It is with great sadness that I have learned in the last 24 hours that an old friend, Walter Allan, died last Friday. A Scottish graduate in economics, Walter not only went on to work with the publishing house MacMillan as a commissioning edtior but in the early 1990s he served as the Editorial Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
In recent years I understand that he divided his time between his wife Eunice in Manchester, teaching commitments at the Cass Business School in London, and the writing of numerous economics and business studies textbooks.
A driven and natural teacher, writer and raconteur, “Wal” as he was known to his friends, was also one of the funniest people you could ever have the pleasure of working with. Mindful of his larger than life character, his outrageous humour and his sheer sense of life, I and many other free marketeers will miss him greatly. Walter Allan, rest in peace.
On Tuesday, I spoke at the IEA’s The State of the Economy conference, participating in a panel discussion on Fiscal Policy and Government Expenditure with Edmund Conway, Sir John Bourn, Graeme Leach and Danny Alexander MP.
In discussions about when to begin cuts, I flatly rejected Keynesianism, explaining that capital-based macroeconomics gives a quite different set of tools for thinking about the economy. This generated interest from students and professional economists present so I have updated our primer, adding The Causes of the Economic Crisis and Garrison’s macroeconomics slides.
I also recommend these articles as a quick-start to rethinking money, banking and economics:
I am delighted to report that I have agreed to participate in a panel discussion at the Institute of Economic Affairs’ “State of the Economy” conference on 23 February 2010.
The subject will be “Fiscal Policy and Government Expenditure”, chaired by Ed Conway, Economics Editor, The Telegraph. Also on the panel are Sir John Bourn, Former Comptroller and Auditor General, National Audit Office, Graeme Leach, Chief Economist and Director of Policy, Institute of Directors and Danny Alexander, Chair of the Manifesto Group and MP for Inverness, Liberal Democrats.
I will be appearing on this panel as Conservative PPC for Wycombe.
