Economics In Ten

• Season 8 - Episode 4 - Paul Samuelson

  Paul Samuelson once said ‘I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws or crafts its advanced treatises if I can write its economics textbooks’ and boy did he write the book! Samuelson understood the power of economics and his best selling textbook called (surprisingly) ‘Economics’ was read by millions across America and influenced a number of the economists and policy makers that shape economic policy today. This was far from being his only claim to fame though and throughout his lifetime he wrote an extraordinarily large number of influential papers across a range of micro and macroeconomic topics (in cricket terms he was very much and all rounder or for baseball fans a 'two way player'. His neoclassical synthesis that combined Keynesianism with New Classical theory was a particularly influential advance. He is also seen as the man who brought a far greater mathematical rigour to economics, an approach which has very much outlived him.In this fourth episode of Season 8 of their award winning podcast, your friendly neighbourhood economists, Pete and Gav, dive into the world of Paul Krugman’s (a fellow Nobel Prize winner) favourite economist. Along the way, you will find out about AMSR, a trivia quiz that features a ‘joke’ question that Samuelson got right and so many ideas, you won’t know what to do with them all. Technical support as always comes from our good friend Nic.

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• International Trade Special

  In the post-war era in particular the orthodox view in economic and political circles has been that "free" trade is crucial in ensuring that economies grow and prosperity is shared across the world. Arguably, with the Trump presidency we are seeing a departure from this accepted convention. We are also seeing some other, perhaps less charged voices sharing a more nuanced picture of the benefits of trade, for example the Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton who has pointed out the almost wilful ignorance many thinkers display with respect to the downsides of international trade. In this special episode by Pete and Gav, your friendly neighbourhood economists, you will dive into this dense topic to create your own a guide that can help you see the woods from the trees! If you’re worried that you may have the Marshall-Lerner condition, never fear! They’ll put you straight. In a tizz about the differences between trading blocs, free trade areas and custom unions? Then again, do not fear because all will be revealed. Not only do we cut through the technical language we also have a fun quiz when you can try and work out what the key export is for ten countries. You have a good score to beat, so good luck! Technical support as always comes from Nic, whose comparative advantage is definitely in computer stuff.PS We were delighted recently in the Feedspot Top 60 Podcasts About Economics. Thanks dear listeners!

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  1:30:44
• Season 8 - Episode 3 - James Meade

  All countries seem to have economic growth as their primary economic objective and the received opinion is that the best way to do this is through international trade. Since the end of the Second World War this trade has been facilitated by trade agreements brokered first by the ad hoc assemblies to promote the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and later via the auspices of the permanently instituted World Trade Organisation (WTO). The man behind the idea of an organisation to encourage trade was Nobel Prize winner James Meade, a real economists’ economist. Throughout his life, he worked on numerous areas of economics and had a personal crusade to prevent the malaise of unemployment, With even a cursory look at his thought you can see how influential he is or might be today's world in a broad range of areas e.g. in his prescient ideas about an Universal Basic Income (UBI) In this third episode of Season 8 of their award winning podcast, your friendly neighbourhood economists, Pete and Gav, dive into the world of Angus Deaton’s (a fellow Nobel Prize winner) favourite economist. Along the way, you will get a cheese recommendation, a rather coarse quiz and so many policy ideas, you won’t know what to do with them all. Technical support as always comes from our good friend Nic.

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  1:24:14
• Supply Side Economics Special

  How do you achieve the magic formula of low inflation and economic growth? In the 1970s this was beginning to move further and further away from the reach of policy makers using the traditional approach of ‘demand management’, In the post-war era fiscal and monetary policy to manage the vagaries of the economic cycle but this approach was undermined by the curse of "stagflation". The late 1970s and 1980s so the emergence of a "new" approach and policy-making saw a big swing towards the use of what became known as supply-side policies. On both sides of the Atlantic Thatcherism and Reaganomics introduced ‘trickle-down’ economics to the world and a whole suite of new policies to manage (or not manage!) the economy - but what were they trying to do and did they actually work? In this new special by Pete and Gav, your friendly neighbourhood economists, we dive into the world of supply-side economics. As always we discuss 10 questions that we hope will give you a good overview of what supply-side policies are and the key debates surrounding them. Along the way, you will come across a ‘supply’ quiz and find out which economist has actually seen one of our paintings of them! Technical support as always comes from Nic. Enjoy and afterwards, you might think about what kind of graph you might draw on a napkin that would change economics forever!

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  1:27:33
• Season 8 - Episode 2 - Edith Penrose

  What makes firms grow? This appears to be an important question, particularly with governments looking for GDP growth to be driven by firms. The normal vehicle for exploring this in Economics would be to use the 'classical' Theory of the Firm but in terms of growth, it doesn’t really have any answers or at least answers that provide any concrete implications for real-world decision-making. It was this question that the late, great Edith Penrose decided to answer and through doing this, created the Resource Based View (RBV) approach to help explain why firms grow (and some of course do not!). In this second episode of Season 8 of their award winning podcast, your friendly neighbourhood economists Pete and Gav, dive into the world of one of Diane Coyle’s favourite economists - Edith Penrose. Discover how Edith Penrose could be described as the Forrest Gump of economics and see how she challenged the economics orthodoxy of her time. Sadly there is no quiz this time but still there is poetry, food recommendations and plenty of bonhomie. Technical support comes from our own RBV Nic.

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