IER NEWSLETTER Vol. 6 (2016/4/28) 

Job Opening for a Lecturer or an Assistant Professor of Microeconomics in Institute of Economic Research (IER), Hitotsubashi University

 

Economists seem to have a high regard of markets. Democratic institutions also tend to be treated as "sacred and inviolable". When I was a graduate student, I held markets in high regard despite learning about many instances of market failures. While markets are very good at meeting demands and supplies of the current generation, it tends to use up resources that may be best left for future generations. Furthermore, were a politician in an indirect democracy to advocate for individuals three generations in the future, he will probably lose. Voters would most likely vote for candidates that maximize the voters' utility. I did not realize this when I was very young, but the democratic and free market institutions that underpin modern liberalism seems to rob the future generations of their resources “without any remorse”.  On the other hand, experiments utilizing real people have shown that we also have “sympathy, kindness, and empathy”. Perhaps, market and democratic institutions dull these natural sensibilities.  

 

We have begun to design new frameworks under the auspices of “Future Design” to augment market and democratic institutions.  We wish to implement virtual future generations. While it may sound a bit preposterous, people seem to change their thinking once they put on the “caps” of future generations. Please look at the following if you are interested. There are also videos. 

https://www.hit-u.ac.jp/kenkyu/project/forum.html

Mitsukuni Nishida (The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School) 2016/6/15-2016/8/14

Shin Kanaya (Aarhus University & CREATES) 2016/5/19-2016/8/18

Shintaro Yamaguchi (McMaster University) 2016/4/20-2016/7/21

Katsuo Kogure (Osaka University) 2016/4/2-2017/3/21

Tatsuyoshi Saijo (Kochi University of Technology) 2016/4/2-2017/3/21

Satoshi Tanaka (University of Queensland) 2016/4/1-2016/6/30

[Foreign Visiting Faculties]

Robert Gal (Corvinus University of Budapest) 2016/4/11-2016/7/10

 

[Visiting Scholars]