̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Ha-Joon Chang

Cambridge heads for Hay

jfp40 — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 09:20:09 +0000

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Series has been running for six years at the prestigious Festival and is part of the ̽��ֱ��’s commitment to public engagement. ̽��ֱ��Festival runs from 22nd May to 1st June and is now open for bookings.

This year's line-up includes Sir John Gurdon who was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that mature cells can be converted to stem cells. He will talk about his pioneering work on cloning.

Other speakers include Dr Ha-Joon Chang on economics, classicist Professor Paul Cartledge on after Thermopylae, Dame Barbara Stocking, former chief executive of Oxfam GB and president of Murray Edwards College, on the challenges for women in the workplace, Professor Chris Dobson and Dr Mary Dobson on Alzheimer's and other plagues, economist Professor Noreena Hertz on smart thinking and Professor Robert Mair on tunnelling into the future of our cities.

Professor Richard Evans, president of Wolfson College, will talk about the history of conspiracy theories, Dr John Swenson-Wright from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies will ask if North Korea is the perennial crisis state and Dr Robin Hesketh from the Department of Biochemistry will attempt to demystify cancer.

Several of the talks will take the form of a conversation: Professor Simon Blackburn will debate the uses and abuses of self love with journalist Rosie Boycott; novelist and playwright Biyi Bandele, a former Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, will be in conversation with Dr Malachi McIntosh from the Department of English about migrant writing; Professor Henrietta Moore, William Wyse Chair of Social Anthropology, will talk about the future of civil activism with Ricken Patel, founding President of Avaaz, the world's largest online activist community; and psychologist Dr Terri Apter will debate how women follow, resist and play with the stereotypes that define them with author and alumna Zoe Strimpel.

Other Cambridge academics speaking at Hay are Professor Stefan Collini discussing higher education’s two cultures - the humanities and science - and historian Professor David Reynolds.

Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, said: "Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� nurtures and challenges the world's greatest minds, and offers the deepest understanding of the most intractable problems and the most thrilling opportunities. And for one week a year they bring that thinking to a field in Wales and share it with everyone. That's a wonderful gift."

Nicola Buckley, head of public engagement at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Cambridge series is a wonderful way to share fascinating research from the ̽��ֱ�� with the public. ̽��ֱ��Hay Festival draws an international cross-section of people, from policy makers to prospective university students. We have found that Hay audiences are highly interested in the diversity of Cambridge speakers, and ask some great questions. We look forward to another fantastic series of speakers, with talks and debates covering so many areas of research and key ideas emerging from Cambridge, relevant to key issues faced globally today."

For tickets, go to: www.hayfestival.org

A host of Cambridge academics, including Nobel Laureate Sir John Gurdon, will be speaking on subjects ranging from stem cell technology and Alzheimer’s to the future of North Korea and the history of conspiracy theories at this year’s Hay Festival.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� nurtures and challenges the world's greatest minds, and offers the deepest understanding of the most intractable problems and the most thrilling opportunities

Peter Florence, Director of Hay Festival

Hay Festival

Night shot at Hay Festival

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Unlocking the agricultural economics of the 19th century

amb206 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 08:30:22 +0000

Two hundred years ago the price of British-grown grain – a commodity vital to the baking of bread and the brewing of beer, two items representing household staples, particularly for the poor and working classes - reached an all-time high.

We know this because, just as today’s media reports on the movements of the stock market, listing prices and trading volumes, so too did newspapers of the late 18^th and early 19^th century report on agricultural markets. Known as the Corn Returns, these reports set out the volume and average price of the main corns (wheat, barley, rye, oats, beans and peas) sold in a given week.

̽��ֱ��inflated price of wheat in Britain in 1812 (50 per cent more than average and twice what it had been a decade before) was mainly the result of Napoleon’s Continental Blockade. In 1806, frustrated by his inability to invade Britain or overcome the formidable Royal Navy, Napoleon Bonaparte issued legislation, known as the Berlin Decree, which forbade France and her allies from trading with the British. To enforce the blockade, the French navy policed the English Channel.

̽��ֱ��Berlin Decree was Napoleon's attempt to starve Britain of vital supplies. By the end of the 18th century, Britain’s imports of foodstuffs outstripped exports by ten-to-one. ̽��ֱ��blockade resulted in a tit-for-tat stand-off in which Britain retaliated by banning imports from France and her allies. What resulted was a trade war, which ended when Napoleon fell in April 1814. In many ways this was characteristic of trade spats ever since – including the so-called Cod War.

