Multidisciplinary Economics: The Birth of a New Economics Faculty in the Netherlands

ISBN-13: 9781441938787 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 446 str.

Peter De Gijsel; Hans Schenk

Opis

Multidisciplinary economics deliberately uses the insights and approaches of other disciplines and examines what consequences their contributions have for existing economic methods, theories and solutions to economic problems. Multidisciplinary economists should be at home in their own discipline and meet the high international standards of economic teaching and research that the discipline has developed. At the same time they should be able to recognise the limits of economics and be willing to open up new horizons by following new, discipline-transcending paths on which new insights into the analysis and solutions of economic problems can be found in collaboration with representatives of other disciplines. As a result of this search, economic methods and theories may have to be adjusted in such a way that they take insights from other disciplines into account. They may even have to be replaced by methods and theories that have been developed by other disciplines.

Recenzje

This volume reports on the inaugural conference of the Utrecht School of Economics and the Tjalling C. Koopmans Research Institute. Its title refers to the objective of the new faculty and is rooted in the history of economics at Utrecht: it originated in Law, with economists attached to the Social Sciences, Geography and History. Thus was born an economics with institutional, historical and spatial dimensions. The naming of its research institute was natural in the sense that Koopmans, one of the world's most distinguished economists, was actually a student at Utrecht, but in mathematics and physics: he moved to economics later as a graduate student. In another sense, Koopmans might appear a surprising choice, given that Multidisciplinary Economics will signal to many a broader social science dimension. Yet Koopmans was more than general equilibrium theory, econometric theory and linear programming, although he was all these things: he had a strong sense of social purpose and was centrally concerned with the contribution theory could make to a better understanding of society, as revealed by Frankel and Sandoz (his daughters: as non-economists a nice touch!) and by Kay, in a thoughtful contribution on the nature of the market economy. Frey is another outsider providing a thought-provoking contribution: he takes the unfashionable, but convincing stance that corporate governance can learn from public governance, and in doing so uses psychology to inform the extremely narrow perspective of traditional agency theory. The contributions of further eminent outsiders, for example Buiter, coupled with those of the five, newly inaugurated full professors, Alessie, Garretsen, Kool, Schenk and Unger, complete a substantial volume of wide interest: the editors, de Gijsel and Schenk, are to be congratulated on its quality and relevance.

Keith Cowling, University of Warwick

"An important contribution to the field. Rich in ideas". Professor Noreena Hertz.

 

Spis treści

I Multidisciplinary Economics: the Birth of a New Economics Faculty in the Netherlands Opening Address, Historical Mistakes Rectified, Tjalling C. Koopmans: an Inspiring Example, Styles of Research in Economics at Cowles II Multidisciplinary Economics at Utrecht University Origins and Development of Multidisciplinary Economics at Utrecht University, Multidisciplinary Economic Research at Utrecht University III Spanning Multidisciplinary Economics: the Institutional, Historical and Spatial Dimensions of Economics. Restructuring the Welfare State Introduction , Towards a European Social Model: Managing Social Risks through Transitional Labour Markets, Dutch Debates: Modernising Social Security by Introducing the Life Course as a Frame of Reference, Learning to Trust Industrial Dynamics and Innovation Economics Introduction, The Truth about Markets, The State of the Industrial Organization Field, On the Dynamics of Innovation Policy: a Dutch Perspective, ‘History Friendly’ Models of Industrial Evolution: an Overview Financing Problems of the Welfare State Introduction, Public Governance and Private Governance: Exchanging Ideas, Macroeconomics of Fiscal Policy and Government Debt, Joys and Pains of Public Debt EU Integration and the New Economic Geography Introduction, European Integration and Economic Geography: Theory and Empirics in the Regional Convergence Debate, An Account of Geographic Concentration Patterns in Europe – Introduction and Summary Past and Future of the Global Financial Architecture Introduction, Regulation and the Role of Central Banks in an Increasingly Integrated Financial World, Who is Running the IMF: Critical Shareholders or the Staff?, Synthetic Money Economics and Ageing Introduction, Health, Wealth and the Role of Institutions Inaugural addresses Organisational Economics inan Age of Restructuring, or:How Corporate Strategies Can Harm Your Economy, Does Social Security Crowd Out Private Savings?, Will the Dutch Level Out their One and Only Mountain?, The Pietersberg Paradox and Mountains of Debt, The Global Market for Capital: Friend or Foe From Koopmans to Krugman: International Economics and Geography, Index

O autorze

Peter de Gijsel took his PhD at the university of Dortmund in 1980.  He taught economics at the universities of Dortmund, Regensburg and Maastricht and was professor of economics at the University of Osnabrück from 1994 to 1998. From 2000 onwards he was the driving force behind the setting up of the new Faculty of Economics of Utrecht University.  He was appointed the first Dean of the faculty in 2004. De Gijsel's special fields of interest are micro-, labour market and monetary economics.

 

Hans Schenk.

After studying economics and business administration at the universities of Nyenrode, Amsterdam, Oregon and Leuven, professor Schenk took his PhD at the university of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France.  He taught economics and business at various universities in the Netherlands (e.g. in Groningen and Rotterdam) and abroad (e.g. in Beijing and Strasbourg)and was professor of Industrial Policy and Corperate Strategy at Tilburg University before coming to Utrecht as professor of Organisational Economics in 2002.  A year later, he became director of the Tjalling Koopmans Research Institute. Schenk has advised numerous firms and governments and specialises in mergers and acquisitions and competitiveness policy.