September 5, 2013
Written by: Natasha Somji
For some time now, I have been debating whether or not to stay within the world of academia. While I love theories and conducting analysis, there is a sense of discomfort I feel whenever I consider pursuing a PhD that is not entirely captured by the monumental monetary costs or confusion about what I want to study. Much of this squeamishness has to do with questioning whether I buy into the mainstream version of academia: a field that uses theories and models to predict outcomes and then validates these predictions through quantitative studies. I find myself sometimes doubting the purpose of academia and how it is executed. If models were constructed with a particular audience in mind and studies are run on certain samples, how can these be generalisable to new contexts? Can studies that employ quantitative techniques – widely hailed as being more credible in substantiating results – really capture the subjectivity of the human experience?
Much of academia relies on using numbers to validate theories and models. The problem comes in when these same studies view people as mere numbers and do not consider more qualitative aspects of an individual or the culture in which models are operating.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Academia to Policy, Economics, Natasha Somji, Public Policy |
Leave a Comment »
May 10, 2013
The “Academia to Policy” column seeks to bridge the debate in academia to the adoption of policy in practice. In this inaugural Academia to Policy article, Natasha Somji discusses the challenges present in the translation of academic work to policy.
Policymakers frequently turn to academics as consultants, who are able to conduct analysis and provide background when considering how to change existing laws or propose new policies. However, the ways in which academia is translated into politics can be rather problematic.
It is often the case that policymakers have little awareness about the tools used in quantitative studies carried out by academics. Indeed there is a need to ‘dumb down’ academia to make it more accessible to the masses. While this is not problematic in itself, if the methodology is flawed, policymakers may be proposing changes that are based on questionable assumptions. Consider Gary Kleck’s and Britt Patterson’s study entitled, The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Ownership Levels on Violence Rates which has been cited time and again in the policy world to justify repealing gun laws. The research finds that gun prevalence and most gun laws have no effect on violence rates.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Academia to Policy, Canadian Politics, Natasha Somji, Public Policy |
Leave a Comment »
May 6, 2013
Written By: Rebecca Gu
Harmless Economics
Economics has rightfully earned a reputation for being abstract to the point of obscurity. Theoretical physics and mathematics also practice this same level of abstraction, but unlike economics, those fields also do not arrogantly claim that their usefulness lies in their applicability to real life. It is this combination of both asserting relevance and simultaneously reducing complexity of real applications that leads to some dangerous assumptions about how the world should work. For example, my research thus far;
The Many Facets of Carbon Emissions
Global climate change is an economic puzzle in that it involves a lot of different elements, that relate back to concepts of fairness and unfairness.
1) Historical Grudges
Given the amount of man-made emissions that have collectively been produced to date, it is arguably the currently rich countries that have benefited the most from this. Carbon emissions are a by-product of industrialisation, and industrialisation is associated with the economic development of most of the West. Thus, climate change treaties are saddled with the burden of how to distribute future obligations based on historical responsibility.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Public Policy, Rebecca Gu |
3 Comments »
January 29, 2013
Written By: Dennis Shen, Raktim Roy and Joséphine Gantois
The design of a global economic system that supports inclusive growth is central to today’s policy debate. The current global economic model has been in-place since the 1980s: the decade in which free market thinking revolutionized the world economy. The neoliberal system adopted since that time has engineered a world with less trade barriers, globalized markets, and minimal government intervention – based on the belief that a pro-market, anti-governance approach would support human welfare. Globalization has been an important outcome, and has re-shaped our lives.
Now, there exists an active debate on whether the neoliberal system has been a success. Proponents of globalization and free trade would say that the world is the better for it – proponents like Martin Wolf write that inequality and poverty are declining in large part due to globalization forces. But on the other end, outspoken voices like Robert Wade at the London School of Economics would say that rather than supporting lower inequality and improvements in welfare, the current system has in many ways held the rich countries up and the poor countries down.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Dennis Shen, Economics, Global Economics, Globalization, Public Policy |
Leave a Comment »
October 8, 2012
Written By: Dennis Shen
In academic circles, it has become commonly accepted that rapid economic growth can increase inequality. This has been supported by international developments in recent decades that show declining inequality between countries but increasing inequality within countries. China and the United States are just two examples. To explain the reason, some point to globalization as the natural conduit not only for high growth and inter-country convergence but also the agent for downward domestic pressures on working class payrolls, capping wage increases in response to international labor competition and resulting in intra-country divergence. Others have argued that unregulated laissez-faire economics is both an apparatus for rapid economic advances and the natural environment for the development of a Darwinian economy (see Robert Frank’s “The Darwin Economy”) of winners and losers across an increasingly segmented income distribution, requiring a strong state to intervene and re-balance.
