Research Online at MacEwan :: Browsing by Author "Jahangir, Junaid"

Browsing by Author "Jahangir, Junaid"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 46

Amplifying heterodox economics with video clips
(2021) Jahangir, Junaid
Many ECON 101 students do not major in Economics partly because of the way it is taught through the chalk and talk method and partly due to the subject content that emphasizes abstract models over contemporary issues including climate change, inequality, and financial crises. The critique is of both content and presentation. The objective therefore in this paper is to address both these issues. To this end a review of salient ideas of the Reardon et al. (2018) textbook Introducing a New Economics is undertaken and paired up with video clips from movies and cartoons to amplify their reach.
Are there realistic possibilities for a higher “batting” average? On improving residential energy efficiency in Canada
(2013) Ryan, David L.; Jahangir, Junaid
The main use of energy in the residential sector in Canada is for space heating. Reductions in residential energy use, therefore, are likely to be achieved primarily through energy-saving retrofits, such as improved insulation. Reasons advanced to explain the foot-dragging of the residential sector in this regard are examined here, along with various policy options. Canadian survey data from 2003 are used to examine and compare the most energy-inefficient households who saw no need for retrofits with other households who provided a similar response, with a view to assessing whether there are factors that can be exploited to increase the uptake of such retrofits. The results suggest there is likely to be no quick fix. In the absence of large retrofit subsidies, with their accompanying free-rider problem, or a multi-pronged strategy that includes a whole array of policy instruments, including one that changes the relative importance of energy costs in household budgets, the outlook for sizeable improvements in residential energy efficiency in Canada via residential retrofits does not appear to be overly promising.
Book review of Acemoglu, Daron and Johnson, Simon: Power and progress: our thousand-year struggle over technology and prosperity
(2024) Jahangir, Junaid
Daron Acemoglu has been among noted economists to study the economics of automation. His latest book has received attention from prominent economists and academics such as Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Angus Deaton, Joel Mokyr, and Michael Sandel, amongst others. The purpose of this review is to summarize his main thesis and situate it in the milieu of popular books on automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology including Susskind (2020) and Suleyman/Bhaskar (2023).
Book review of Beker, V. A.: Economic theory for the real world
(2025) Jahangir, Junaid
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there has been a renewed push by student groups towards pluralism and real-world content in economics (Earle et al. 2017, Fischer et al. 2018). In this regard, several books of authors like Komlos (2023), McGuiness (2023), and Schneider (2024) have been recently published with words like ‘pluralism’ or ‘real-world’ in the title. However, not all such books are textbooks to answer the call for change in economics pedagogy, even though they address textbook content. The textbook of McGuiness (2023), which is like a supplementary reader to go with economics textbooks, has a neoclassical bent. Similarly, the work of Beker (2024), although heterodox, is not promoted as a textbook with exercises and resources. However, I was intrigued by his book as I used Komlos (2023) in my Humanistic Economics class and Komlos provided the foreword. Beker’s book reflects both seminal and recent contributions in heterodox economics and in a manner accessible to interested instructors, students, and lifelong learners. Moreover, while Komlos (2023) and Schneider (2024) are promoted as textbooks, Beker (2024) would be a supplementary reader that focuses on select topics.
Book review: Blanchard, O. and D. Rodrik (2021), Combating inequality: rethinking government’s role
(2022) Jahangir, Junaid
Introductory mainstream microeconomics textbooks like Mankiw et al. (2020) relegate the discussion on inequality towards the end of the book’s chapters, where the text focuses more on poverty reduction instead of the contemporary discussions on the Top 1 per cent and wealth taxes. Often the topic is not addressed at the ECON 101 level. Anecdotally, some economists believe that the concern with inequality rests predominantly on envy. This is why the book Combating Inequality edited by Blanchard and Rodrik is pressingly significant, as it comprises 29 articles, which converge towards the consensus that inequality must be effectively addressed beyond poverty alleviation (p. xiii). The articles are short and readable and can be easily assigned in undergraduate classes including ECON 101 to spur discussion and interest in one of the most pressing issues of our times.
