The nominees for, and configuration of, the portfolios in the European Commission named by Jean-Claude Junckers this week gives some hint of the priorities in European governance over coming years. In this context we might ask how significant is it that Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans has been nominated as First Vice President with responsibilities to include Better Regulation, Inter-Institutional Relations, the Rule of Law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights? At first glance this portfolio appears to reflect procedural rather than substantive concerns for the new Commission. The mission letter from President-Elect Junckers suggests that the brief is one which crosses the concerns of all the other portfolios indicating a recognition of the link between process and performance on key issues such as regulation.
Month: September 2014
Maynooth University Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting in association with FMC2 (Financial Mathematics and Computation Research Cluster) are hosting a one-day conference on Financial Crises: Transmission and Consequences on Wednesday, September 24 in Renehan Hall, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co.Kildare.
The event brings together leading international and domestic experts on financial crises, contagion and banking. The full programme of speakers and presentations is shown below. We invite you to join us in Maynooth. Registration is free, but please confirm your attendance by emailing: thomas.flavin@nuim.ie. The conference programme is shown below the fold.
Thanks to readers for the valuable comments on my last post on Scottish independence. I have just received the transcript (here) of some brief remarks I made on the above topic at a recent conference in the UK.
Many readers of Irish Economy are likely to be aware of a project to rethink the teaching of Economics, linked to the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and organised by a committee chaired by Professor Wendy Carlin of UCL. Some people associated with this blog, including Kevin O’Rourke, are also involved in this work.
A beta digital textbook (‘The Economy’) has very recently been put online and there is a useful explanatory video and a blog.
On my preliminary and (so far) partial reading of ‘The Economy’, it achieves its goal of being strikingly different to the standard first-year textbook. It places at the centre of the story familiar ideas that students and the public expect to feature in Economics and understand better through Economics, including capitalism, technology, living standards, the environment, institutions, and property rights before turning to the more abstract aspects of microeconomics. All the bells and whistles of digital publication are there too including hyperlinks to many of the readings. And of course it’s all freely available. The organisers are seeking user (student and faculty) feedback via a Facebook page and it seems there is supplementary material to follow in due course.