081: Julie Nelson on the Importance of Ecology in Economics and the Misconception of Gender Roles in the Economy

Julie Nelson is Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts Boston and Senior Research Fellow at Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, also in the USA.

Julie’s research areas include feminist economics, ecological economics, the philosophy and methodology of economics, ethics and economics, the teaching of economics, and the empirical study of individual and household behavior.

Professor Nelson has also served as a Research Economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and a Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard University amongst others.

Julie is the author of Economics for Humans and author, co-author, or co-editor of several other books including Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics.

She has also authored numerous articles in journals ranging from Econometrica, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Political Economy, to Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Feminist Economics, and Ecological Economics.

Professor Nelson earned a B.A. degree in Economics from St. Olaf College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.

Julie, along with Mark Maier, runs the website introducingeconomics.org

Economics:

In this episode, Julie mentions: statistical inference, bias, production function, land, labor, capital, resource maintenance, feminist economics, care, GDP, Pigouvian tax, carbon, welfare gains, negative externality and Kyoto Agreement.

Economists:

In this episode, Julie mentions: John Stuart Mill, Gary Becker and Amartya Sen.

Quotes by Julie in Episode 81:

“Most economic textbooks tell you there are three basic economic activities… production, distribution and consumption. We added one at the beginning and what we called ‘resource maintenance’. That is, how are you ever going to produce anything if you don’t have the resources and if you haven’t taken care of them and sustained them in a way that they’ll be productive in the future” – Julie Nelson

“No one would be so silly to try to address an economic problem without looking at its social, ethical, physical and political dimensions. But later economists didn’t remember those cautions of Mills and just ran with the math aspect of it.” – Julie Nelson

Takeaway:

“Be careful about what you believe that economists are telling you.” – Julie Nelson

“Wherever we are in our life whether we’re at work in a business or at home or bringing our whole selves with us. We don’t just bring parts of ourselves. So if you want to be an ethical person anywhere, we need to do that when we’re at work.” – Julie Nelson

Books:

• Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus by John Gray
• ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism by Yves Smith
• The Shareholder Value Myth by Lynn Stout

Links:

• www.julieanelson.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download