I’m with the cats
10 years on from the start of the financial crisis, macroeconomics still hasn’t come up with a big new idea in response to the last decade of crisis. Robert Skidelsky brilliantly takes issue with Paul Krugman, arguing that meant Neo-Keynesianism only lasted 6 months after the 2008 crash, and then it was back to austerity-as-usual.
Tunisia is back on a knife edge – here’s why. Reads like a structural adjustment story from 1980s Latin America. Democratization + IMF-led austerity → disillusionment and instability.
Is there an analytically meaningful distinction between ideas and interests? Brilliant brainfood from Dani Rodrik, with a follow up conversation between him and Peter Hall.
Go on, cheer yourselves up for a (brief) moment. In a world where many things appear to be going backwards, we have made incredible progress on one anti-corruption policy.
Last copy of the board game ‘Suffragetto’ (based on Monopoly) to go on display at Oxford, marking the centenary of when women over the age of 30 won the right to vote in the UK. Time for a new edition?
And some Sausagefestgate Fallout:
Calling all lecturers/students: upload the gender breakdown of your course reading lists in this table from Alice Evans (a lecturer in Development Studies at Kings College) and me. Once we get a critical mass of entries, it could become a really useful resource and commitment device.
Gender discrimination in political science and the problem of poor allies. Excellent and thought-provoking h/t Rakesh Rajani
‘Economics has an insidious bias against women’ says The Economist in a research-packed long read.
Great Davos video. “We have billionaires on the Davos mountain talking about issues that are affecting people like us on the garbage mountain.” A message from the other mountain – Ashura Mciteka & Nelson Munyiri on why ordinary people are uniting to fight inequality. And thanks to #fightinequality for responding to my request to put it up on youtube (after 15.000 hits on twitter) so I could embed it here: