Events

In association with the Chief Executives’ Club at Queen’s University Belfast, Dr Michael Aldous, Senior Lecturer in Management at Queen’s chaired a thorough discussion of the issues and implications of de/reindustrialisation. Panel members included Dr Graham Brownlow, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Queen’s University Belfast; Dr Judy Stephenson, Associate Professor in Economics and Finance of the Built Environment, University College London;  Dr Tirthankar Roy, Professor in Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science; and Rose Mary Stalker, Chair of Invest Northern Ireland.  The complete discussion is available HERE.

On Wednesday 13 January LRI will hold its first event of 2021: De/Re-Industrialisation: Legacies, Challenges and Future Prospects.  A panel of leading economists, historians, and industry representatives will examine the causes and consequences of deindustrialisation. They will also discuss how long run perspectives help them to think about possibilities for reindustrialisation, and the implications these trends have for today’s corporate decision makers and policy makers.

For more information, click HERE.

On October 2, 2020, LRI held its first online conference: Big Tech: Monopoly’s Second Moment? The Evolution and Trajectory of Government Policy and Corporate Strategy. The event far exceeded expectations with nearly a thousand people registering for the event. With viewers from Canada, the USA, the UK, and the EU, the conference underscored just how concerned people are about the consolidation of social, economic, and political power in the hands of a few – the so-called FAANG companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (Alphabet).

Discussing one of the great public policy challenges of our time, the conference brought together senior representation from the public, academic, and corporate domains. The opinions were varied and thought-provoking, pivoting from historical insight to contemporary analysis. The conference, in short, delivered in full on the LRI mandate to bring experts to the table on matters of significance. A summary document and video highlights will be available shortly.

Co-sponsored by LRI and the Wilson/Currie Chair in Canadian Business History, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, the event provided an important opportunity for the public to access subject experts in debate on this most complex topic.

Our thanks go to event co-chairs Dr. Laurence B. Mussio, Co-Founder and Director of LRI; Dr. Dimitry Anastakis, the Wilson/Currie Chair in Canadian Business History, University of Toronto; keynote guests LRI governor the Hon. Dr. Kevin Lynch, PC, OC, PhD, LLD, and Dr. Richard Langlois, University of Connecticut; and interlocutors Mr. Simon Kennedy, Deputy Minister, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; Dr. Gillian Hadfield, Director, Schwartz-Reisman Institute, University of Toronto; Ms. Claudette McGowan, Global Executive Officer for Cyber Security, TD Bank; Mr. Victor Tung, Executive Vice President U.S Chief Technology & Operations Officer & Chief Operating Officer, BMO Financial Group; Dr. Michael Aldous, Senior Lecturer, Queen’s Management School, Queen’s University, Belfast; LRI governor Mr. David Walmsley, Editor-in-Chief, The Globe and Mail; Mr. Lawson A.W. Hunter, Senior Counsel, Stikeman Elliott LLP; Dr. Taylor Owen, Max Bell School of Public Policy & Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, McGill University; Dr. Elizabeth Acorn, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Political Science, University of Toronto; and Mr. David Skok, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, The Logic.

The LRI are delighted to support the launch of the new book, An Economist’s Guide to Economic History, Edited by Dr Matthias Blum and Dr Chris Colvin, colleagues at Queen’s University Belfast, and with chapters contributed by LRI Directors, Professor John Turner and Dr Michael Aldous. The book will be formally launched at an event at QUB on the 18th January with a Roundtable Discussion including contributions from Prof. Wendy Carlin, Prof. Nicholas Crafts and Paul Winfree. If you are interested in the LRI agenda please check out the book and/or come along to the launch for a stimulating discussion on the importance of history in economics.

An Economist’s Guide to Economic History

Edited by Dr Matthias Blum and Dr Chris Colvin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding ‘how we got here’. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past.

This important and unique book addresses this problem by demonstrating the power of historical thinking in economic research. A carefully curated collection of short chapters guides economics lecturers and their students through the field of economic history, and advises them on how they can actively engage with economic history in their own teaching and learning.

Matthias Blum and Christopher L. Colvin bring together important voices in the field to show readers how they can use their existing economics training to explore different facets of economic history. Each chapter introduces a question or topic, historical context or research method and explores how they can be used in economics scholarship and pedagogy. In a century characterised to date by economic uncertainty, bubbles and crashes, An Economist’s Guide to Economic History is essential reading.

THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ECONOMICS
Riddel Hall, 18 January 2018, 1:30PM

A roundtable discussion on the past, present and future of economics as a discipline, with a particular focus on how it is taught at university and understood by the general public.

Panellists include:
• Professor Wendy Carlin CBE (University College London), economist and director of the CORE Econ project, which aims to overhaul the way introductory economics is taught at university.
• Professor Nicholas Crafts CBE (University of Warwick), economic historian and expert on UK productivity across the past two centuries.
• Mr Paul Winfree (Heritage Foundation, Washington DC), health economist and former senior advisor on budgetary policy in Donald Trump’s White House.

Event to coincide with the official launch of An Economist’s Guide to Economic History, a new edited volume aimed at introducing economic history as a field of study to economics lecturers and their students. Published in December 2018 by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by Dr Matthias Blum and Dr Chris Colvin of Queen’s University Centre for Economic History, the book’s website is http://www.blumandcolvin.org/.

To register please go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-past-present-and-future-of-economics-book-launch-and-roundtable-discussion-tickets-53585834674

The theme of the event evolved from numerous discussions amongst the participants around issues of innovation, productivity, and globalization. Phrases such as Industrial or Information Revolution easily set off debates amongst economic and business historians. What are the causal factors? How do they relate to previous revolutions? What are the likely effects in light of previous experience?

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