MISSION & VISION

JNE Mission

Remarkably, the historic articulation of modern economics had in 1776 with Great Economics Master Adam Smith’s Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth of Nations. The rigorous study of Wealth and Welfare of People stands now at new crossroads of the 21st Century.

At the heart of Economics, the original purpose - in its wholeness - was development and human welfare - to inquire into what makes some nations to grow and accumulate wealth, enabling its citizens to lead a sustainable better, fuller lives, while others stagnate - precisely, why some nations thrive while others stagnate.

The Mission of the Journal will be to stay true to this original concern of economics and facilitate the stocktaking of ideas enabling us to think afresh and look ahead at the challenges of inclusive development and sustainability that the world, especially emerging economies confront today. This as well inspires all involved in economics discipline and profession (academia and policymakers) define inspirational pathways to a better future.

JNE projects to attract and embody scholarships on “New Ideas That Matter Much in Economics” to better serve humanity via addressing global issues – health crisis arising out of fast sweeping Covid-19 pandemic devastating human lives, economies and revealing deep divisions in societies, unmitigated environmental degradation associated with resultant climate change leading to existential threat to the planet, repeated financial meltdown and piecemeal economic growth impacting instability and uncertainty, rising trade protectionism, raging poverty and humanitarian crisis, growing inequality in income and concentration of wealth, rising human immiseration threat from unguarded fast-advancing technology – Hi-Tech AI and Robotics, dangers of ‘social media’ facilitating privately controlled monopolistic surveillance economy, and ineffectually investing to empower young adults as future leaders of a more sustainable and thriving world. Alongside, whilst learning for a living and female empowerment, affordable healthcare, safe drinking water, clean energy solutions and proper sanitations demand governmental urgency, grassroots community and social initiatives are positively impacting by enhancing micro-up development.

JNE Vision

JNE envisions an Encompassing Economics Discipline by inspiring the economists to innovate a much greater diversity of ideas and by promoting action research to explore and address solutions for the vital critical challenges of the 21st century.

Notably, given the gravity of continual damage to natural world, Ecology and Earth Sciences need to be embedded in Encompassing New Economics in order to understand the sustainability of our engagement with Nature and identify the options humanity has to enhance biodiversity and prosperity.

Economics is a discipline that, as towering naturalist David Attenborough argues, shapes decisions of the utmost consequence, and so matters to us all. The UK HM Treasury commissioned The Dasgupta Review, made public on 02 February 2021, at last puts biodiversity at its core and provides the compass how we can help save the natural world and in doing so save ourselves by bringing economics and ecology face to face. In order to account for ‘nature’ in economics and decision-making, a deep understanding of ecosystem processes and how they are affected by economic activity needs to be grounded in Encompassing New Economics.

The Worst Financial Crisis, triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the US, shook the world on 15 September 2008, followed by Royal Bank of Scotland ‘finished’ – after 3 weeks on 07 October when it rose to the world’s Fifth Largest Bank [Northern Rock in UK collapsed one year back on 13 September 2007]. Still, even after 1.5 decades, it continues to reverberate in economies and communities across the world, practically its phantom still irks us. As the appalling scope and scale of the crash was revealed, the financial institutions that had symbolized the West's triumph since the end of the Cold War, seemed - through greed, malice and incompetence - to be about to bring the entire system to its knees. The huge bail-out package with many billions of dollars to the few financial institutions, thus tycoons, was conjured up to prevent complete collapse, basically encouraged 'socialize losses and privatize gains’.

The question that has arisen most forcefully out of the 2008 worst economic crash since the Great Depression of 1930s – What Falls Short of Real-World Economics? A quest for a paradigmatic shift was thus gathering momentum.

Economists are indeed at a paradigmatic puzzle: Urge for New Paradigm in Economics becomes historically focal following the peak of major crises or crashes as were - Great Depression of 1930s preceding the 1929 Financial Crash, End of WWII, Stock Market Crash in 1987 (Black September), Major Macroeconomic crisis in Asia and Latin America of the 1990s, Collapse and subsequent Bankruptcy of corporate giants like Enron or Worldcom in 2001, 2001-2002 Recession and Worst Financial Meltdown of 2008 - triggered by the asset bubble in US House Market.

The dynamics of the economy, including the extent to which it is competitive, cannot be studied without integrating social, political and cultural factors into a paradigmatic framework.

The economic and financial crisis has been a telling moment for the economics profession, for it has put many long-standing ideas to the test. If science is defined by its ability to forecast the future, the failure of the economics profession to see the crisis coming should be a cause of great concern. But it’s not the problem economists had as a profession lack of models or of failure to keep up with a changing world but was the failure of applying historical knowledge of great relevance - precisely what our Seniors learned from crisis of 1930s Great Depression. Undeniably, there is a much greater diversity of ideas within the economics profession than is often realized. By all means, lessons of the 2008 crisis need to be carefully shaped into 'a more encompassing model’.

Economics has indeed generated a wealth of ideas, many of which argue that markets are not necessarily either efficient or stable, or that the economy, and our society, is not well described by the standard models of competitive equilibrium used by a majority of economists. The Economics discipline would however need to be a more encompassing in accommodating, thus integrating much useful dimensions of the Neoclassical Economics Orthodoxy which used to rule for decades. It is of course more useful to adjust our theories and assumptions to reflect the world we live in, than to force human nature to follow the assumptions on which we conveniently established our theories.

In fuller fulfillment of the Mission, JNE aims to advance sound economic ideas to better serve humanity. Bringing social concern issues and ideas into the Realm of Economics would allow economists to better capture the human dimension of innovative and creative activities. Economics thus needs to be built on the foundation of humanity.

Obviously, rethinking economics within a moral setting, weighing economics with justice, including an account for nature in economics and decision-making, emphasizing ground-up development, and human-centred principles a la Smith, Keynes, Sen, Skinner, Yunus, Etzioni, Stiglitz, Krugman, Varoufakis and Komlos, matter paramount. Of course, Aristotle (384-322 BC), Plato (428/427 or 424/423 BC – 348/347 BC), St Thomas Acquinas (1225-74), Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), St Antonino Acquinas (1389-1459), Sir William Petty (1623-87), Richard Cantillon (1680-1734), and Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) are of relevance. [Conspicuous Claims are there: Celebrated North African Scholar Ibn Khaldun outlined strikingly similar ideas to those of Adam Smith almost 370 years earlier – ‘Division of Labour’ being the Cornerstone of Modern Economics. As such, the conventional economics discipline faces a huge challenge, thus demands rigorous re-evaluation of existing economic theories and models in pursuit of sound economic theory and methods, and practices in reshaping the profession that envisions a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable way forward.

The JNE projects to attract the academic and practitioner economists to a free and open economic discourse in order to shape A More Encompassing Economics Discipline. As such JNE would build a bridge between current and next generation of scholars and practitioner economists, and encourage young scholars to brainstorm Adam Smith’s community system design and strengthen collaborative research efforts as effective pathway to face critical challenges of the 21st Century,

Finally, JNE would actively engage at high profile yearly Global Assembly of Economists, being organized by GIfNE and CfD to cause maximum interactions of the wider audiences, and gradually shape a dissemination process.