St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar - Robert Ashford

Wed 10 May 2017

St Catharine's College

Speaker: Robert Ashford is Bond, Schoeneck & King Distinguished Professor of Law at Syracuse University, where he teaches or has taught courses in Business Associations, Business Planning, Public Corporations, Professional Responsibility, Secured Transactions, Securities Regulation, and Inclusive Capitalism. He holds a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, and a B.A. with majors in physics and English literature, graduating first in his class at the University of South Florida. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Stanford University.

Professor Ashford has authored or co-authored books, articles, and book chapters on subjects including banking, binary economics, history of economic thought, inclusive capitalism, professional responsibility, socio-economics, and tax law. His scholarship has been cited by state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court. He has lectured at universities and conferences in Australia, Canada, France, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and throughout the U.S.A. His biography appears in editions of Marquis Who’s Who since 2011. Professor Ashford is founder and principal organizer of the Section on Socio-Economics of the Association of American Law Schools, the Society of Socio-Economists, and a member of the academic honor societies of Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Pi Sigma (physics), and the American Law Institute.

Talk Overview: To achieve fuller employment of labor and capital and enhanced earnings of poor and middle-class people, austerity advocates advance the laissez faire approach grounded in neoclassical theory, and stimulus advocates advance various versions of Keynesian theory. The presentation offers a different strategy (broadening competitive market opportunities to acquire capital with the earnings of capital) resting on a different theory of fuller employment) (the prospect of more broadly distributed capital earnings in future years provides incentives to profitably employ more labor and capital in earlier years). This theory of fuller employment is similar to Keynesian theory but distinct and complementary because it operates in the long run as well as the short run and requires no redistribution. Based on the theory, modest changes in the system of corporate finance will enable market participants to price the value of more broadly distributed capital acquisition. Predicted results include (1) enhanced earnings for poor and middle-class people, (2) enhanced corporate profits and growth, (3) reduced need for welfare dependence, government spending, borrowing, and taxes, and (4) enhanced sovereign creditworthiness. These predicted results, if realized, surpass expectations based on mainstream theories and will make both austerity and stimulus strategies more affordable and politically feasible.

Cost: FOC