28th ASEPELT CONGRESS. INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON APPLIED ECONOMICS.
“ECONOMICAL SCIENCE AND ECONOMISTS TO THE CHALLENGES OF OUR CURRENT SOCIETY. 50 YEARS EVALUATION”
As every year, ASEPELT organises its annual congress that will be held in Malaga (Spain). The congress is celebrating at the same time that the beginning of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of the University of Malaga’s foundation which was born under the name of Faculty of Political Sciences, Economics and Commercial Sciences.
Time passes and this changes the concept and contents and the change of the name of the faculty is a reflect of it. Fifty years is a very special date to celebrate the changes through which the Economics Science has passed in order to face with the changing challenges of the society. What’s the meaning then of the appearance of Applied Economics? As we said in our Association “ it is the meeting point of different methodological traditions in the field of Economics Science that share the same preoccupation with the real problems and the search of a solution for them”
And these fifty years is a proof of it. From the 60’s to nowadays, the world has have to face with several challenges, optimistic situations and difficult moments, disconcerting surprises and anxious searches, moments of euphoria and doubtful situations…
In the middle 60’s, we were living through the so-called “Golden Age of Keynesian Economics”.
The application of the ideas of this English author into the economical management was enabling USA to go through one of the longest expansion period of its story. In other countries, the “ policy of economic development” prevailed. In Spain, in particular, the indicative planning was giving birth to “ Spanish miracle”. This Faculty is indeed part of this miracle. Obviously, Economics Science and the economist profession were on the upswing. People even talked about the implementation of a “ new international order” based on better life conditions for everybody and new parameters associated with the participation and progress that could answered to the problems caused by the “underdevelopment scandal” and the “growth limits”.
But all changed when the new decade began. The stagflation was a scandal for all the economic models prevailing at that time. People even said that the “Phillips curve” has turned into a UFO. The oil crisis did fuel even more the fire. The “ critical decade” produced important economical problems for the people life but also, the increase in unemployment and prices, the cancellation of development decades supported by United Nations, etc… This situation couldn’t help affecting the Economics Science, which was unable to answer coherently, and made it look for new answers, leaving behind Keynes thinking, to the interventionism of public sector; to the predictable capacity of econometrics models. But all this also was bad for the profession. Our role and our capacity as economists to handle the situation were questioned. The 80`s was a time of lights and shadows. For some people it was a “ Lost decade” for some others it was a period of recovery, for others it implied the disappearance of the full economic system in force in Europe and for others the modification of the map of the Old Europe. Was it the “end of history”?
The Neoliberalism and the Globalization were in motion, supporting a new international order very different form the one dreamt by Jan Timbergen at the beginning of the 70’s; giving controversial answers during the 90’s; the New Economy, the Asian dragons, the deregulation, the happening of particular crisis, the growth of financial engineering, the IT’s unstoppable revolution, European Union expansion and the general euphoria of the new millennium…
But the autumn of 2007 came, and nowadays we are still suffering the effects. We went through periods of stagflation and deflation rapidly, turning back into inflation, living some periods of prices stabilization just before throwing into a new inflation…; and always followed by the “ghost of unemployment” ; the financial sector decay, the difficulties in the public sector, the problems with the Euro, the tensions produced by the “ Arab Spring”, the North and South divide, the merging economics challenging the old predominant economics, the geostrategic challenges of Eurasia the future of the European Union… And, what does the Economics Science say? What are the graduate students of the Faculty of Economics doing?
These are the questions that we will cover in this Congress; we will make an evaluation of these 50 years and will try to give birth to new ideas and actions for the future.
Presidents of the Organizing Commission
Antonio García Lizana Pablo Podadera Rivera