̽��ֱ��data on Corn Returns, which were published in ̽��ֱ��London Gazette from 1770 onwards, represent an unparalleled historical resource, which promises to shine a light on the role of agriculture and agricultural markets in the British Industrial Revolution.

Now a project at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Financial History at Newnham College (http://www.centreforfinancialhistory.org), sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (http://ineteconomics.org), is under way to digitize the Corn Returns and to make the data available to researchers the world over in the form of ̽��ֱ��Corn Returns Online (http://www.cornreturnsonline.org).

“ ̽��ֱ��Corn Returns Online (1770-1865) begins with the publication of returns in ̽��ֱ��London Gazette, but the practice of reporting returns dates from the reign of James II,” said Dr D'Maris Coffman, who is directing the project. “As early as 1685 the state appointed inspectors to report the market prices of major agricultural commodities in the English maritime districts. ̽��ֱ��purpose was to enforce, and adjust, the custom duties on imported grains and bounties on grain exports.”

Both Crown and Parliament used this market information to direct Treasury policy and to ensure that bounties on the export of corn were paid. Although the bounties themselves made up a small part of the revenue, understanding grain markets was also essential to the administration of excise taxation, which represented about half of the total revenue in the early 18^th century. Of that, the excise on beer and ale formed the largest part, and the brewing industry, in turn, consumed between a quarter and a third of the grain grown in Britain.

From 1770 onwards, inspectors were required to supply weekly quantities and prices for specified coastal and inland market centres - including Newcastle, Bristol and Plymouth as well as London - and eventually covered 290 markets. ̽��ֱ��average weekly prices were published in the London Gazette and after 1820 the published returns also included the quantities traded.

̽��ֱ��Corn Returns played a role in the famous debate between David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus on whether or not Britain should remain protectionist after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In advancing his argument about the “comparative advantage of nations,” David Ricardo employed a corn-ratio theory (sometimes called a corn model), which was in itself an extension of the analysis that Adam Smith made of corn markets in ̽��ֱ��Wealth of Nations.

According to Dr D’Maris Coffman, the director of the Centre for Financial History, this project has the ability to provide a clear picture of the role the infamous Corn Laws played in either fostering or retarding the growth of British industry.

This question has also been raised by Cambridge’s own Professor Ha-Joon Chang who argues controversially that British industry benefited from protectionist policies for the agricultural sector in the early 19th century. Dr Coffman explained: “Whether or not the data ultimately supports Professor Chang’s conclusions, he is correct that the Corn Laws were not just about protecting the interests of the gentry, but were also about state policy in a much wider sense.”

̽��ֱ��Corn Returns had a wider social role as well. They provided an unbroken time series of the prices of standardised commodities (bushels or quarters) and a basis by which newspaper correspondents and their readers could track movements, estimate their land rents, and speculate in grains. Dr Coffman commented: “It is no exaggeration to say that much of 19^th century political economy rested on contemporaries’ interpretations of this data, which was as ubiquitous for them as stock market prices are for us today.”

̽��ֱ��Corn Returns, which amount to more than 6 million data points, represent the 19^th century equivalent of today’s Big Data – a term used to describe the number-crunching power of computing and information technology to gather and analyse the huge quantity of data generated by market participants and by the modern state.

Dr Coffman said: “Our project is by no means the first attempt to make use of this incredible resource. Dr Lucy Adrian, an emerita fellow in Geography at Newnham College, Cambridge, attempted something similar in the 1970s, but the computing resources were not there. My team consists of a statistician, Dr Louise Pryor, and a trade economist, Dr Yuning Gao. I’m delighted we’ve been able to advance Lucy’s work and we hope to take it to completion.”

Modern computers give Cambridge researchers the tools they need to analyse the Corn Returns. ̽��ֱ��data they extract will answer important questions about the nature of agricultural markets in Britain, the world’s first industrialising economy. ̽��ֱ��Corn Laws were a hotly debated topic for 20 years; one side argued they were essential to protecting British agriculture while the other argued that they represented an unjustified tax on manufacturers. “Data extracted from the Corn Returns, and analysed using modern econometrics, will tell us which side was right,” said Dr Coffman.

̽��ֱ��world needs food – and its need for food is ever-expanding. Many of the issues debated, and the economic scenarios played out, in the mid-19^th century have parallels today as developing countries enter global markets with agricultural products vulnerable to the trio of climate change, governmental policy, and speculation.

“At the Centre for Financial History, we are pleased and proud to offer an historical database that will allow us to understand these challenges for the 19^th century, hopefully with lessons for today,” Dr Coffman said.

