The economy today… hard subject to teach!

When teaching about the current economics or using the book Global Shift, which focuses in the constant changing, one needs to keep pace with the economy. One has to admit that following the economy today, it’s not that easy. It’s especially hard if you rely on the mainstream media, or media with strong ties to financial groups (corporate media, anyone?). The noise gets much worse when we’re a month from the presidential election in the USA. To sum up, I would just say, that in my opinion, there is too much focus on the housing market, when the root of the problem has been actually reckless investing and of course the trillionare debt. One would recommend to the US cutting a little bit on military expenditures, but then that would look anti-American. I just hope for the best for the US economy.

 Oh, well, keeping updated economics powerpoint slides seems impossible today. 

Busy teaching and reading… no time for blogging…

The last couple of weeks I have been quite busy preparing the classes of “Economic Geography”, and “Localization & Development Theory”. Besides that, I have reading the literature of the phd course I attended at Utrecht University. Therefore I have not had too much time too work in the project. Nevertheless I’m learning a lot, not only from preparing the classes with updated information, but from comparing different literature.

PhD course on Economic Geography. Utrecht, The Netherlands

 

This is the view from the room where the course was held

Today finished the PhD Course on Economic Geography, in the Utrecht University. It was from September 9 to today, September 12, 2008. Actually this is only the first part, in early November we will gather for the second week. Between the weeks, we have to write a paper which is supposed to be inspired by the literature of the course. The local organizer is Ron Boschma and the guest lecturers are Bjørn Asheim (Lund University), Stefano Breschi (Bocconi University), Koen Frenken (Utrecht University), Meric Gertler (Toronto University), Elisa Giuliani (Pisa University), Gernot Grabher (Bonn University), Udo Staber (Canterbury University), Mario Maggioni (Catholic University Milano), Anders Malmberg (Uppsala University), Ron Martin (Cambridge University), Allen Scott (UCLA) and Phil Cooke (Cardiff University and Aalborg University), which is my beloved secondary supervisor.

It’s an outstanding group of researchers, it’s really nice from them to be willing to teach us. The course had 25 available slots for PhD students. Out of them, only 5 were from the home University, the rest were students from all over Europe, and even one from Chile and another from China (from a British and a German University respectively). There was a very good atmosphere, and so far the course has been very constructive. I really enjoyed the format of the organization. Ron Boschma has done a remarkable job being able to bring such recognized professors, and the participation of the students.

Listening to these senior researchers it’s very good. I have to admit that in some cases I read their papers several times and I only got some ideas, but then listening to them, it’s another world. This not only makes you better understand the issues, but it spurs your creativity. Besides the participation of the professors, every PhD student (some in September and others in November), has the opportunity to present a paper (usually close related to his main PhD thesis), and have the feedback of another of the PhD students (junior discussant) and one of the senior discussants. Then there is time for everyone to comment on his/her work.

All of us, we’re happy to present our project, but I think were a little bit afraid to get a hard critic, especially from the senior discussant. I was the youngest PhD student (for the PhD starting date), therefore my project is the early phases, and it’s normal to get all kind of “constructive criticism”. I might rather have all these suggestions and critics in the beginning than let’s say for someone who started its PhD in 2003. Imagine something like “well, someone has already published about this issue, and contradicts your research” (after several years of study in about to do your PhD defence)… Not a pleasant situation! J

The main problem I have with my projects is the common misunderstanding between academics/scientists and policy makers. It’s like the yin-yan. My project is financed by policy makers of local level, and my team project is basically formed by government officials at local and regional level. My project needs to work for them in all senses. For example, they are interested in the “experience economy”, a catchy concept in Scandinavia. But, I would also like to publish my work in an academic journal, a term like “experience economy”, which government officials like, does not go well for the majority of the scholars. They rather have me talk about the analytical, synthetic and symbolic knowledge bases (P Cooke, L Leydesdorff – The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2006; B Asheim, L Coenen, J Moodysson, J Vang – International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2007), which I think it would be a great idea, but I also believe that my project team could be somewhat confused or bored, if I start talking about deep academic subjects. So my challenge is to keep my project interesting for both policy makers and academics… and of course… me..!   

Anyways, I am very grateful for all the course and I’m looking forward for the November week. I already have some ideas for the upcoming paper. Let’s see if it works.

Denmark leaves the “recession”… FIFO?

So if we use the “recession” term used by the press, not the economics, (See the difference in the wiki: recession), then Denmark has just got out of the recession. As I pointed out 2 weeks ago, it’s hard to believe we were in a recession with less than a 2% official unemployment. Nevertheless it’s nice to see, for Denmark and the EU, that the first economy that went down, with 2 quarters of economic contraction, has noted a small increase.

I have to admit, that I have not lost my fears. Last week, a small bank, the Roskilde Bank, was nationalized. It seems that 10 different people loan so much money, that they put the bank in distress. see news. I have an old accountant telling me they should put to in jail all the bank executives, for letting this happen (I think he was not happy that tax payers money is used for this).   

Anyways, going back to the good news for today: Danish Q2 GDP rises 1.2 pct yr/yr, and in Spanish: Dinamarca sale de la recesión. Let’s see if it lasts.