What is the World Economics Association?

For participants of the Hong Kong INET Conference

What is the
World Economics Association?

The World Economics Association (WEA) was launched in May 2011. The WEA seeks to increase the relevance, breadth and depth of economic thought. Its key qualities are worldwide membership and governance, and inclusiveness with respect to: (a) the variety of theoretical perspectives; (b) the range of human activities and issues which fall within the broad domain of economics; and (c) the study of the world’s diverse economies.

 Already over 11,000 economists and related scholars have joined, including some of today’s most respected thinkers. (See page 3 for a geographical list of the WEA’s founding members.) The geographical distribution of the WEA’s membership is approximately as follows: Africa 9%, Asia 18%, Europe 33%, Latin American and the Caribbean 12%, Oceania 8%, and US and Canada 20%.

This phenomenal success has come about because the WEA fills a huge gap in the international community of economists — the absence of a professional organization which is both broadly international and pluralist.

Contact: [email protected]

What does the WEA do already?

http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/

The WEA facilitates the development of economic thinking and debate through:

• 3 on-line journals (high download rates of papers):
  
  • World Economics Review (with open on-line peer review)
    
  • Economic Thought (with open on-line peer review)
    
  • Real-World Economics Review (See page 4 for the contents page of current issue.)
    
• Online Conferences
  
  • Recently held:
    
    • Economics in Society: The Ethical Dimension
      
    • Sustainability – Missing points in the development dialogue
      
    • Rethinking financial markets
      
    • The political economy of economic metrics
      
  • Forthcoming:
    
    • The economics curriculum: towards a radical reformation (spring)
      
    • Inequalities in Asia (Spring)
      
    • Neo-liberalism in Turkey (Autumn)
      
• Bi-monthly 12-page newsletter: 8 issues have already been published

All of the above are freely available to audiences across the globe: academics, students, lay people, and those in government and business.

What new things does the WEA plan to introduce this year?

• Its website is in the process of being completely redesigned and upgraded.

• A Network of 50+ National Chapters
  Our prototype national network is Amnesty International’s. One or more people will be recruited to start up a national chapter and manage its website. The idea is for them to promote WEA network groups for scholars and students in the individual countries, and for their websites to display results of their activities in terms of memoranda, conferences, special sessions therein, reports, and discussions of both publications and their national economic situation. The IT system for the network is already in place, and the organizing campaign will be launched in May. We expect this grassroots network to lead to a large increase in WEA membership, enough to make the WEA the world’s largest professional association for economists.
• Blog and Notice Boards
  The WEA Pedagogy Blog will soon be operational, managed by an American, a Pakistani and a Brazilian. A set of seven regional WEB blog-type notice boards for jobs and events are planned, including one for the world as a whole, with the Latin American one (in Spanish and Portuguese) to lead off.
• WEA Press
  Plans are underway for establishing a WEA Press to publish e- and paperback books, initially of best papers from WEA conferences, later probably more wide ranging.
  

What are the WEA’s long term ambitions?

• To create a global grassroots movement in the economics profession that will realize the WEA’s aims of pluralism, global inclusiveness and real-world relevance.

• To make its website a primary focus point for the economics profession worldwide.
  
• To establish more journals using the strategic combination of digital technology and the membership email list.
  
• To make the WEA the discipline’s primary professional reference point, rather than the American Economic Association.
  
• To create digital platforms for the global based professional discussion of economics and economic issues.
  

What is the WEA’s legal status?

 World Economics Association is registered under United Kingdom law as a non-profit Community Interest Company. Company number: 07507045. Address: 12 Maurice Road, St. Andrews, Bristol BS6 5BZ, UK. Email: [email protected]. It has a board of directors and is a company limited by guarantee.

 What is the WEA’s financial situation?

 The WEA is now at a point of transition from “start-up”, based entirely on volunteers, to a more established and permanent organization, still volunteer based, but with a need for self-sustaining financing to support our web and publications infrastructure.

 So far the WEA has been financed entirely by small donations ($50 is about average) from its members. In total about $45,000 has been raised this way. Our main costs are the employment of staff for editing, formatting and IT work and the purchase of IT software. Assuming that the management of the WEA operations continues to be available on a voluntary basis, then a total budget of $200,000 for the next 2 years would secure WEA’s development and future.

For this we require substantial donations.

 We invite anyone who sympathizes with the WEA’s manifesto, agrees with WEA’s goals and appreciates its potential to contact us, either to volunteer or to donate: [email protected]

 7 key WEA members are participants in the INET Hong Kong Conference.

• Sheila Dow – co-editor of Economic Thought
  
• Jean-Pierre Dupuy – founding member
  
• Edward Fullbrook – Executive Director ([email protected])
  
• Norbert Häring – Director
  
• Steve Keen – member of Executive Committee
  
• Richard Koo – member of Executive Committee
  
• André Orlean – founding member
  

WEA Executive Committee Members

• Juan Carlos Moreno Brid, Mexico, UN Economic Com. for Latin America and the Caribbean
  
• C. P. Chandrasekhar, India, Jawaharlal Nehru University
  
• Ping Chen, China, Peking University and Fudan University
  
• Edward Fullbrook, UK, University of the West of England
  
• James K. Galbraith, USA, University of Texas at Austin
  
• Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Italy / UK, London South Bank University
  
• Steve Keen, Australia, University of Western Sydney
  
• Richard C. Koo, Japan, Nomura Research Institute
  
• Tony Lawson, UK, Cambridge University
  
• Peter Radford, USA, Radford Free Press
  
• Dani Rodrik, USA, Harvard University

Founding members of the World Economic Association

 Initiators

Edward Fullbrook

Peter Radford
Norbert Häring
Grazia Ietto Gillies
Vicki Harris
Valerie Radford

Launch Committee

Dean Baker

Ha-Joon Chang
Herman E. Daly
Heiner Flassbeck
Edward Fullbrook
James Galbraith
Jayati Ghosh
Grazia Ietto Gillies
Norbert Häring
Steve Keen
Richard C. Koo
Tony Lawson
Frédéric Lordon
Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid
Peter Radford
Erik S Reinert
Irene van Staveren
Robert Wade

sanity, humanity and science                      probably the world’s most read economics journal

real-world
economics
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ISSN 1755-9472

– A journal of the World Economics Association (WEA) 11,201 members, join here

– Sister open access journals: Economic Thought and World Economic Review

     – back issues at www.paecon.net
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Issue no. 63, 25 March 2013

In this issue:

The veil of deception over money                                 2
Norbert Häring

Ultra easy monetary policy and the law of unintended consequences              19

William White

Civilizing capitalism                                         57

Erik Reinert

Looking at the right metrics in the right way – Two kinds of models                  73

Merijn Knibbe

Crisis and methodology: Some heterodox misunderstandings                 98

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Inapplicable operations on ordinal, cardinal, and expected utility                118

Jonathan Barzilai

Reduced work hours as a means of slowing climate change                     124

David Rosnick

Electronic money and Modern Monetary Theory                        135

Trond Andresen

Productivity, unemployment and the Rule of Eight                        142

Alan Taylor Harvey

What I would like economic majors to know                            147

David Hemenway

Past contributors, submissions and etc.                                155

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