̽��ֱ��Corn Returns – market data from the 19th century and beyond – represent a valuable resource for economic historians looking at the emergence of modern agricultural markets. A project to make these records digitally available will help solve some of the big questions about the economics of the age.

Much of 19th century political economy rested on contemporaries’ interpretations of this data, which was as ubiquitous for them as stock market prices are for us today.

Dr D'Maris Coffman

Michael Parker Wright (Flickr Creative Commons)

Crops Growing

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Cambridge makes Hay

bjb42 — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:16:17 +0000

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge alumnus and Hay Festival director Peter Florence has invited the ̽��ֱ�� to contribute a third annual speaker series to the world-renowned Festival, held between May 27 and June 5.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Hay series is a spin-off from the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, and features outstanding communicators from the Cambridge academic community.

Up to 5,000 people are expected to attend the talks and discussions in the Cambridge series and this year ̽��ֱ��Telegraph is the Festival’s media partner.

Highlights this year include philosopher Baroness Onora O'Neill debating the limits of toleration in today's society and Dr Amrita Narlikar on the rise of new powers Brazil, India and China and their impact on global governance. Dr Narlikar heads Cambridge's new Centre for Rising Powers.

India is one of the focuses for this year's Festival and Dr Kevin Greenbank and Dr Annamaria Motrescu will lead a session entitled “ ̽��ֱ��Reel Raj: cinefilm and audio archive from the Centre of South Asian Studies”. This includes remarkable footage from some of the almost 300 home movies in their collection which offer a unique glimpse of life in India and other parts of South Asia during the final days of the British Empire.

Hay audiences can also look forward to Dr Ha-Joon Chang on 23 myths of capitalism and Professor Tony Wrigley in conversation with George Monbiot, discussing a new look at the industrial revolution and the links between the industrial revolution and our current energy crisis. Professor Nicky Clayton will talk about her research on crow behaviour which was featured in a series of online films made available by the ̽��ֱ��.

And with an event which may appeal to adults and children alike, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press Chief Executive Stephen Bourne will speak about the company’s decision to adopt a giant panda at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Foundation in China – a bid to build closer working links with the country and to help protect the endangered species.

Other speakers include:

Dr Simon Mitton, on the books that have changed our view of the universe, from Alexandria to Cambridge
Professor Michael Lamb on children in the legal system
Professor Gerry Gilmore on whether science claims to know the unknowable
Professor Rosamond McKitterick on history, memory and ideas about the past
Dr Ulinka Rublack on dress codes in Renaissance Europe
Dr Clive Oppenheimer on eruptions that shook the world
Professor Simon Blackburn on the relationship between language and action, pragmatism, and practical reasoning.
Dr Rachel Polonsky on Molotov, one of Stalin's fiercest henchmen.

Nicola Buckley, currently Head of Community Affairs, said: “ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is delighted to be contributing its speaker series to the Hay Festival once again. We welcome the Festival director’s vision to open up Cambridge research on historic and contemporary India, among many other topics, to the Hay audience, and we look forward to lively talks and debates.”

̽��ֱ��full line-up for the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival is:

Fri 27/5, 5.15pm

Professor Sir Colin Humphreys

Cambridge Series 1 - " ̽��ֱ��Mystery of the Last Supper: Reconstructing the Final Days of Jesus".

Reconciling conflicting Gospel accounts and scientific evidence, the distinguished Cambridge physicist reveals the exact date of the Last Supper in a definitive new timeline of Holy Week and offers a complete reassessment of the final days of Jesus.

Fri 27/5, 6.30pm Professor John Barrow

̽��ֱ��Book of Universes

̽��ֱ��mathematician encounters universes where the laws of physics can change from time to time and from one region to another, universes that have extra hidden dimensions of space and time, universes that are eternal, universes that live inside black holes, universes that end without warning, colliding universes, inflationary universes, and universes that come into being from something else – or from nothing at all.

Fri 27/5, 7.45pm Dr Simon Mitton

From Alexandria to Cambridge

̽��ֱ��historian of astronomy examines of Five Books That Changed Our View of the Universe: Ptolemy's Almagest, Copernicus' De Revolutionibus, Galileo's Siderius Nuncius and Dialogo, and Newton's Principia. A facsimile of the Copernicus manuscript will be displayed.

Sat 28/5, 2.30pm Professor Michael Lamb

Angels, Demons, Dunces

̽��ֱ��developmental forensic psychologist examines our inconsistent views of children in the legal system.

