Spotlight on Alan Kirman, economist and USIAS fellow

A video interview “Why We Need a Multidisciplinary Economics” with Professor Alan Kirman (2017 USIAS Fellow) has been published on the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

Alan Kirman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the French University of Aix-Marseille, director of studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and Senior Advisor to the New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

His two-year Fellowship project at USIAS The Complex Origins of our Economic and Social Problems ended earlier in 2019. It aimed at pursuing work on the socio-economy as a complex evolving system. These systems are in general not in equilibrium in any standard sense, but evolve and adapt over time and periodically pass through crises to periods of stasis without any external shocks. Aggregate behaviour emerges from the interaction between participants in these systems. This view of such systems integrates considerations from physics, biology, sociology and psychology, a multidisciplinary approach that Alan Kirman promotes during the interview. A book “The Great Illusion” is to be published with Princeton University Press in 2020.

View the full interview:

The INET, founded in 2009 by George Soros, is a think tank born from the 2007 financial crisis. It aims to incubate new economic thinking, and promote it to influencers, policymakers and the public in order to promote real-world impact. Alan Kirman’s interview is part of the INET blog that includes interviews, presentations and video series with provocative economic thinkers, public figures and students.