Heske van Doornen, Author at

Speed Dating for Academics

Most academic conferences involve 20-minute paper presentations, followed by a 10-minute Q&A. For a small workshop of 10 presenters, that’s 5 hours of presentation time. Of which every person there spends 90% listening. And checking their email. And their Twitter.

We’re all used to it. And attached to it, because it’s easy. We can use the PowerPoint from last time! Just a couple edits from the airplane, and voila.

But we forget the reason we got on that airplane in the first place: to meet other people in our field. Because we really need to find a collaborator for our next paper, or a mentor to offer some guidance for the last phase of our PhD, or a friend to help edit our language before our work goes to peer review.

And now we’re stuck trying to meet those people during a 10 minute break, while juggling a coffee in one hand and a granola bar in the other. Those are crucial after 4.5 hours of listening…

There is a way to improve on this without increasing everyone’s preparation time. Next time you’re in charge, consider the following. Instead of having every person present to the group, have every person present to every person. It’s called academic speed dating.

Here’s how academic speed dating works:

The group seats themselves around a table, with each person facing another, like so:

O O O O O Side A
_____________________
O O O O O Side B

To begin, everyone on Side A tells the person they sit across from about their research and interests. For four minutes, just like they may tell an acquaintance. No formulas, no PowerPoints.

Once the four minutes are up, everyone on Side B talks about their work and interests, in much the same way.

Then, each pair spends four minutes brainstorming where their areas of interest may overlap and if their work and expertise may offer insight to the other, taking notes as needed to hold on to good ideas.

Next, everyone moves one seat to the right, putting them in front of a new person to repeat the exercise. With a group of ten, it only takes 2 hours to complete the full cycle. After that, everyone has a rapport with everyone, and any obvious “matches” in interests should have become clear.

The exercise is best followed by a sizable break, allowing anyone to continue conversation with potential matches in a more organic, casual way.

There are many variations, or add-ons, of course. The exercise could be combined with a short training on how to present one’s research succinctly and effectively in just a few minutes; the elevator pitch! Facilitators may prove tips on this first, and allow participants to write down key items their pitch should include. This way, academic speed dating may double as an opportunity to try out freshly written pitches and tweak them as needed.

At the Young Scholars Initiative, Peter Bent first introduced this exercise, and continues to lead the Advisory Team for Innovative Academic Formats. We can’t thank him enough for making our community more engaging.

Going Beyond Exchange

Traditional economics reveals the dynamics of exchange. But is that all there is? Late economist Kenneth Boulding recommends that we look further. Once we consider that some transactions only go one way, we can see the economy in a different light.

If you’re a high school student and you’re hungry for lunch, you may go out and buy yourself a sandwich. You give the deli guy five bucks, and he gives you a BLT. That’s exchange! But where did your five dollars come from? If you’re lucky, your parents gave it to you. Just like they gave you breakfast, your clothes, and a home to live in. And what did you give them? Probably your dirty laundry.

Modern-day, Western world parenting is an example of a one-way exchange. Parents provide for their children because the market doesn’t. And they do so without expecting much in return. Upon reaching adulthood, none of us receive an invoice detailing the costs we incurred. If we did, we’d probably be quite disturbed. In some cultures, children “pay back” by supporting their parents when they are older. But in the West, retirement plans, social security, and old-age homes have largely removed that expectation too.

Economist Kenneth Boulding advocated for such one-way exchanges, or “grants”, to be included in our study of the economy. Grants make up a big part of our distribution of resources, he argues, but economists have limited themselves to the study of exchange. To construct a more holistic framework in which both systems are fully represented, Boulding introduces “Grants Economics,” which adds to our understanding of the economy both at the micro-level (grants within the household) as well as at the macro-level (grants from the government*).

Boulding distinguishes grants by their motivating force. In the example of parental care, the motivating force is one of love. Parents provide for their children because they care about them. Charity, scholarships, and much of government transfers fall into the same category. But each economy also contains grants based on threat. If you’re about to buy your deli sandwich, and an armed robber comes in, you may hand over your money because you’re scared of getting hurt. That’s a grant as well.

Every system, he explains, contains elements of exchange, love-based grants, and threat-based grants. But their respective shares in the total economy vary. To visualize this, Boulding presents a triangle, the corners of which represent a pure exchange-system, a pure love-based grant system, and a pure threat-based grant system. All the points inside the triangle represent different proportions in which the three systems can be combined. Where in the triangle we are, and where we are going, is the question.