Book review: Edible economics
(2024) Jahangir, Junaid
I googled to find popular books written by him including Kicking Away the Ladder (2002), Bad Samaritans (2008), 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (2010), and Economics: The User's Guide (2014). These books provide a countervailing narrative to the usual popular books like Freakonomics (2006), The Undercover Economist (2006), Economics in One Lesson (2008), and Excuse Me Professor (2015). Chang's latest book Edible Economics (2022) crystallizes the narrative that he has developed through his popular books over the years. While he uses the imagery of food in this book to reinforce his narrative, I have reviewed the salient ideas as follows in a bid to draw out lessons I could share with my ECON 101 students.
Book review: Foundations of real-world economics
(2023) Jahangir, Junaid
A chapter-by-chapter review of Foundations of Real-World Economics by John Komlos.
Book review: Fullbrook, E. and Morgan, J. (2020), Modern monetary theory and its critics
(2022) Jahangir, Junaid
The book edited by Fullbrook and Morgan is a collection of articles published in Issue 89 of the journal, Real-World Economics Review. It assembles eighteen articles from experts who offer their vision or criticism of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that has been popular in the media given fiscal austerity, stagnating wages, rising inequality, and climate change. This review focuses on salient ideas that could be presented to economics students in a way that would challenge mainstream viewpoints including that budget deficits crowd out private investment, that government spending is constrained by taxes and borrowing, or that money is solely created by the central bank. Another motivation for this review comes in the context of the economic crises faced by countries like Pakistan that reel under currency depreciation, dependence on imports for food, medicines, and energy, and the unhelpful conditions stipulated by IMF loans. The idea is to explore whether MMT has any hope to offer such countries or whether it is predominately applicable to the U.S. whose dollar serves as the world reserve currency. Thus, the key ideas presented in this book are systematically delineated below.
Book review: Jin, Keyu (2023): The new China playbook
(2023) Jahangir, Junaid
Keyu Jin is an academic who has worked with the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the IMF, and the World Bank. She provides an analysis as someone who is intimately familiar with both a state-regulated China and Western neoliberal institutions that prize free markets. I have found her book to be an important read in understanding the Chinese miracle that traverses the binary between socialism and capitalism. Her book shows that economic development does not necessarily depend on the prescriptions of neoclassical economics of free markets, unfettered trade, minimal government, and private enterprise.
Book review: Krugman, P. (2020), Arguing with zombies
(2022) Jahangir, Junaid
As an undergraduate student in the 1990s, Paul Krugman's work, along with that of Joseph Stiglitz, was instrumental in my studies in economics. As an instructor in the 2020s, I was excited to find that the Nobel Laureate's book Arguing with Zombies, which is mainly based on his New York Times columns, helped to make sense of the economic orientation and situation in my home province, Alberta, where the United Conservative Party (UCP) came to power in 2019. The UCP government was extremely concerned about the previous government raising the minimum hourly wage by more than C$4 in fewer than three years but showed no qualms in reducing corporate tax rates by 4 percentage points, eliminating the carbon tax and cutting spending. This approach continued through the COVID-19 pandemic, as the government cut the post-secondary budget by 20 per cent over a four-year plan, and proposed a 3 per cent wage rollback for overworked nurses in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, while announcing investments to the tune of billions of Canadian dollars in Keystone XL, a risky and unnecessary oil pipeline.
Book review: Piketty, Thomas (2021), Time for socialism
(2021) Jahangir, Junaid
Blanchard and Rodrik (2021) edited a collection of articles in their book Combating Inequality that featured the voices of cutting-edge scholars like Lucas Chancel, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, amongst others. The editors expressed that economists should be at the forefront of tackling inequality instead of making the usual naysaying arguments that ‘we can’t afford it’, ‘we don’t have enough evidence’ or that ‘incentives will be distorted’. Conspicuously absent was the voice of Thomas Piketty, whose book Capital in the Twenty-First Century brought the topic of inequality into mainstream public discourse. His seminal work has been challenged in mainstream newspapers through arguments including that ‘inequality did not rise’ and that ‘inequality does not matter’ (Grisold/Theine 2020: 1082). Therefore, it is heartening to see his latest book, which is a collection of his newspaper articles from 2016 to 2021. Piketty’s book transcends the mainstream naysaying that is stuck on ‘why is economic inequality bad; how is it harmful?’ to offer a vision for the future based on socialism. His book reflects his academic research on inequality, which he has carefully presented to the broader public over the years. This is significant especially for ECON 101 students, who are either not taught about inequality or indoctrinated with the mainstream neoclassical perspective that the whole issue is moot or simply based on envy. Thus, assigning articles, which he has collected in one place in this book, is a welcome approach towards teaching undergraduate economics students about one of the most pressing issues of our times after climate change.
