Presents
The Revival of Political Economy
An all-day conference with distinguished scholars in Political Economy
Saturday February 9, 2008
9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Hall of Sciences, HS 4
Drew University, 36 Madison Ave., Madison, NJ 07940
* Directions & Accommodations Info * Conference Schedule * Student Research Poster Session *
* Speaker's Biographies * Conference Poster *
Nancy Folbre, author of The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (2001), and Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, presents “You Go, Girls! Feminism and Political Economy.” The presentation explores the intellectual history of feminism and economics, reviewing classic debates between liberal and socialist feminists and emphasizing their relevance to the current day. Dr. Folbre will provide an overview of feminist economics today with an emphasis on the discourse of “care” and growing empirical research on the “care sector” of the economy.
James K. Galbraith, author of Created Unequal (1998), Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, presents “The Political-Economy of U.S.-China Relations” in which he examines the mutual interdependence that now exists between the U.S. and China, the peculiar - even unique - characteristics of China’s economic expansion, the implications of China’s rise for the development strategies of other countries, especially in Latin America, and the consequences of China’s financial boom for its economic statistics, many of which including the trade surplus are distorted and misunderstood as a result.
Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism (1972 and 2003), Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC), and President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), presents “The U.S. and Global Bubble Economy” in which he explains the essence of the increasingly financialized Bubble Economies and their impact on the global payments system. Dr. Hudson argues that the United States enjoys an international free ride by virtue of the dollar hegemony as key currency in international payments, thus allowing the U.S. to run up debts without international constraint. Dr. Hudson challenges the claim that U.S. consumer demand is the “engine” that drives world economic growth; a claim that is used as a threat to foreign central banks who are forced to relend their inflow of surplus dollars to the U.S. Treasury, otherwise their currencies will rise, reducing their competitive position vis-à-vis dollar-area exporters. Foreign economies therefore have held down their exchange rates by keeping their own interest rates low, spurring financial and real estate bubbles of their own. Dr. Hudson concludes that for the global economy, dollar hegemony has become a form of international economic overhead.
Jan Kregel, Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Distinguished Research Professor at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability (UMKC), presents “Savings Gaps, External Resources and Debt Crises in Latin America: Towards a New Model of Development in Latin America.” Dr. Kregel questions the traditional development theory which identifies the obstacles to development in the lack of domestic resources and domestic savings in developing countries. It thus supports reliance on external resources in the form of official assistance and foreign borrowing. Latin America has followed this model and the result has been a series of increasingly devastating debt crises. In the 2005 Global Summit Outcome, the UN shifted emphasis to give greater weight to domestic employment policy - one of the most underutilized domestic resources in developing countries. After the 2001 crisis, Argentina has initiated a new approach based on producing domestic growth before it attempts to return to borrowing in international capital markets. Do these changes in emphasis represent the basis for a New Model of Latin American development?
This event is free and open to the public, and is co-sponsored by the Economics Department, the Economics Club, and The Presidential Initiative Fund of Drew University.
For more info please contact Dr. Fadhel Kaboub, 973-408-3764, fkaboub@drew.edu