Posts Tagged ‘economics’

richard green

June 20th, 2010

The relationship between science and society is of growing importance. The science says, for example, that we must reduce carbon emissions in order to meet the challenge of climate change. But how societies can do this is another matter.

Richard Green is a social scientist, an economist to be precise, Professor of Energy Economics at the University of Birmingham. He reminds us that, if there is one thing that unites economists, it is that people and organisations respond to incentives. Thus if governments can create the right incentives, people and companies will reduce their carbon emissions.

Professor Green is also the Director of the Institute for Energy, Research and Policy. His  main research interests are in the economics and regulation of the electricity industry and energy policy.

gordon brown

June 19th, 2010

The good news is that changing one’s behaviour can have great impact on our sense of well-being and general health, so says Warwick’s Professor Gordon Brown whose work is at the interface of economics and cognitive psychology.

Professor Brown, along with Neil Stewart and Alex Wood argue in The New Optimists that the focus will shift from mastery of the environment to mastery of our cognition. Money typically explains only 1-2% of individual differences in happiness. Thus improving national happiness may well be better achieved by a greater emphasis on preventing unemployment rather than increasing everyone’s income.

Professor Brown’s research interests in the computational and mathematical modelling of human timing and memory; categorisation, identification, and word recognition; and the interface between economic psychology, cognitive science, and psychophysics