Book review: pluralism, real world, and decolonization: a review essay inspired by the book Economy studies: a guide to rethinking economics education
(2023) Jahangir, Junaid
De Muijnck and Tieleman emphasise critical thinking that is developed through pluralism when different perspectives are compared (p.190). This, in addition to addressing real-world issues and incorporating the contributions of women and non-white thinkers (p.191) allows for a richer economics pedagogy. While the authors propose including blogs, podcasts, and videos as part of economics pedagogy (p.85), I also incorporate popular books in class. Thus, to answer the call of the authors to include pluralism, real-world content, and to decolonise economics, I offer books on pressing economic issues from a diverse group of writers in my elective economics classes. In the following section, I offer a quick synopsis of the books that I use in my classes.
Book review: Post neo-liberal economics
(2022) Jahangir, Junaid
The book, edited by Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan, is a collection of articles published in the Real-World Economics Review (Vol. 96, 2021). The book assembles 15 essays from leading heterodox economists who offer their vision of economics beyond economic theory and the current hegemonic system of neoliberalism. This collection of essays provides an insight into ideas that could offer an alternative to the standard principles of economics in the Mankiw et al. (2020a, 2020b) textbook (and its variant versions) which is singled out for its global reach and because it forms the basis of the critique of several heterodox economists (Davis et al., 2019; Goodwin, 2014). This review focuses on salient ideas that could be presented to ECON 101 students. Thus, the key ideas presented in Post Neo-Liberal Economics, which, by the way, I fully endorse and recommend, are systematically delineated below.
Book review: The coming wave: technology, power, and the twenty-first century’s greatest dilemma
(2024) Jahangir, Junaid
Suleyman is the Co-Founder of the world’s leading AI companies including Inflection AI, and DeepMind, acquired by Google. He was behind the AI programs AlphaZero and AlphaGo Zero. It is therefore not surprising that Suleyman and Bhaskar (2023) has received attention from a wide array of prominent thinkers, academics, entrepreneurs, authors, and leaders like Yuval Noah Harari, Nouriel Roubini, Andrew McAfee, Daniel Kahneman, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Al Gore, and Bill Gates. What follows is a summary of the main themes raised by this book and how the ideas critically engage with economists studying automation, and with thinkers like Acemoglu and Restrepo (2019), Susskind(2020), Acemoglu (2021) and Qureshi and Woo (2022). Suleyman and Bhaskar (2023) argue that the coming technological wave is based on AI and synthetic biology, which will become cheaper and widely accessible (p.7, p.9). They also express concern of the risks of “AI-powered cyberattacks, automated wars, engineered pandemics”, and the ‘existential threat to nation states’ (p.10). The response to such catastrophic outcomes could be authoritarian surveillance (dystopia) or bans and boycotts of technology (stagnation), both of which are unacceptable (p.10, p.206). The authors argue that we need to focus not just on the positive spillovers of technology but also on its ‘unintended consequences’ (p.36). Thus, they argue for containment, i.e., the capacity to control, limit, or shut down technology; and to change the research direction, or ‘deny access to harmful actors’ (pp.36–37). Overall, they argue that technology should be ‘democratically decided’ and its benefits ‘widely distributed’ (p.285).
Book review: Thomas Picketty, A brief history of equality
(2023) Jahangir, Junaid
The issue of inequality has received attention from top economists, whose voices have been projected through the book edited by Blanchard and Rodrik (2021). The editors make a strong case by arguing that economists should be at the forefront of combating inequality instead of making the usual naysaying arguments that "we can't afford it", "we don't have enough evidence" or that "incentives will be distorted" (p. xx). In a Canadian context, Osberg (2018) emphasizes addressing inequality as a pressing issue, stating that the Top 1% instigate narratives in their favour through think tanks and policy institutes. He proposes policies to combat inequality including guaranteed annual income, raising the top tax rates, and supporting higher wages. However, Piketty seems to have had the greatest impact on highlighting the issue of inequality, especially in mainstream newspapers, where his work has been challenged through arguments including that "inequality did not rise" and that "inequality does not matter" (Grisold and Theine, 2020). Piketty (2021) counters the mainstream, arguing that if we keep stating that it is impossible to make the richest individuals pay, we run the risk of future rebellions. In making this stand, he expresses that "there is no universal law of economics" and that everyone must "draw there own conclusions without allowing themselves to be intimidated by the well-argued opinions of others" (p. 42).
