Financial markets won’t be spared as geopolitical rules are torn up
From markets and trade to tech and climate change, the world is changing, and economists need to be ready
Witticisms about economists abound. George Bernard Shaw apparently remarked that if all the world’s economists were laid end to end, they still would not reach a conclusion. There are quips about the “three-handed” economist – on the one hand, on the other hand, and so forth – and how economists have predicted far more recessions than have come to pass.
It was therefore with anticipation that I joined a conference last month in Lindau, Germany, to discuss the dismal science. The 8th Lindau Nobel Meeting in Economic Sciences saw the gathering of 22 Nobel laureates (18 in economic sciences) and almost 300 scientists, mostly young, many with PhDs – and me, a newly minted PhD holder but as old as some of the Nobel Prize winners.
It seemed appropriate that many of the Nobel laureates in economic sciences are physicists and mathematicians and had studied psychology – indeed some are even economists. It was a treat hearing the life work of such lauded teachers, and the lasting lessons came from distilling the major themes arising in economics today.