Re: Report on ASHE Conference

Inaugural Australian Society of Heterodox Economists Conference, University
of NSW 9-10 December, 2002

Peter Kriesler

Conference Website: http://www.economics.unsw.edu.au/PEOPLE/PKRIESLER/SHE/

Fred Lee has asked me to write a brief report on my impressions of the
Conference. Let me start by making a few remarks about how this conference
came to be. I am sure that there is no need for me to talk to reiterate the
importance of a separate conference on heterodox economics. The impetus for
this conference was the result of growing dissatisfaction with conventional
economics, and with the lack of an appropriate forum to discuss heterodox
ideas. In July, a number of people from three of the Sydney Universities
got together and decided that we would test the waters and see if there was
interest in having a conference. As there was very little notice given, we
did not think that too many people would come or give papers, hence the low
key nature of the conference and organisation.

Happily, we were wrong. We were overwhelmed by offers of papers and people
wanting to attend, so much so that we had to schedule parallel sessions.
People attended from across Australia, from New Zealand, Korea, the United
States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Romania and Norway. We had e-mails of
support from all over the world, with many promises to attend any future
conference.

The program itself covered an interesting and broad spectrum of heterodox
economics. Two particular aspects of the discussion stood out. The first
was that, unlike heterodox sessions in "regular" conferences, presenters
did not feel that they had to place themselves within a context to be
understood by neoclassical economists. Except for one paper specifically
critical, most papers ignored neoclassical economics. There was no need to
explain what we were trying to do to outsiders, people were able to get on
and do economics to an audience who, even when they did not agree with the
ideas, at least understood where they came from, and the context in which
they appeared. There were no silly questions, as when one of my colleagues
at UNSW asked John King, who was giving a papers on the future of Marxism
for the twenty first century, on why a neoclassical economists should be
interested in this Marx fellow!

The second was the positive spirit of the conference. In many conferences,
people ask questions in order to point score or to show off. Here there was
a genuine sense of camaraderie, with advise being offered, useful
references given and so on. There was a pleasant buzz around most of the
sessions.

Throughout the conference a number of themes emerged. The first was the
general agreement that federal government deficits were needed during times
of unemployment. The nature of the deficit was more controversial, but most
speakers agreed that government spending, especially on infrastructure,
health and education, the last two (particularly in the Anglo-Saxon
countries) was needed. We were reminded that governments do not need to
"finance" their expenditure as such. Government expenditure occurs via
Central banks creating liabilities against the government, which, of course
directly influence the money supply. Taxes and/or borrowing from the
private sector do not finance that expenditure in the way in which
households finance their expenditures by income or borrowing. Rather, they
have the effect of undoing the increase in effective demand originating
from the original expenditure.

The second major theme was the changing nature of the global capitalist
economy, with one paper going as far as questioning whether the result was
still capitalism. The implications of the changing rules of the game caused
by the dominance of the neoliberal agenda, and the impact of this on the
fundamental institutions, and on globalisation, accumulation and on
financial markets, including superannuation and derivatives were the
subject of a number of papers.

The Conference also held a business meeting at which a number of issues
were discussed and a number of decisions made. It was agreed that a
discussion forum be maintained, which Trond Andresen kindly agreed to host
at: http://www.itk.ntnu.no/mailman/listinfo/she_forum. The name of the
"group" was discussed with Heterodox Economics Network (HEN) being an early
reject and Society of Heterodox Economics (SHE) narrowly defeating Oceanic
Progressive Economics Network (OPEN) : so SHE it is. It was also agreed
that the Conference should run annually, with the next one also being at
the University of New South Wales, on 15 and 16 December 2003. So consider
this advance notice!

We are in the process of developing a dedicated website to SHE, but, in the
meantime, the conference site is still in use, and has been recently
updated to include a list of conference attendees, and the minutes of the
business session.
Received on Thu Jan 16 00:03:20 2003