New centre to challenge conventional economic thinking

The Centre, which will engage over 40 leading academics across a broad range of disciplines, aims to stimulate innovation and debate in economics, support visionary interdisciplinary research, and radically redefine the education of the next generation of economists and leaders in business and government. ‘The Complexity Economics Programme will build on the existing research strengths at Oxford’s CABDyN Complexity Centre, and bring in leading international researchers from other institutions to build the critical mass needed for this exciting new activity ,’ said Felix Reed-Tsochas, co-Director of the CABDyN Complexity Centre. ‘Our aim is to deepen our understanding of important economic phenomena, such as financial crises, economic growth, inequality, technological innovation, and the management of systemic risk, by applying an interdisciplinary perspective grounded in the study of complex systems, using tools such as complex network analysis and agent-based modelling.’ An important part of the centre's mission is to nurture the next generation of economists and future leaders in government and business. How will we do this at Saïd – teaching on specific programmes/electives/events? I’ll probably incorporate this as a quote from Peter. The core funding for the centre comes from INET, a New York based non-profit foundation started by George Soros. Explaining his reasons for funding the research at INET@Oxford, Mr Soros said: ‘Fresh thinking in economics is urgently needed to mitigate many global challenges, not least systemic financial crises, the creation of sustainable jobs and employment, and the wide-ranging challenges of development.' .

12 April 2012