Showing posts with label new zealand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new zealand. Show all posts

Friday, 21 February 2014

Margrit Kennedy

Margrit Kennedy 1939 - 2013
 
Professor Dr Margrit Kennedy
 
It was with deep regret that we learned that Margrit Kennedy passed away on 28 December 2013 at her home in Germany. Margrit was a leading light in developing alternative approaches to money and currencies and an outspoken critic of the current global economic system.
Margrit’s tour of New Zealand in the summer of 2001-2002, along with her husband Declan, inspired the formation of Living Economies Educational Trust.
Margrit specialised in Urban & Regional Planning with a Ph.D. in Public & International Affairs then became professor of Ecological Building Technologies at the Dept. of Architecture, University of Hanover.
Her book, Interest and Inflation Free Money, Creating an Exchange Medium that Works for Everybody and Protects the Earth, has been translated into 22 languages. With Bernard Lietaer she wrote People Money – the Promise of Regional Currencies, which tells the stories of local currency systems from around the world. Her most recent book, Occupy Money, Creating an Economy Where Everybody Wins, makes the case for a stable and sustainable monetary system that reflects real wealth instead of the smoke and mirrors of speculative profit.
Margrit's passion and commitment lives on in our work.
 
Our heart goes out to Declan, and to all who knew and loved her.
This clip shows Margrit explaining her main insights on eco-logical money: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ixgt4syL9U
www.kennedy-bibliothek.info offers the interested reader insight into the work and publications of Prof. Dr. Margrit and Prof. Declan Kennedy.
http://www.kennedy-bibliothek.info/index.php?id=6 offers an overview of their professional careers.


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Thursday, 31 January 2013

William Phillips

 
 
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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William Phillips
Neo-Keynesian economics

Phillips with his MONIAC computer
Born(1914-11-18)18 November 1914
Te Rehunga near Dannevirke
Died4 March 1975(1975-03-04) (aged 60)
Auckland
NationalityNew Zealand
InstitutionAustralian National University
University of Auckland
FieldMacroeconomics
Alma materLondon School of Economics
InfluencesIrving Fisher
John Maynard Keynes
InfluencedPaul Samuelson
Robert Solow
Edmund Phelps
ContributionsPhillips curve
Alban William Housego "A. W." "Bill" Phillips, MBE (18 November 1914 – 4 March 1975)[1] was an influential New Zealand economist who spent most of his academic career at the London School of Economics (LSE). His best-known contribution to economics is the Phillips curve, which he first described in 1958. He also designed and built the MONIAC hydraulic economics computer in 1949.

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[edit] Early life

Phillips was born at Te Rehunga near Dannevirke, New Zealand, to Harold Housego Phillips, a dairy farmer, and his wife, Edith Webber, a schoolteacher and postmistress.[1]
He left New Zealand before finishing school to work in Australia at a variety of jobs, including crocodile hunter and cinema manager. In 1937 Phillips headed to China, but had to escape to Russia when Japan invaded China. He traveled across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway and made his way to Britain in 1938, where he studied electrical engineering. At the outbreak of World War II, Phillips joined the Royal Air Force and was sent to Singapore. When Singapore fell, he escaped on the troopship Empire State, which came under attack before safely arriving in Java.
When Java, too, was overrun Phillips was captured by the Japanese, and spent three and a half years interned in a prisoner of war camp in Indonesia.[2] During this period he learned Chinese from other prisoners, repaired and miniaturised a secret radio, and fashioned a secret water boiler for tea which he hooked into the camp lighting system.[2] In 1946, he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his war service.
After the war he moved to London and began studying sociology at the London School of Economics, because of his fascination with prisoners of war's ability to organize themselves. But he became bored with sociology and interested in Keynesian theory, so he switched his course to economics and within eleven years was a professor of economics.

[edit] Economics career

William Phillips, LSE formal portrait.
While a student at the LSE Phillips used his training as an engineer to develop MONIAC, an analogue computer which used hydraulics to model the workings of the British economy, inspiring the term Hydraulic Macroeconomics. It was very well received and Phillips was soon offered a teaching position at the LSE. He advanced from assistant lecturer in 1951 to professor in 1958.
His work focused on British data and observed that in years when the unemployment rate was high, wages tended to be stable, or possibly fall. Conversely, when unemployment was low, wages rose rapidly. This sort of pattern had been noticed earlier by Irving Fisher, but in 1958 Phillips published his own work on the relationship between inflation and unemployment, illustrated by the Phillips curve. Soon after the publication of Phillips' paper, the idea that there was a trade-off between a strong economy and low inflation caught the imagination of academic economists and policy-makers alike. Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow wrote an influential article describing the possibilities suggested by the Phillips curve in the context of the United States. What people think of as the Phillips curve has changed substantially over time, but remains an important feature of macroeconomic analysis of economic fluctuations. Had he lived longer, Phillips' contributions may have been worthy of a Nobel Prize in economics. He made several other notable contributions to economics, particularly relating to stabilization policy.
He returned to Australia in 1967 for a position at Australian National University which allowed him to devote half his time to Chinese studies. In 1969 the effects of his war deprivations and smoking caught up with him. He had a stroke, prompting an early retirement and return to Auckland, New Zealand, where he taught at the University of Auckland. He died in Auckland on 4 March 1975.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Nicholas Barr, "Phillips, Alban William Housego (1914–1975)" (subscription required), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 4 July 2008.
  2. ^ a b Phillips, Alban William Housego; Robert Leeson (2000). A.W.H. Phillips: Collected Works in Contemporary Perspective. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57135-7.
  • Mike Hally, Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age, Joseph Henry Press, 2005, ISBN 0-309-09630-8
  • David Laidler, "Phillips in Retrospect". (A review essay on A. W. H. Phillips: Collected Works in Contemporary Perspective, edited by Robert Leeson, Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

[edit] External links

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MONIAC Computer



With the introduction of advanced stage Transfinancial Economics it would be possible to get a highly accurate undertstanding of the economy in real-time.

http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics


However, the MONIAC article is included here for general interest of the readers of this blog.