In a recent article on Project Syndicate (link here), Columbia professor Alexander Stille acknowledged this accepted relationship between rapid economic growth and increasing inequality, but also interestingly pointed to a novel alternative hypothesis: in addition to rapid growth driving rising inequality, could times of relatively weak growth also be associated with the very same inequality phenomena? As Stille writes, “might slow growth and rising inequality – the two most salient characteristics of developed economies nowadays – also be connected?” At first, it would seem counter-intuitive that very weak growth be commonly associated.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Dennis Shen, Economics, Public Policy |
Leave a Comment »
February 22, 2012
Written by: Dennis Shen
The crisis of the natural commons – our forests, our waterways, our skies, our marine fisheries, our biodiversity – is rooted in an existing failure of the international economic and regulatory system to internalize a critical externality. It reflects a system deficiency to place a price and regulate the use of the earth’s depletable and valuable natural ecosystems in a time in which continued freedom to over-use may pose real risk to the sustainability of these natural systems and in turn, the sustainability of our long-term economic path.
In 1776, Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, stated that an individual, by pursuing his own interest, will be “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” And in the case of private, tradable goods – the invisible hand of competitive markets has, in testament, done wonders to foster the efficient exchange of assets and maximize the product of human labour. But the marketplace works under assigned boundaries and if the current rules state the goal to be maximum short-term exploitation at the cost of long-term consequences, then that is exactly what the markets will institute into practice.
The reason a sustainable architecture to our global economy (that internalizes the price of common goods) has been difficult to come by is in part due to the historical misconception that the natural ecosystems are so vast that they cannot possibly be significantly influenced by man – a misconception founded on a history of people in which exploitation of nature has seemingly taken place without boundary or repercussion.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Dennis Shen, Economics, OTS, Politics, Public Policy |
Leave a Comment »
February 1, 2012
Written By: Dennis Shen
Capitalism and democracy are often characterized as the twin virtues that have defined America’s modern history and success. But capitalism and democracy do not exist in uniformity: to be more capitalistic does not invariably make us more democratic. Instead, there has always existed an intricate balance between free market principles and strong democratic governance, oftentimes counterbalancing one another, that has determined the long-run health and sustainability of a political and economic system. America’s past success in becoming the world’s leading nation was founded and sustained by its managing this balance between private markets and government better than perhaps any other country in history. The ingenuity and allocative efficiency of free markets in partnership with the vision and moral leadership of a strong American government helped design the modern world and make it in the image of a fair and decent people.
But this balance between markets and government can break down if not very carefully maintained. At the core of America’s problems today is an existing imbalance of too much dependence on unregulated, free market capitalism and too little government oversight and leadership.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in American Politics, Dennis Shen, Politics, Public Policy, Regulation |
Leave a Comment »
January 18, 2012
Written By: Joel Suss
Today, Wikipedia has taken itself offline in protest. Thousands of other sites, including the host of this blog, WordPress, are taking part by removing content or by being blacked-out, protesting the first attempt by the US government to censure and control the internet. It is a monumental and unprecedented day in the life of the internet.
While the stated objective of the legislation, to tackle online intellectual property theft, is valid in principle, the effects were they to become law would have serious negative implications for the internet and may not even be effective in limiting piracy. Here are some important details about the two bills, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA): They would allow the attorney general to create a list of sites that must be blocked. Now here is the kicker: service to these sites may be shut off without a court hearing or trial. SOPA, the bill originating in the House of Representatives, goes even further than the Senate’s PIPA, allowing private companies to sue providers for hosting sites that infringe on copyright, even if it is unwittingly doing so. Imagine Google being bombarded with lawsuits, effectively crippling it.
Click to continue reading this post on Off the Spectrum
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in American Politics, Information Age, Internet, Joel Suss, Media, Politics, Public Policy |
1 Comment »
Off the Spectrum 