Knowing and Making

My panel on behavioural economics from earlier this year is now available at WorldBytes . Thanks to The Lantern Group for spotting this before I did. If you look hard enough you may spot missmarketcrash in the audience.

Who's to blame for the financial crisis and the recession? This idea of 'who's to blame' is an omnipresent theme of the last six months. A quick search for " to blame for the crisis " or " to blame for the recession " makes hilarious reading. Here are the first few candidates that show up: Over-enthusiastic community organisers Testosterone Economists Deregulation A flawed response to China Business schools (along with 'misguided government programs, "only think for today" financially illiterate consumers, conflicted credit agencies, laughed at (and purposefully weakened) regulators, lobbyist groups running Congress, and many of our best and brightest in the corporate world') Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd The media The government The Internet Owners of imported cars David Bowie The Federal Reserve The free market Subprime borrowers Subprime lenders The head of programming of HGTV Religion What is the appropriate response to thi...

My debate with Stuart Derbyshire is now published as this week's Rising East essay . Please read and let me know what you think. Is Stuart right that behavioural economics is a bit trivial and a bit patronising? Or do you prefer my argument that it has some real insights into decision-making which will make an immense difference to how we do economics and manage economic policy? And if you'd like to argue it in person, please come to the Battle for the Economy (see above) and throw your questions at us (along with Emre Ozdenoren and Michael Savage, who are just as interesting but may have better things to do than argue it out with us in advance).

I'm speaking on Saturday 16th May at the Battle for the Economy , a conference in the aftermath of the G20 summit. It's "a public discussion about the economic crisis with leading economists, political commentators, business people and policy makers. With the emphasis on public debate rather than behind-closed-doors diplomacy, the event will start a conversation to move us beyond political soundbites and help us get to grips with the political and economic battles ahead". I have a couple of free tickets to give away, so read on to find out more... My session is on behavioural economics, and among other things we'll be debating whether it's a new and powerful guide to economic behaviour or just a cop-out; whether policymaking that takes advantage of (or combats) cognitive biases is Orwellian or enlightened; and whether behavioural research can actually be used for anything more useful than making a glass of wine taste better. If you can't spend the whole da...