All entries for Monday 11 November 2013

Scare stories about USS pension scheme are overblown

There is an excellent article by Ros Altmann, the well known pensions expert, in the Financial Times today.

She says that the concerns about the USS deficit that have been expressed by John Ralfe (on BBC Newsnight and in the FT) are overblown.

Hers is a similar argument that Con Keating and myself put forward in somewhat less measured language last week.

Dennis Leech : 11 Nov 2013 23:24 |  Tags: Pensions; Uss |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Economics as a Discipline

In today's Guardian there is a story about a conference on the state of the discipline of economics being held at the Bank if England: Economics Lecturers accused of clinging to pre-crisis theories

There is nothing new about criticism of the Economics curriculum. It has been going on for over forty years. Here is the presidential address by Wassily Leontieff to the American Economic Association in 1970, "Theoretical Assumptions and Non-Observed Facts", in which he made the same points. Nothing has been done to address them. He was simply ignored.

Dennis Leech : 11 Nov 2013 18:07 |  Tags: Economics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem