Two Pre-SONA Talks on the Philippine Economy (@ UP Diliman)

Economics students and would-be policy makers cannot afford to miss these two events - two talks (in the University of the Philippines Diliman) on Philippine development prospects and outlook days before President Benigno Aquino III's second State of the Nation Address (SONA). From two contending ideological camps, the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) which espouses a developmentalist state and the UP School of Economics (UPSE) which retains its neoclassical foundations, we stand to learn more about the dynamics of the Philippine economy, the interaction of government, firms, and the consumers.







See details below.

Progress of Civilization: from BBC's Hans Rosling

Happy 2011 everyone!

As we celebrate the coming year with hope and optimism for change and progress, let us look at the video clip below to remind us, despite the apparent global convulsion due to the  flawed economic paradigm of neoliberalism, how much the world has progressed across centuries. The presentation by Hans Rosling, a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker, can serve as inspiration of how much innovation and technological change can push nations from the brink of poverty towards modernity.

The trajectory of growth (and how they sort of "converge") reminds me of the Solow–Swan model (also known as the exogenous growth model and the neoclassical growth model) - a model of a long-run economic growth. The model was developed independently by Robert Solow and T. Swan from the earlier  Harrod-Domar model used to explain an economy's growth rate in terms of the level of saving and productivity of capital.

Conversations on the Economy

Through Facebook, three of my good friends, Bonn Juego, Marvin Beduya (please visit http://synthesistblog.com), and Michael Ocampo, and I have been discussing interesting issues on the economic profession, the economic schools of thought, the status of mainstream economics, and other thoughts on heterodox evolutionary economics (Nelson and Winter had been mentioned several times in the course of the discussions). Looking at heterodox economics is important specially in the light of its failure to aid development of Southern countries and explain the current economic ailments of the Northern developed countries.

What is considered mainstream economics? What schools of thoughts constitute the mainstream? It is instructive that mainstream economics is sometimes called as the neoclassical synthesis (the term was supposedly developed by John Hicks and popularized by Paul Samuelson), being largely Keynesian on macroeconomics and neoclassical on microeconomics. But the mainstream is still evolving, incorporating elements of Milton Friedman's Monetarism (as practiced by Paul Volcker),  new classical economics by Robert Lucas (Chicago), Thomas Sargent (Stanford), and Robert Barro (Harvard), and supply side economics promoted by the likes of Arthur Laffer and manifesting in Reaganomics and Thatcherism of the 80s.

I hope this conversation will contribute in promoting interest on the history of economic thought and starting  debates and discourses amongst Filipino economists, political-economists, and students of development on the current status of mainstream economics and alternative schools. It is now more than ever that we should discuss what constitutes an effective economic development strategy for the Philippines, and this begins with the discussion on the warring schools of economic thought.

Low-intensity Democracy

All the fuss about Arroyo establishing a Marcos-style Martial Law is nothing but white noise, I realized recently. After all, that was what Arroyo construed the purpose of her recent antidemocratic measures to begin with – to be a weapon of distraction against her opponents, or maybe another bargaining chip against the opposition (which she can use to buy time by “waiving” in “good faith”). That is not really particularly interesting. What is interesting, however, is how her style of governance (or more aptly, tyranny) imposes a change to the very nature of our democracy – a change which may very well be irreversible if unmitigated.