Sun 29/5, 2.30pm Dr Ha-Joon Chang

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

̽��ֱ��economist turns all received wisdom about free markets, globalisation and the digital revolution on its head and offers an utterly compelling alternative. Chaired by Jesse Norman of the Treasury Select Committee.

Mon 30/5, 4pm Professor Tony Wrigley

Opening Pandora's Box: a New Look at the Industrial Revolution

All material production requires energy. All pre-industrial economies derived the bulk of their energy from agriculture. Production horizons were tightly bounded. ̽��ֱ��use of fossil fuel overcame this limitation. Chaired by George Monbiot.

Tues 31/5, 1130 Stephen Bourne

Panda-monium: social responsibility in China

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press has adopted the young giant panda Jian Qiao at the Chengdu Research Foundation in China. Its CEO reports on the practicalities and symbolism of this new relationship, and we'll meet Jian Qiao on the big screen.

Tues 31/5, 1pm Professor Simon Blackburn

Practical Tortoise Raising

̽��ֱ��Philosopher explores the relationship between language and action, pragmatism, pluralism and practical reasoning.

Tues 31/5, 1pm Professor Clive Oppenheimer

Eruptions That Shook ̽��ֱ��World

̽��ֱ��volcanologist explores geological, historical and archaeological records to ask how volcanic eruptions have shaped the trajectory of human society through prehistory and history. He looks at the evidence for

volcanic cataclysm and considers how we can prepare ourselves for future catastrophes.

Tues 31/5, 5.30pm Dr Amrita Narlikar

̽��ֱ��Rise of New Powers and the Challenges of Global Trade Governance

No good deed goes unpunished: the WTO’s timely response to accommodate the new powers – Brazil, China, and India – at the heart of its decision-making has created new opportunities but also generated unanticipated new problems. What insights can be learnt about the rise of new powers within the WTO and in other multilateral organisations?

Tues 31/5, 7pm Dr Kevin Greenbank / Dr Annamaria Motrescu

̽��ֱ��Reel Raj: cinefilm and audio archive

An overview of the digital holdings of the Centre of South Asian Studies and their potential in the teaching of British and South Asian imperial history. Chaired by Hannah Rothschild.

Weds 1/6, 11.30am Professor Gerry Gilmore

Past, present and infinite future?

Was there anything before the beginning, why does science claim to know the apparently unknowable; where do I come from? What do we know about the infinite future?

Weds 1/6, 4pm Rev Dr John Polkinghorne

Quantum Theory

" ̽��ֱ��mathematician, theoretical physicist and priest explains the strange and exciting ideas that make the subatomic world so different from the world of the every day."

Thurs 2/6, 2.30pm Dr Ulinka Rublack

Dressing Up: Cultural identity in Renaissance Europe

Historian Dr Rublack will show why clothes made history and history can be about clothes. Her research imagines the Renaissance afresh by considering people´s appearances: what they wore, how this made them move, what images they created, and how all this made people feel about themselves.

Thurs 2/6, 5.30pm Dr Rachel Polonsky

Molotov's Magic Lantern

A luminous, original and unforgettable exploration of a country and its literature, viewed through the eyes of Vyacheslav Molotov, one of Stalin's fiercest henchmen.

Fri 3/6, 2.30pm Professor Nicky Clayton

̽��ֱ��Ape On Your Bird Table

Crows are as smart as apes. They manufacture tools, they are socially sophisticated, and they plan where to cache for tomorrow's breakfast. These findings have led to a re-evaluation of avian cognition, and resulted in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in apes and crows.

Sat 4/6, 2.30pm Professor Rosamond McKitterick

History, Memory and Ideas About the Past

̽��ֱ��historian focuses on uses of memory and the problems of the relation between memory and written, especially narrative and records of memory. Particular memories can also be exploited to reinforce an identity or even an ideology. Modern historians have distinguished between official and popular history and memory, as well as collective and individual manifestations and uses of memory. She will explore how helpful modern experience may be in interpreting the distant past. Case studies of historical narratives and epitaphs inscribed on stone from the early middle ages (c. 500-c.900) will serve to highlight both the kind of material with which an early medieval historian works, and its implications for historical knowledge and interpretation more generally.

Sun 5/6, 2.30pm Baroness Onora O'Neill

Is Toleration Still A Virtue?

̽��ֱ��philosopher is an exacting examiner of great issues such as freedom of speech, assisted suicide and

stem cell research. Here she explores a fundamental assumption of liberal societies.

̽��ֱ��books that have changed our view of the Universe, eruptions that shook the world and Stalin's fiercest henchmen are just some of the themes that will be under discussion during the popular Cambridge Series at this year's Hay Literary Festival.

