countries as far apart as the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, China, India and New Zealand. However, while some were officially in recession having experienced two consecutive quarters of negative growth, others such as India and China avoided it. Australia even managed positive growth. All year experts at Cambridge Judge Business School have been offering advice to those affected by the "slump". Here Boni Sones reviews what they said.

Michael Kitson warns we need to develop industries with long term potential for growth.

Robert Prechter offers a new explanation of why markets perform as they do.

Crisis, what crisis? Greece is not alone when it comes to debts and the Eurozone says Dr Christos Pitelis.

Member of The Council for Science and Technology Professor Alan Hughes explains why despite anticipated cuts in scientific funding, the future for science research in the UK has an excellent outlook

Anatole Kaletsky says we need to move away from a "monopolistic approach" to economics.

Professor Bruce Caldwell on complex economic phenomena and the history of economic ideas.

Professor Franklin Allen explains the difference between 'too big to fail' and 'too big to liquidate' and why creating a new economic world order will be problematic.

Why a new "three currencies approach" is needed to stabilise world economies, Professor Helene Rey explains.

The management of economic decline needs a better, bolder and more imaginative approach claims Professor James Galbraith.

Keynes would have supported an 'ontological' approach to economics claims economist Tony Lawson.

Professor Jeremy Siegel says markets do work and the recovery can be sustained.

Professor James Mirrlees says we should keep faith with economic modelling - it works!

Professor George Akerlof asks did bankers take their identity from the wrong cultural influences? Is the incentive structure the root cause?

Nobel Prize winner Professor Joseph Stiglitz calls for caution on the economy.

Nobel Prize winning economists give their views on what's wrong with today's economic theory, the Eurozone's future and how the USA, Britain and India and China are placed to ride out debt inflation and growth over the coming years.