Dear Members,
As we discussed previously on our agenda meeting on Monday, we are planning to have a workshop-working group session at the conference on post factual democracy at the Centre for Information and Bubble studies.
Our main idea was to invite young scholars who are already planning to attend the conference, and also have an open call for a working group session.
Regarding senior scholars and panels, we have some names of scholars who are already attending the conference, but we can also invite others. In our priority list there is professor William H Janeway and and prof Molly O' Sullivan. Our vision was on the relation of bubbles and innovation, financial and information, hence the names of Janeway and O'Sullivan.
We are taking suggestion on the type of workshop, or event you would prefer. Meanwhile following you have a provisional program of the conference.
Please feel free to reply to this thread.
The Economics of Post-Factual Democracy
Annual CIBS Conference, February 9-10, 2017A democracy is in a post-factual state when facts and evidence are replaced by populist narratives and impracticable political promises. Consider the The Brexit referendum: Expert economists from leading institutions were agreeing unanimously on the dire economic consequences of a Brexit. They were largely ignored and publicly disregarded as “experts” the nation had “had enough of” by a leading political actor. Facts, political realism, expert advice and consequence calculations were disregarded, disbelieved or not sufficiently voter mobilizing to matter in the end. The media environment of mass and social media may be factors facilitating post-factual discourse. Anger and fear mongering narratives demonstratively tend to set the agenda and receive high levels of attention from mass and social media.
Besides populist political actors and the media academic institutions and scholars may also, in part, have fueled a post-factual tendency. In the wake of the 2008 crash questions were raised as to whether mainstream economics indeed was adequate for describing, explaining and predicting real world situations. Strong belief in efficient markets and market-fundamentalism, where price-setting is by default definition correct and bubbles cannot exist have been pointed out as important reasons for the failure of predicting the bust of the subprime bubble. Some scholars of economics have mistaken mathematical beauty for truth, the criticism goes, and have lost the connection to the […] reality their models aimed to forecast.
Austerity policies implemented in the EU added to the contemporary post-factual condition. On the one hand implemented austerity measures have not secured growth, but on the other these very measures have resulted in a – very real – increased inequality. This situation feeds back into the public debate as a general distrust in experts fueling post-factual tendencies. If policies ought to be evidence based it is crucial that the evidence and forecasts are […] continuously tested in the real world. Research in economics needs to attend to the real world problems of the people most affected by globalization and rising inequality. Politics and policy-making, public democratic deliberation and the science of economics must be committed to reality.
Reality is not only a test of truth, belief or theory. The grand challenges we are facing are also all too real. The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently announced 10 global challenges: food security, inclusive growth, employment, climate change, global finance, the internet, gender equality, global trade, long-term investment, and health care. To have a fighting chance in the face of these challenges both politics and scientific research must 1) at one level track the facts and be submitted to the test of the real world and 2) address the major real world issues with the practical aim of solving them. How are we to navigate politically to avoid both the scylla of post-factual relativism and the charybdis of a technocratic econocracy? That’s the central question of this international meeting of minds: How to reconfigure capitalism to meet the grand challenges of our time.
Confirmed Speakers
Flemming Besenbacher
Professor, Chairman of the Carlsberg Foundation
Alexander Heffner
Anchor, The Open Mind, Channel Thirteen, PBS, USA
David Lando
Professor of Finance and Director of Center for Financial Frictions (FRIC), Copenhagen Business School
Mogens Lykketoft
President of the United Nations General Assembly, Presiding over the 70th session of the General Assembly
Lars Rohde
Governor by Royal Appointment, Chairman of the Board of Governors of Danmarks Nationalbank
Didier Sornette
Professor of Entrepreneurial Risks and Finance, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
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Conference theme: Vincent F. Hendricks & Mads Vestergaard (CIBS)
Conference Organization: Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS), University of Copenhagen
Venue: The Carlsberg Academy, Copenhagen
Date: February, 9-10 2017