We welcome the vision to open up Cambridge research on historic and contemporary India, among many other topics, to the Hay audience.

Nicola Buckley

Peter Curbishley from Flickr

Hay Festival

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23 things they don't tell you about capitalism

lw355 — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:38:04 +0000

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Dr Chang left his homeland for the first time when he moved to Cambridge as a graduate student in the 1980s. His time in Korea had coincided with an economic miracle, when the country transformed itself from being one of the poorest countries to one of the richest by the late 1980s. It was an economic transition that he now looks back on with academic interest: ‘Of course when you are living through it you don’t realise the enormity of the change,’ he says. ‘But, as an economist today, I feel extremely fortunate to have witnessed this leap, rather like a historian of mediaeval England witnessing the Battle of Hastings.’Dr Chang’s research in the Faculty of Economics encompasses trade and industrial policy issues, foreign investment and intellectual policy rights, corporate governance and the stock market. Partly shaping his research agenda is his work with the many organisations he advises, from the World Bank to Oxfam, and the Ecuadorian Presidency to Shell.‘I don’t wish to work on a permanent basis anywhere other than in academia but I have a lot of interactions with non-academic people – in government, business, international organisations, and NGOs – because much of my research is directly relevant to policies,’ he says. ‘These interactions help me to take a fresh look at economic theory and how it relates to the real world.’He is also keen to bring economics to a new audience by communicating complicated ideas in plain language. His latest book 23 Things… explains how capitalism really works by challenging such dogmas as the ‘free’ market, globalisation making the world richer, and rich countries being more entrepreneurial than poor ones, before concluding with his eight principles for rebuilding the world economy.

What might others be surprised to learn about you?

A few years ago, South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense banned my book Bad Samaritans: ̽��ֱ��Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism in the country’s military barracks as ‘seditious’ literature. Funnily enough, the incident propelled me into something of a celebratory sphere in Korea – whenever the issue was discussed, somehow my book became representative of the list of 23 banned books. I suppose you could say it was the best kind of ban. Bad Samaritans had a certain aura and yet was available everywhere except in army bookshops, with the result that sales more than doubled!

Who or what inspires you?

I’m inspired by people who have fought for a better world – the individuals we know about and also the countless, nameless people who have made sacrifices to change the world. I often get asked by my students whether, with so many things wrong with the world and so much resistance to change, it is realistic to expect any social and economic reform. But only 200 years ago people thought that abolishing slavery was totally unrealistic, and 100 years ago women were imprisoned for wanting the vote. These things were changed because people fought for them. So I tell them yes, although in the short run it’s almost impossible to change anything, in the long run it is possible.

If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, what would it be?

I would love to wake up having learned another language overnight because knowing another language is like knowing another world. Spanish would be the best because some of my favourite writers are from Latin America, but even if it’s a language with only three books I would gladly take it if it were given to me.

What is your favourite research tool?

It’s more a research methodology than a tool, but I’ve learned much from looking at the economics of real societies and comparing them across time and space. ̽��ֱ��real world does not operate in a way that economic models would predict – life is often stranger than fiction. My favourite example is Singapore. It’s famous for its free trade and welcoming attitude towards foreign investors but in many ways it’s a socialist country, with all the land publicly owned, 85% of housing provided by the government-owned housing corporation, and more than 20% of national output produced by state-owned enterprise. It is a perfect example of both the limitations of economic theory and the pragmatic mixture that is needed in the real world – anyone trying to invent an economic system on the basis of a particular theory would not invent Singapore’s economy. Real-world analysis wakes you up from your hidden assumptions and helps sharpen your theory.

What will the future look like in 2050?

In contrast to what is often hyped, over the past 30 years the world economy has grown more slowly and has become more unstable and more unequal than it was during the preceding 30-year period. On top of this, we are in the middle of a financial crisis the end of which is not yet in sight. Unless we reform this system we could continue to have these problems over the next 50 years. I see the challenge as restoring the balance between the market and the government, finance and the real economy, and material prosperity and environmental sustainability. Economists will need to do their bit to help find solutions.

For more information, please contact Dr Ha-Joon Chang (hjc1001@cam.ac.uk) at the Faculty of Economics or visit www.hajoonchang.net/

Author of the recently published 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Dr Ha-Joon Chang studies how international markets succeed and fail, asking what steps might be taken to rebuild the world economy.

We are in the middle of a financial crisis the end of which is not yet in sight. Unless we reform this system we could continue to have these problems over the next 50 years."

Ha-Joon Chang

Mark Mniszko

Ha-Joon Chang

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