RS.



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"Moniac" redirects here. For the settlement in the United States, see Moniac, Georgia.

Moniac Computer, exhibited at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand
The MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer) also known as the Phillips Hydraulic Computer and the Financephalograph, was created in 1949 by the New Zealand economist Bill Phillips (William Phillips) to model the national economic processes of the United Kingdom, while Phillips was a student at the London School of Economics (LSE). The MONIAC was an analogue computer which used fluidic logic to model the workings of an economy. The MONIAC name may have been suggested by an association of money and ENIAC, an early electronic digital computer.

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[edit] Description


MONIAC dashboard
The MONIAC was approximately 2 m high, 1.2 m wide and almost 1 m deep, and consisted of a series of transparent plastic tanks and pipes which were fastened to a wooden board. Each tank represented some aspect of the UK national economy and the flow of money around the economy was illustrated by coloured water. At the top of the board was a large tank called the treasury. Water (representing money) flowed from the treasury to other tanks representing the various ways in which a country could spend its money. For example, there were tanks for health and education. To increase spending on health care a tap could be opened to drain water from the treasury to the tank which represented health spending. Water then ran further down the model to other tanks, representing other interactions in the economy. Water could be pumped back to the treasury from some of the tanks to represent taxation. Changes in tax rates were modeled by increasing or decreasing pumping speeds.
Savings reduce the funds available to consumers and investment income increases those funds. The MONIAC showed this by draining water (savings) from the expenditure stream and by injecting water (investment income) into that stream. When the savings flow exceeds the investment flow, the level of water in the savings and investment tank (the surplus-balances tank) would rise to reflect the accumulated balance. When the investment flow exceeds the savings flow for any length of time, the surplus-balances tank would run dry. Import and export were represented by water draining from the model, and by additional water being poured into the model.
The actual flow of the water was automatically controlled through a series of floats, counterweights, electrodes and cords. When the level of water reached a certain level in a tank, pumps and drains would be activated. To their surprise, Phillips and his associate Walter Newlyn found that MONIAC could be calibrated to an accuracy of ±2 %.
The flow of water between the tanks was determined by economic principles and the settings for various parameters. Different economic parameters, such as tax rates and investment rates, could be entered by setting the valves which controlled the flow of water about the computer. Users could experiment with different settings and note the effect on the model. The MONIAC’s ability to model the subtle interaction of a number of variables made it a powerful tool for its time.[citation needed] When a set of parameters resulted in a viable economy the model would stabilise and the results could be read from scales. The output from the computer could also be sent to a rudimentary plotter.
MONIAC had been designed to be used as a teaching aid but was discovered also to be an effective economic simulator.[citation needed] At the time that MONIAC was created, electronic digital computers that could run complex economic simulations were unavailable. In 1949 the few computers in existence were restricted to government and military use. Neither did they have adequate visual display facilities, so were unable to illustrate the operation of complex models. Observing the MONIAC in operation made it much easier for students to understand the interrelated processes of a national economy. The range of organisations that acquired a MONIAC showed that it was used in both capacities.
Phillips scrounged a variety of materials to create his prototype computer, including bits and pieces from war surplus such as parts from old Lancaster bombers. The first MONIAC was created in his landlady’s garage in Croydon at a cost of £400.
Phillips first demonstrated the MONIAC to a number of leading economists at the LSE in 1949. It was very well received and Phillips was soon offered a teaching position at the LSE.

[edit] Current Locations

It is thought that twelve to fourteen machines were built.
  • The prototype was given to the Economics Department at the University of Leeds, where it is currently on exhibition in the reception of the university's Business School. Copies went to three other British universities.
  • A MONIAC owned by Istanbul University is located in the Faculty Of Economics and can be inspected by interested parties.
  • A Moniac from the LSE was given to the Science Museum in London and, after conservation, was placed on public display [1] in the museum’s computing galleries.
  • The MONIAC at The University of Melbourne, Australia, is on permanent display in the main building of the Faculty of Business and Economics (1st Floor, Business and Economics Building, 57 Swanston St, Parkville, Melbourne). The faculty has extended an invitation to anyone interested in restoring the MONIAC to functional capacity.

[edit] Popular culture

  • The Terry Pratchett novel Making Money contains a similar device as a major plot point. However, this device can not only be used to simulate the economy but can magically affect it.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "A. W. H.(Bill) Phillips, MBE and the MONIAC". http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/about/museum/3121411.pdf. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  2. ^ "Michael Stevenson: Tropical Economies". http://www.kunstaspekte.de/index.php?tid=14632&action=termin. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
Hally, Mike (2005), Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age, Joseph Henry Press, pp. 187–205, ISBN 0-309-09630-8.

[edit] Documentary

  • "The League of Gentlemen". Third Episode of Pandora's Box, a documentary produced by Adam Curtis

[edit] External links


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