Method Study Group
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Principal Investigator: Doyne Farmer
David Tuckett trained in Economics, Medical Sociology and Psychoanalysis and is Professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty at UCL in the Faculty of Brain Sciences, as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London.
He works part-time in clinical practice but since winning a 2006 Leverhulme Research fellowship for a “psychoanalytic study of investment markets” has been collaborating with a range of colleagues to introduce psychoanalytical understanding to behaviour in the financial markets and the economy more generally.
Researcher: Claire Connelly
Claire Connelly is a visiting academic at the Institute for NewEconomic Thinking in Oxford, and a research fellow at the Global Institute for SustainableProsperity.
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​With a background in journalism, Connelly has written for leading publications including TheAustralian Financial Review, The Saturday Paper, the ABC, SBS, Which-50, New Matilda,and the Sydney Morning Herald. She has featured regularly on television shows, web series,radio programmes and podcasts, including ABC’s The Drum, Channel 10’s The Project,SBS’ The Feed, 2SER’s Fourth Estate, Radio National’s Breakfast, Drive, Hack, andDownload This Show.
Project Summary
A reassessment of the methods used in undertaking research to understand the macroeconomy is a necessary and vital element of our network. By adopting diverse methods to undertake research and to construct and test new theories we expect that the discipline will benefit by incorporating ideas that have proved successful in other branches of the social and natural sciences. We envisage that the adoption of new technologies, such as machine learning and neural networks, allied to a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches to gathering data may open-up new methods to support analysis. The methods used to acquire knowledge can be, and should be, a topic for enquiry if we wish to further our understanding of the macroeconomy.
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The ‘Methods Study Group’ will examine the feasibility of importing alternative research methods from other branches of the natural and social sciences that might enhance and support our understanding of the macroeconomy. It will collect perspectives from leading international academics and policy makers on which alternative methods might usefully be applied to the project of Rebuilding Macroeconomics. The Group will match specific macroeconomic questions with specific alternative methods with regard to the feasibility and utility in each case of introducing a reformed methodology.