Book review: Value(s): building a better world for all
(2022) Jahangir, Junaid
Mark Carney served as the Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008–2013, and as the Governor of the Bank of England from 2013–2020. In doing so, he led the former through the financial crisis, and headed the latter prior to the onset of the COVID pandemic. Thus, it is not surprising that in addition to the existential threat of climate change, he addresses financial crises and pandemics as the three main challenges of our times, amidst a backdrop of public distrust, globalisation, and rapid technological change (p.2, p.5). In the book, Carney argues that markets are crucial for finding solutions to the most pressing problems of our times (p.130, p.473). While he upholds the dynamism and efficiency of markets for prosperity and wellbeing, he qualifies that their effectiveness is based on ‘the values of society’ (p.130, p.474), which include solidarity, fairness, kindness, and sustainability, and accordingly, must be nurtured to sustain an inclusive capitalism (p.4, p.139). He views these values as institutions themselves and deems them more important than geography or trade in explaining growth (p.473). Additionally, he cautions against market fundamentalism that depletes social capital (p.9).
Corporate power and the illusion of competition
(2024) Jahangir, Junaid
A book by Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar is the latest from McGill Max Bell Lectures. It has received attention from a wide array of citizens including economists, government officials and independent business representatives, all of whom share concerns on stifled competition and innovation in Canada. Hearn and Bednar express concerns on corporate power and concentration by alluding to “three major telecommunications companies, five grocers, a few big banks, [and] two major airlines.” This phenomenon is problematic not just because of rising grocery bills and weak bargaining position for workers, but also because of concerns about long-term economic growth, less research and development (R&D) and low productivity. What this means is that citizens both on the left and the right can stand united against such market concentration, given their concerns about worker rights and economic growth respectively.
Easy expectations and racial bias in economics instructor ratings
(2023) Jahangir, Junaid
The objective in this paper is to investigate the determinants of Economics instructor ratings in two universities in Edmonton based on the data available from the Rate My Professors (RMP) website. Based on random effects and multi-level regression analysis, it is found that instructor ratings are predominantly driven by difficulty level and grades received by students. Additionally, ethnic instructors receive significantly lower ratings, which is explained less by accent and more by race. If the reported difficulty level of a course and the grade received by a student capture “easy expectations” on the part of students in the RMP data, and if instructor ratings are driven by a combination of such "easy expectations" and racial bias on the part of students, then the case for using average instructor ratings for annual faculty evaluations is weakened.
Economic pluralism and the Disney princesses
(2024) Jahangir, Junaid
The objective of this paper is to present a pluralist perspective on teaching economic principles through the three Disney stories of Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and The Princess and the Frog. Introducing both neoclassical and heterodox perspectives through Disney animations catches student interest and improves student understanding in a way that traditional pedagogies do not. This is because it makes economic content more relatable to students and thus improves their retention of economic ideas. The emphasis in this paper is on complementing the teaching of standard economics principles with heterodox ideas and concepts including a focus on relative income, exploitation of individuals with lower cognitive abilities, shaping of consumer preferences through predatory advertisements, institutional racism and the limits of markets in addressing discrimination.
Homosexuality: the emerging new battleground in Islam
(2018) Jahangir, Junaid; Abdullatif, Hussein
As in the case of Jews and Christians, the topic of homosexuality is not easy for Muslims. Amongst various Christian denominations, it has led to rifts within congregations. The conversation in Christian and Jewish circles in North America has happened in the context of the LGBTQ and civil rights movements over several decades. However, the conversation in Islam, specifically in the North American context, is relatively new. In Muslim countries, homosexuality has conventionally been viewed as a behavioural trait in the context of pederasty and aggressive desire in gender-segregated societies. This, however, is being challenged by a growing number of Muslim youth, especially in the West, who do not wish to perpetuate a behavioural paradigm, in which one marries to keep face and have sexual encounters with members of the same gender on the side. Muslim LGBTQ groups and individuals have increasingly become socially and politically visible as technology and media have allowed them to network and share resources.