How to do macroeconomics in an age of uncertainty: methodology & theory (lecture 1 and 2) With Professor Jesper Jespersen

Wed 23 October 2013 - Wed 30 October 2013

Little Hall

Professor Jesper Jespersen is Professor of Economics at the Department of Society and Globalisation, University of Roskilde, Denmark since 1996. Previously he taught international economics at the Copenhagen Business School. In 2001/02 and 2004/05 he was awarded a Carlsberg overseas fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, carrying out research in Post Keynesian Macroeconomics. His main research areas include Macroeconomic Theory, Policy and Methodology, John Maynard Keynes in the History of Economic Thought, European Economics and the Scandinavian Welfare Model.
Keynes’s name has resumed public recognition as a consequence of the recent economic crisis combined with apparent confusion on what economic policies are useful to overcome the growth-crisis.
There are many similarities to the 1930s, where Keynes wrote his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which changed the way macroeconomics was understood for quite a number of years. But the impact petered away after the crises of the 1970s and nearly disappeared in the wake of the methodology of new classical economics.

The prolonged crisis and the changed social and institutional frameworks call for renewed understanding of macroeconomics. Professor Jespersen’s claim is that the methodology of Keynes is still relevant and not yet fully understood. Keynes introduced the concept of ‘uncertainty’ into macroeconomic analysis. For that purpose he searched for a new methodology which could capture the importance of uncertainty (at the micro and macro level) for the making of a realistic analysis of macroeconomic development in the past, the present and for the future.

Lecture one will begin with an analysis of macroeconomic development in the past and how can it be explained? In this lecture the importance of methodology and how to choose a relevant model, where uncertainty is represented, is discussed.
Lecture two is about policies. The main question is how to make the modern macroeconomic systems more robust in an increasingly uncertain environment, where ‘black swans’ seems to appear quite frequently.

Cost: free