Links
Charity Commission
4CMR
Cambridge Econometrics
Interview with Terry Barker in World Economics

Workshop
Achieving 2°C climate stabilisation: macroeconomic benefits or costs?
Thursday 4 July and Friday
5 July 2013

Trustees
Founder
Dr Terry Barker, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR), Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, and Chairman of Cambridge Econometrics

Chief Executive
David Taylor, Administrative Director, Cambridge Econometrics

Trustee
Prof Philip Arestis, Director of Research, Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge

Trustee
Richard Lewney, Managing Director, Cambridge Econometrics

Trustee
Dr Annela Anger-Kraavi
Lecturer in Macroeconomics of Ecosystems
University of East Anglia

Trustee
Dr Şerban Scrieciu
Reader in Economics for Sustainability
Natural Resources Institute
Department of Livelihoods and Institutions
University of Greenwich
 

The Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics was founded on 28 September 2005 as a registered charity (number 1111552). The Founder is Terry Barker, Chairman of Cambridge Econometrics Limited. He transferred control of the company as a trading subsidiary to the Trust. The objects of the Trust are as follows:

"The Charity is established to advance education in the field of economics for the benefit of the public, with particular regard to the following principles:

(a) that economic behaviour is primarily social rather than individual;
(b) that economic behaviour is influenced by aesthetic and ethical values as well as economic values: and
(c) that the pursuit of self-interest in economic behaviour can impact adversely on both society and the environment.

In particular, the Charity is to educate the public in developing practices and policies that recognise and redress the adverse effects that arise from lack of awareness of the principles stated above."

The Objectives
It is vital that two social problems be solved. The first is the obvious degradation of the planet and its atmosphere by over-consumption and over-production through the exploitation of resources in pursuit of monetary gain. The second problem is the toxic pollution of the global money supply, also obvious, caused by financial practices over the past twenty years, led by the investment banks of Wall Street and the City of London.

The problems are related: both arise out of the pursuit of self interest, sanctified by the crude economic utilitarianism that underlies equilibrium economics; both are non-linear catastrophic events, although on different time scales; and arguably both can be described, in different ways, as the greatest market failures in human history.

The Trust has been founded to promote new thinking in economics that does not rely on equilibrium and instead recognises the inherent uncertainties in the understanding of behaviour and accepts that nearly all economic activity is social in nature, not individual; that human beings are social animals; and that successful economies are based on trust and integrity.