to
Ramsden room, St Catharine's College
About
Date: Wednesday 21 January 2015
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Lord Eatwell
Talk Title: 'In combating austerity, pure theory matters’
Location: McGrath Centre, St Catharine's College
Here is a film from the presentation on 21 January 2015.
Speaker
John Eatwell has held several positions within the University of Cambridge, including Professor of Financial Policy at the Judge Business School and University Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics:
he was a fellow of Trinity College from 1970 to 1996, when he was elected President of Queens' College. John Eatwell taught Economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s. He is also a member of various important national bodies. He was chief economic adviser to Neil Kinnock, the then-Leader of the Labour Party, from 1985 to 1992 and is a Labour member of the House of Lords as Baron Eatwell, of Stratton St Margaret in the County of Wiltshire. In 2010, he was appointed a Labour Opposition Spokesman for the Treasury in the House of Lords by new leader Ed Miliband.
Talk overview:
John Eatwell has been particularly struck by the a-theoretical stance of the austerity-opposition. In part this is understandable as a reaction to the obscurantist scholasticism of the economic orthodoxy. But it also represents a fundamental failure to engage with our fellow economists - the stated objective of the General Theory. John Eatwell will illustrate why pure theory debates are a key component in opposition to the damaging policies that dominate current policy, and that the theoretical failures of the opposition have strengthened the austerity school.