Abstract
The multilevel economic paradigm extends Darwin’s evolutionary framework of thought (concerned with living things) to economics, in contrast to the neoclassical paradigm, which is modeled after Newtonian mechanics (applicable primarily to inanimate objects). The central theme of the multilevel paradigm is functional organization, which refers to the way in which economic agents (individuals and groups) and systems are structured to achieve economic objectives. The multilevel paradigm recognizes that people are engaged in multiple levels of functional organization and thus agency is distributed between individuals and groups. These levels are flexible through time and across domains (economic, political, social and environmental), so that the economy is understood as embedded in the polity, society and the natural world. Flexible levels of functional organization are both a cause of and response to radical uncertainty. This flexibility of functional organization implies multilevel economic decision-making and multilevel flourishing.
About the speaker
Dennis J. Snower is President of the Global Solutions Initiative, which provides policy advice to the G20. He is International Research Fellow at the Said Business School, Oxford University; non-resident fellow of The Brookings Institution and visiting Professor at University College, London. Furthermore, he is a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (London), at IZA (Institute for the Future of Work, Bonn), and CESifo (Munich).
Dennis J. Snower was born in Vienna, Austria, where he went to the American International School. He earned a BA and MA from New College, Oxford University, and an MA and a PhD at Princeton University. He served most recently as President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, where he is now a president emeritus, and was previously Professor of Economics at Birkbeck College, University of London.
He is an expert on labor economics, public policy and inflation-unemployment tradeoffs. As part of his research career, he originated the “insider-outsider” theory of employment and unemployment with Assar Lindbeck; “caring economics” with Tania Singer; the theory of “high-low search” with Steve Alpern; the “chain reaction theory of unemployment” and the theory of “frictional growth” with Marika Karanassou and Hector Sala. He has made seminal contributions to the design of employment subsidies and welfare accounts. He has published extensively on employment policy, the design of welfare systems, and monetary and fiscal policy.
He has been a visiting professor at many universities around the world, including Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Harvard, the European University Institute, Stockholm University, and the Vienna Institute of Advanced Studies.
Furthermore, he has advised a variety of international organizations and national governments on macroeconomic policy, employment policy and welfare state policy.