Book review

Notes

1. This comes from the ‘Maxims for revolutionists’, an annex to Shaw (1903).

2. The term used by the Meteorological Office in the UK to describe the first warning of severe weather.

3. I should mention in passing that I taught economics at Manchester Business School (part of the University of Manchester) from 1995 to 2004. In those days, it was rare for students from the School of Economics to take modules in the Business School, or vice versa.

4. In the midst of the financial crash, I was teaching part of the microeconomics module to our MBA students, and it was agreed that I should devote a three-hour session to what was going on. As the class was originally scheduled to be on innovation, I decided to focus on some of the financial innovations that played such a dangerous part in the crash (mortgage-backed securities, collateral debt obligations, high-frequency trading, etc.). This is an example of MBA teaching at its most productive, because it turned out that quite a few of our students knew about these innovations and could make a lot of useful contributions to class discussion. What they did not know, before the lecture, was just what damage these innovations had done to the economy.

5. I am referring to the technological revolution in the agriculture of developing countries, especially in the 1960s, where the use of artificial fertilisers, pesticides, and high-yielding seed varieties could enhance productivity. Unfortunately, it also had the unexpected effect of increasing poverty for some subsistence farmers who could not afford the necessary fertilisers and pesticides.

6. Boulding (1970, p.v) said that he started his ‘transition from being a fairly pure economist’ in 1948.

7. William Starbuck's own work is to be found in all the top management journals. He was once editor of Administrative Science Quarterly, one of the most highly regarded of management journals. Starbuck made these comments in a lecture at Nottingham University Business School in 2009. The slides of a similar presentation in Linköping are available in Starbuck (2009).

8. These remarks are made in an editor's introduction to Tirole's letter in Association Française d'Economie Politique (2015).

9. In particular, as Ietto-Gillies (2008) points out, mainstream economics does not believe that there is any merit in competition between different research paradigms (e.g. mainstream and heterodox).

10. In using the term, ‘special relationship’, I am referring to the phrase used by many British politicians to describe the UK's relationship with the US. Most ordinary people in Britain, however, consider that this special relationship is a myth.