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100th Issue of the Review : The Four Ages of Post-War British Policy Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Patrick Minford*
Affiliation:
Applied Economics, University of Liverpool

Extract

The NIESR has been for 25 years at the centre of the British macroeconomic policy debate. This seems to be a good occasion to look back critically over that debate and the NIESR's role in it. That role it has always taken very seriously, even though it has often involved painstaking exposition to non-economists of well known economic issues. In this it has continued a tradition actively followed by Keynes, of policy commitment and persuasion as well as the pursuit of research and its dispassionate dissemination. This tradition is frowned on across the Atlantic; there ‘scholars’ are not encouraged to dirty their hands with policy, at least until retirement. So be it; here our society expects greater involvement by its scholars, and he that pays the piper must call the tune.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

Many of the technical issues referred to in this paper are discussed at proper length and with appropriate references in two previous papers to which I would like to refer the interested reader. ‘A rational expectations model of the UK economy under fixed and floating exchange rates’ (Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy. vol. 12, 1980) and ‘Labour market equilibrium in an open economy’, processed University of Liverpool (Working Paper 8103).

References

(1) Sir Bryan Hopkin was Director of the National Institute from 1952 until 1957 and was instrumental in setting up the Economic Review. The Review itself did not appear until January 1959, some time after his departure. Mr Godley spent two years leave of absence from the Treasury at the National Institute from May 1963 until May 1965. Editor.