The Institute for New Economic Thinking has released the following news.
New York, NY – The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), launched with a $50 million pledge from George Soros to promote changes in economic theory and practice through research grants, task force groups, academic partnerships, and conferences has selected D. Wade Hands of University of Puget Sound to be awarded a $58,380 project grant to conduct historical research at Duke University’s Paul Samuelson archives.
The award to Hands is part of the institute’s Inaugural Grant Program, which was created in direct response to arguably the worst economic crisis in world history. The program received more than 500 applications from around the world and has selected 30 initiatives to be awarded grants totaling $6.75 million. It has been designed to encourage and support the new economic thinking required to effect change that will avert future crises.
“In economic theory, as in hiking, the best move—when it is clear that you have completely lost the trail—is to return to where the trail was well-marked and retrace your steps to discover where the mistake was made,” said Hands (pictured left). “In the current crisis of economic theory, this means returning to the Keynesian-neoclassical synthesis of Paul Samuelson. The INET grant will allow me the opportunity to investigate this important topic through research in the Samuelson archives.”
Paul Anthony Samuelson (1915–2009) was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. Samuelson, more than any other person, set the intellectual and political tone for the American economics profession during the period 1946–1969: the period British journalist Anatole Kaletsky calls Capitalism 2.2 (the Keynesian Golden Age). Through the research, Hands aims to understand Samuelson’s intellectual development and how he managed various tensions within his economic and political vision.
“Hands is going to embrace the work and the papers of Paul Samuelson, who may have been the most formidable economist in the period since the Great Depression,” said Dr. Robert Johnson, executive director of INET. “He certainly set the tone and came up with many of the innovations and ways of looking at things and employing mathematics that led to the prevailing paradigm. We are looking forward to the product of Hands’ research that would provide an understanding of the synthesis offered by Samuelson and thus an innovative approach to the current crisis.”
D. Wade Hands is professor of economics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma Wash. He has written on a number of topics in the history and philosophy of economics, and is currently co-editor of The Journal of Economic Methodology. He is the author of Reflection Without Rules: Economic Methodology and Contemporary Science Theory, (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and his Agreement on Demand: Consumer Choice Theory in the 20th Century, edited with Philip Mirowski, was published in 2006 by Duke University Press.
INET’s Inaugural Grant Program has been designed to harness the new economic thinking we recognize as crucial to effecting change. The grant program will continue with two similar grant cycles annually, the next one commencing in the spring of 2011.
For further details regarding INET’s grant program or additional projects and people to be awarded grants, please visit the Institute’s website.
About the Institute for New Economic Thinking:
Launched in October 2009 with a $50 million commitment from George Soros, and driven by the global financial crisis, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is dedicated to empowering and supporting the next generation of economists and scholars in related fields through research grants, task force groups, academic partnerships, and conferences. INET embraces the professional responsibility to think beyond current paradigms. Ultimately INET is committed to broadening and accelerating the development of innovative thinking that can lead to insights into and solutions for the great challenges of the 21st century and return economics to its core mission of guiding and protecting society. For more information please visit www.ineteconomics.org/
PHOTO top right: Paul Samuelson, Dec. 1950. From Life magazine and in the public domain.