[OPE-L:6491] Julian Wells

Gerald Levy (glevy@pratt.edu)
Wed, 22 Apr 1998 15:25:33 -0400 (EDT)

Julian Wells, from the Open University in the UK, has joined us. Many
listmebers will remember Julian from his participation at past IWGVT
conferences.

He gives a very thorough (and interesting) introduction below:

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About myself
============

My scholarly activities are all related to the overall project of
reconciling Marxist theory with probabilistic ideas.

They can be divided into two broad streams:

(a) a practical/empirical one, stemming from my interest in Farjoun and
MachoverUs probabilistic attack on the transformation problem, and

(b) a theoretical/methodological/historical one, concerned with attitudes
to determinism and probabilism in Marxist writers, beginning with Marx
and Engels themselves.

As you will see, this overlaps with the interests of Paul Cockshott and
Allin Cottrell.

In connection with (a) in the very near future I expect to start a PhD
(at the Open University) looking at the statistical distribution of rates
of profit among UK companies, using firm-level data.

This project can be summed up by saying that I intend to use Farjoun and
Machover's proposals as the basis for a more sophisticated empirical
history of the business cycle.

Publications
============

Subscribers to ope-l who also take part in the mini-conferences of the
International Working Group on Value Theory will have encountered a
throat-clearing exercise in stream (a), in the form of my paper to the
1997 IWGVT mini-conference, RMeasuring value categories using company
accounts dataS.

Similarly, those who attended the 1998 IWGVT mini-conference may have
encountered a contribution in the area of stream (b), my paper on
RProbabilism and determinism in political economyS (taking a swipe at
Bernstein by way of a comparison with Engels).

I have recently joined Alan Freeman and Andrew Kliman in editing the 1996
IWGVT proceedings (the publication of which we hope will be speeded up as
a result!), and will be part of the organising committee for the 1999
mini-conference.

Teaching
========

The majority of my teaching is currently at the Open University in the UK,
though I also do some work with South Bank University in London, and with
GoldsmithsU College of the University of London.

My own work is on our recently-launched intermediate micro-economics course
RUnderstanding economic behaviour: households, firms and marketsS. This
is an attempt to combine a standard mid-level micro course with a range
of heterodox critiques of the neo-classical paradigm.

(For those unfamiliar with the British academic scene I should point out
the Open University provides exclusively distance education at the
undergraduate level -- in other words, correspondence courses, but using
custom-developed texts and other learning materials).

My teaching elsewhere includes a very large dose of REconomics of the
European UnionS, a very fashionable (and, for the itinerant hourly-paid
lecturer, lucrative) field just at the moment.

I also teach quants and computing for economists.

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Julian: welcome aboard!

In solidarity, Jerry