FROM GALBRAITH TO KRUGMAN AND BACK Galbraith, Krugman and ‘Good Economics’

J.K. Galbraith's heyday was in the 1950s-70s. He was one of the most cited economists of his time, and attracted much praise and blame. In 1994, Krugman was a caustic critic and dismissed Galbraith's influence as a victory of style over substance. He castigated Galbraith as but “a policy entrepreneur”, yet by 2004, Krugman appeared to have undergone a striking metamorphosis, and his New York Times columns (2000-2006) conspicuously echo Galbraith’s understanding of socio-economic issues. This newer Krugman questions consumer sovereignty, bemoans the power of producers, questions the uses to which State power is put, worries about a medical-industrial complex, and laments the hijacking of public policy by private interests. Is this new Krugman merely a journalist, who has left scientific economics behind, or has he 'seen the light' as to what really constitutes ‘good economics’ and a more holistic scientific procedure?

Learning from university museums and collections in higher education: University College London (UCL)

Object-based learning (OBL), drawing on the rich resources of university museums and collections, offers a way of leaping lightly over knowledge hurdles. At UCL, over 100 course units include OBL, translating into 2,500 instances of students working with the museum collections each year. Learners in higher education (HE) can be confronted with difficult topics which become obstacles to understanding, slowing down their learning. These obstacles often take the form of new concepts which may initially appear counter-intuitive. Misconceptions sometimes have to be unlearnt before such challenging areas can be negotiated. Active student engagement with museum artifacts can facilitate such processes

Aboriginal Australia: An Economic History of Failed Welfare Policy

Aboriginal welfare policy of recent decades has been widely rejected as a failure. Radically different policies are now being trialed, in recognition of the continuing large gap between indigenous and non-indigenous living standards. Some Aboriginal leaders themselves have called for a rejection of the passive welfare policies of the past, in acceptance of a Friedman-style critique of ‘money for nothing’ welfare handouts, while nonetheless calling for a Sen-style capabilities approach to the policy needs of the future

Exploring the links between corruption and growth

Corruption is a widespread phenomenon, but relatively little is confidently known about its macroeconomic consequences. This paper explicitly models the transmission channels through which corruption indirectly affects growth. Results suggest that corruption hinders growth through its adverse effects on investment in physical capital, human capital, and political instability. Concurrently, corruption is found to foster growth by reducing government consumption and, less robustly, increasing trade openness. Overall, a total negative effect of corruption on growth is estimated from these channels. These effects are found to be robust to modifications in model specification, sample coverage, and estimation techniques as well as tests for model exhaustiveness. Moreover, the results appear supportive of the notion that the negative effect of corruption on growth is diminished in economies with low governance levels or a high degree of regulation. No one-size-fits-all policy response appears supportable.

All the Conditions of Effective Foreign Aid

The conclusion that foreign aid will promote economic growth only when allocated towards good policy regimes has been the subject of considerable debate. Aid effectiveness researchers have variously sought to falsify this result or to find other individual conditions of aid effectiveness. However, economic theory suggests that any factor which influences the expected returns to investment may influence the effect of aid on growth even when aid is partly diverted to consumption. To investigate this hypothesis, �all� of the hypothesized conditions of aid effectiveness are individually tested in a cross-country growth specification. From these tests the most significant and robust individual interactions are simultaneously modeled, thereby deriving multiple conditions of aid effectiveness. The paper concludes that aid is more effective in economies experiencing economic shocks or recovering from war, and less effective in countries which are geographically disadvantaged or at war. We also find a previously unidentified condition of aid ineffectiveness: the inflow of foreign direct investment. This finding renews a justified interest in the policy-aid-growth nexus, insofar as domestic policy determines the distribution of aid and FDI flows, which appear to act as substitutes in the growth process.