‘Culture of academic economics changing’

LAHORE
Speaking at Punjab University, British House of Lords Meghnad Desai explained that in his 50 years as an economist, change in the culture of academic economics had been witnessed. “It abandoned empirical habits of studying the economic reality and became wedded to aprioristic reasoning,” he said.
According to a press release issued on Monday, Lord Desai, an Indian born British politician, and active British Labour Party member of the House of Lords, was invited by Punjab University’s Pakistan Study Centre to speak on his latest book “Hubris.”
Pakistan Study Centre Director Prof Dr Massarrat Abid welcomed the British House of Lords, who has written extensively covering a vast variety of subjects from film star Dilip Kumar to applied econometrics.
Professor Emeritus Lord Desai was accompanied by his wife Kishwar Desai and Amina Sayyid of Oxford University Press. Meghnad Desai is Professor Emeritus at London School of Economics.
Lord Desai dwelled upon the complex interaction between diverse macroeconomic and micro-economic variables, which produces both the stationary market equilibrium and dynamic disequilibrium system. He said the ever changing behaviour of prices, wages, credit, profits, investment and employment generated economic cycles both for the short term (7-8 years) and the long term (30-40 years).
He said the crisis of 2007-08 was also the outcome of all these myriad factors and the contemporary waves of globalisation spearheaded by establishment of WTO in 1994 had added to the intricacies and complexity of business cycles which could not be captured or predicted even by the most sophisticated econometric models developed in recent years.
Prof Dr Aqdas Ali Kazmi analysed the main theme of the book, pointing out that the book provides a full length answer to the question as why economic failed to predict the crisis of 2007-08. In the discussion session, Professor Lord Desai answered various questions of the students and the participants.