I started with football in the urban poor communities mentioned as football has started to take off here. We have had some success in this and have been reported in the major networks and newspapers and this is allowing us to open a drop-in centre for street kids, working directly with the kids on the street to assess their circumstances and stories and provide individualised reponses. Anyone interested just email us at ffafoundation@gmail.com

Thanks! Roy

In response to your question – the motivation for this paper came from a series of macroeconomics tutorials that I attended while in my 1st year of my degree (i.e. last year). So, to be very honest I have yet to think about how a parallel paradigmatic progression might be possible in microeconomics. However, when I started on the paper I intended at first to discuss the growth of economics as a whole. I ended up focusing only on macroeconomics because it seemed to be much more malleable and reactive towards changes in policy attitudes and market behaviour – whereas my lack of understanding in the history of microeconomic thought meant that I did not have substantial material to discuss with respect to microeconomic epistemology.

That being said, if you would be so kind as to allow me sometime to mull over this, I will attempt a more considered response in a week.

Also, I’ll be happy to take this discussion further if you have any ideas? (:

Best, Yuh Yiing

The controversial points of view – especially on this growth topic – renders your journal undependent. Let me post a simple word on growth. Growth ist not endless – sorry Xavier. I believe Pareto is still right and applicable for the whole as for the detail. Every system has continuous borders and is therefore closed in a broader sense – by definition.

Editors,
we have to thank you for your effort to enlighten us, the reader.

HJ

I think the references you listed are somewhat different from the article above. Yours go in the freakonomics-direction, but are still mostly serious (standard) analyses of unusual topics. I guess we can conclude that the authors were having fun, but they aren’t making fun. Krugman certainly is — his mentioning of “Star Trek reruns” prove it.

Concerning the list: If we included all economic analyses of unusual (non-economic) topics, then we would have to upgrade our webspace. Thanks to economic imperialism, there aren’t many topics left to be explained in terms of economics. But it would definitely be nice to have a list of these rare articles that really make you laugh and not just wonder. If you have more on that, let’s have it.

There are other ways of making fun than just by writing about it. I once heard of a physicist who was making fun of his profession by pulling a stunt. He submitted an article with a really fancy name and wrote about stuff that was entirely invented. Despite a review process, the article got published. Apparently, the reviewers had no idea what the guy was writing about — I mean they couldn’t, it was invented — yet they ok’d it. Does anyone have a reference to that article? I can’t find it any more.

There is a serious conference on this important subject coming up in Rotterdam: http://www.eur.nl/fw/english/eipe/conferences/economics_made_fun/

The motivating paper for the conference refers to various papers and books that fall within different ways of understanding ‘fun economics’: http://ejpe.org/pdf/2-1-art-5.pdf

Off the top of my headI can think of a couple of other examples of academic economists having fun. Maybe someone should make a list?

Peter Leeson’s book “The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates” (2010). See also e.g. his (2007) paper: An-arrgh-chy: the law and economics of pirate organization. Journal of Political Economy, 115(6), 1049–1094.

Steven J. Brams’ book applying game theory to the bible “Biblical games: game theory and the Hebrew Bible” (2002)

Great article there! I just wonder how it is possible to conduct an experiment with primates to draw conclusions on human behavior with regard to economical decisions. I mean, just because an ape tries to avoid loss of his banana (to put it a little bit silly) doesn’t mean human beings will value avoided loss more than gain, does it? Do you know more on this experiment?

And at one point you mention evolution. As far as I am informed, current evolutionary theory rests not on the assumption that the most powerful being will prevail generally, but that beings who have the best chances of reproduction in a certain environment will eventually come out as dominant in that environment. On a very simple level, wouldn’t that lead to point where, in a world which is more and more “economized”, people who are savvy with regard to economics will finally be pre-dominant in our society?! And wouldn’t then the so-called “neo-classical model of rationality” precisely model that behavior that makes your chances higher to survive and reproduce yourself in this environment, thus a model human beings try to adopt – which would mean that finally utility maximizing is the model we act according to?

Just spilling out thoughts …

Best,

Andrew