At times, Boulding adds, the love-based grants economy may grow to compensate for failure in the exchange economy. If, for example, a hurricane strikes, we recognize the exchange system cannot support the situation, and make donations (grants) to fill the gap. But if we feel the efficiency of our grants is inadequate, the grants economy may shrink again. Only if perceive our grant to be able to be more useful in the hands of the grantee than in our own, do we want to provide it.

Since the 1970s, Boulding’s work has largely been forgotten. Perhaps because his definition of a grant, and the distinction between love and fear can be fuzzy at times, or because the scope of the theory is so vast. Nevertheless, the framework deserves credit for its potential to open our eyes to all the different ways in which resources are distributed. It can get us to think about the nature of our transactions.

Today, it may look like our current economy is increasingly based on exchange. Whereas we used to call a friend to help us assemble a new IKEA couch, many people may now use Handy to book an hour of paid-labor from someone they never met. Later that day, they may log in to TaskRabbit to hire someone for an errand. With the help of modern technology, Interactions that we would otherwise do without asking much in return are becoming two-way transfers.

At the same time, exchange continues to fail us, making large numbers of people rely on grants. In 2016, one in seven Americans received food stamps. That’s 43 million people for whom exchange is not bringing enough food on the table. On the other end of the income distribution, it may seem like things are different. But half of young adults (many with families of a high socio-economic status) rely on financial help from their parents. That’s a grant–typically with less of a stigma than food stamps–but a grant nonetheless.

These trends, and our potential path in the triangle raise various questions. How equal is our access to grants? Should we supply more grants (even a basic income?) or should we boost exchange (perhaps with a job guarantee?) Do we think we’re moving more towards a system based on love, in which care for one another dominates? Or are we finding it tough to get grants out of people unless we threaten them into providing them? Is there an ideal point in the triangle? Can we get there? Ponder on it. Boulding did so too, and being the only economist to sprinkle his books with poetry, he put his thoughts as follows:

Four things that give mankind a shove
Are threats, exchange, persuasion, love

But taken in the wrong proportions
These give us cultural abortions

For threats bring manifold abuses
In games where everybody loses

Exchange enriches every nation
But leads to dangerous alienation

Persuaders organize their brothers
But fool themselves as well as others

And love, with longer pull than hate
Is slow indeed to propagate

– Boulding, 1963

*Sometimes, of course, the lines between exchanges and grants are blurry. If we use taxes toward social security, and cash in at old age, that might be better described as a deferred exchange. If we, however, find ourselves on unemployment benefits, food stamps, rent support that we receive without having made an equal contribution, we can speak of a grant.

Economics: An Illustrated Timeline

Do you keep getting confused about the different schools of thought in economics? Do you always forget what Walras was about, and when Marx was around?

This timeline has your back. It provides an overview of historic events, schools of thought, and the people involved.

About the author: Heske van Doornen holds an MSc in Economic Theory and Policy from the Levy Economics Institute and a BA in Economics from Bard College.

Sources: The Economics Book, Economie!, www.preceden.com, www.econlib.org, www.whistlinginthewind.org, www.hetwebsite.net

In the Spotlight: Stephanie Kelton

If you want to be at the cutting edge of economic policy-making, listen to Stephanie Kelton. She explains how a government spends, and how confusion about debt and deficits have held America back. Shaking up democrats and republicans alike, she shows there is nothing inherently dangerous about a large budget deficit. We should aim for a balanced economy, not a balanced budget.

Her encouragement of ambitious fiscal spending is rooted in Modern Money Theory, which reveals the true nature of money as a creature of the state (discussed in detail here). So long as a government is sovereign and has its own central bank, Kelton shows, it is the sole issuer of its currency. Being the sole issuer of its currency, it can never run out of money, and it will never fail to meet its debt obligations. It’s completely able to spend as needed.

Kelton is always quick to respond to the most common points of critique. Is she arguing for the government to run infinitely large deficits forever? No. She is advocating for the government to determine its spending level based on the state of the economy. Spending should be high enough to facilitate full employment, and low enough to keep inflation in check. The spending level should be chosen based on the impact it has on the economy. Not based on whether it allows for two columns to sum up nicely in Excel.

Over the past couple of decades, this school of thought has gained significant momentum. Kelton, who teaches at the University of Missouri Kansas-City, gained traction in the world of finance and more recently broke into Washington, where she served as Bernie Sanders’ chief economic advisor during his campaign. Providing the economic backbone behind Sanders’ plans to raise the incomes of the 99%, the vast potential of Kelton’s approach to fiscal policy gained recognition. Kelton still works with Bernie to further his movement and mobilize support across the globe.

