INET Delegation launches the YSI festival, hosted at IIT Bombay
Mumbai : The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) along with the Department of Economics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) organized the Young Scholar Initiative (YSI) Festival at the prestigious IITB, from 20th to 22nd February 2024. The festival was themed “Meeting of Young Minds (MYM) in Frontiers of Economics,” and showcased cutting-edge research on economics by nearly 50 young PhD scholars from India and around the globe.
The INET delegation included renowned American political philosopher Prof. Michael Sandel. He was joined by Dr. Rohinton Medhora, Chairman, Board of Directors, INET, Dr. Robert Johnson, President, INET and Ms. Sunanda Nair Bidkar, Director of Strategic Planning, South Asia, INET.
Prof. Rohinton P. Medhora, Chairman of the Board at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, said: “Understanding economics is best achieved by connecting it to other fields and recognizing its deep ties to humanity. We’ve witnessed a significant shift towards an intangible economy, where services now outweigh agriculture in GDP. In today’s digital world, upfront costs and risks are high, but there’s also a huge advantage for those who move first, along with benefits from agglomeration and geopolitics. The fourth industrial revolution is largely controlled by the US and China, collectively commanding over 93% of the technological landscape. Despite this, India has shown a remarkable capacity to innovate compared to East Asia. With immense potential, especially following the success of the G20 Summit, optimism abounds for India’s future.”
Dr. Robert Johnson, President, INET said, “The event served as a platform to showcase the remarkable talent and progressive research endeavors of the emerging cohort of economic scholars. INET remains steadfast in its commitment to supporting innovative economic thinking, and this festival was a testament to that commitment.”
The YSI Festival attendees explored groundbreaking research in macroeconomics, microeconomics, behavioral economics, and other key domains, making it a pivotal gathering for all those passionate about the future of economic thought. At the festival, presentations, panel discussions, and interactive sessions were held featuring panel discussions by many esteemed senior scholars. The festival promoted collaboration and knowledge exchange among participants and scholars from diverse backgrounds.
Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director, IIT Bombay, said, “We are delighted to have hosted the INET delegation and the YSI summit at IIT Bombay, which encouraged discussions and advanced innovative economic thinking among young scholars. We are confident that the YSI Festival has played a crucial role in fostering connections among young scholars and provided them a worthy platform to showcase their talent and research.”
According to the Department of Economics, IITB: The Department of Economics, IITB is happy to provide a platform through the Meeting of Young Mind conference for young researchers in Economics to discuss their research and disseminate their findings among contemporary researchers. In this endeavor, we received overwhelming submissions of papers from across the world. The papers that were discussed at the conference were from various fields of Economics and provided a glimpse of the uncharted area where Economics is likely to evolve in the future. The exchange of ideas by the experts in the panel discussion also emphasized the challenges and possibilities of contemporary economics research and its likely evolution in the present age of automation, AI, and ML.
The festival culminated with a thought-provoking address by Prof. Michael Sandel, Professor at Harvard University and author of ‘Justice.’ In his address on rethinking economics, Prof. Sandel said, “We need to rethink economics. Most of today’s economics assumes that it is a science, a value neutral science of human behavior and social choice. But I think this is a mistake that leads us astray. It ill equips economics to connect with a long tradition of economic thought that connects it with questions of values, that reconnects economics with moral and political philosophy. If we think back to the classical economists, from Adam Smith to Marx and John Stuart Mill, despite their ideological differences, they shared the idea of being assumed that economics is really a branch that cannot be separated from moral and political philosophy. I think they were right about that. I think that economics as it is taught today, at least in many places, makes some mistake to assert its autonomy with respect to those subjects.”