It is worth keeping Kelton’s message in mind as the Trump presidency unfolds. Judging by this article in Politico, Trump plans to cut taxes on the wealthy, and “make the deficit great again.” Considering Kelton’s stance on the matter, such a move should be recognized as problematic because it worsens income disparities, not because it worsens the budget deficit. We should judge Trump on the impact he makes on the economy, not on his ability to balance the books.

Kelton’s message can also provide a powerful weapon against the republican majority that the democratic party will soon be up against. Her advice for democrats is as follows:

“Democrats face a difficult road ahead. Having failed to recapture the Senate, there may be few opportunities to advance progressive goals — e.g. raising the minimum wage or boosting infrastructure spending — without compromising other core values. Democrats may be tempted to give Republicans a taste of their own medicine by hollering about budget deficits as cover for obstructionism. That would be a mistake. Instead, they should stand firm against cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security, exposing the truth about the government’s ability to sustain these programs indefinitely. And when they fight efforts to deliver huge tax cuts for those at the very top, they should make it clear that their opposition is not based on the budgetary impact but rather on the social and economic effects of widening income and wealth disparities.”

If you’re curious for more, be sure to follow Kelton on Twitter, and keep track of the blog she runs with Bill Black. You should also have a look at her crystal-clear presentations. Click here for a talk on the role of government, here for her ideas on inequality, and here to hear about her thoughts on the Bernie Sanders movement. And if you want to know how all this applies to the Euro-zone, this piece she wrote with Randall Wray is a great resource.

In the Spotlight: Pavlina Tcherneva

If I ask you to picture an economist, chances are you’ll visualize an older white male who makes you feel bad for failing to understand mysterious diagrams. Those certainly exist. But so does Pavlina Tcherneva. Chair and Associate Professor of the Economics Department at Bard College, Pavlina spearheads the group of faculty that convinced me (daughter of graphic-designer-dad and dancer-mom) to get a degree in Economics, and then another.

Pavlina’s Work in a Nutshell
Pavlina is comfortable in many unconventional territories of economics. She can tell you why the government should be your backup employer, why the federal budget really need not balance, and what money really is. Besides the US and her native Bulgaria, she’s consulted policy makers in Argentina, China, Canada, and the UK. Her work has been recognized by a wide range of people; most recently by Bernie Sanders, who used her graph to illustrate his point on inequality.

Current Research
Pavlina’s current research focuses on the “Job Guarantee” policy, which recommends the government acts like an employer of last resort by directly employing those people looking for work during economic slowdowns. In 2006, she spent her summer in the libraries of Cambridge, examining the original writings of Keynes. She offered a fresh interpretation of his approach to fiscal policy, and got a prize for it, too. Today, she investigates what the policy can do for economic growth, the unemployed, and in particular: women and youth.

Path to the Present
If you’re feeling inspired, take note: Being like Pavlina doesn’t happen overnight. In her case, it began with winning a competition that sent her to the US as an exchange student. She then earned a BA in math and economics from Gettysburg College, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her undergraduate honors thesis was a math model of how a monopoly currency issuer can use its price setting powers to produce long-run full employment with stable prices.

As a college student, she helped organize a conference in Bretton Woods around this idea, which became the inaugural event of what has become known as Modern Monetary Theory. Then, there were a few years of teaching at UMKC and Franklin and Marshall, and a subsequent move to the Levy Economics Institute and Bard College several years ago. In the midst of all that, she was a two-time grantee from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) in New York. Today, Pavlina lives in the Hudson Valley, together with her husband and daughter.

Eager for more?
If you’re curious about the Job Guarantee policy, here is both a 15 minute video, and a 150 page book. To understand Pavlina’s take on the Federal Budget, this article goes a long way. And to figure out what’s the deal with money, read this chapter of her book. Her work on inequality was featured in the New York Times, NPR, and other major media outlets. She has articles published by INET, Huffington Post, and over a dozen works on the SSRN.

The History of Money: Not What You Think

Most of us have an idea of how money came to be. It goes something like this: People wanted to exchange goods for other goods, but it was difficult to coordinate. So they started exchanging goods for money, and money for goods. This tells us that money is a medium of exchange. It’s a nice and simple story. The problem is that it may not be true. We may be understanding money entirely wrong. Continue reading “The History of Money: Not What You Think”