Amos Witztum

STOREP 2020 invited speaker Professor AMOS WITZTUM received his MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his PhD in economics from the London School of Economics. He has taught, among others, at the Hebrew University, the London School of Economics, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Sorbonne, Singapore Institute of Management, Moscow State University and London Metropolitan University. He is currently a Research Associate at the Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at the LSE. Professor Witztum was involved in the founding of three academic institutions: The New Economic School and the International College of Economics and Finance in Moscow and the International School of Economics in Almaty. In the latter two institutions he has contributed to the development of a new approach towards the curriculum of economic education representing an attempt at contextualising economics. He had also been a Chief Examiner in the University of London International Programmes where he contributed to such contextualisation through curriculum developments.

Professor Witztum’s research interests are broadly focused on the relationship between ethics, economics and society. Through the study of both current issues and the history of economic analysis, he has been trying to explore further the relationship between the individual and society (and its institutions). Particular focus has been given to how social dispositions and ethical values—endogenously created— affect our understanding of the nature of the economic system, the purpose of exchange, forms of economic organisation, the role of government and the way in which we evaluate economic and social outcomes. He is the author of The Betrayal of Liberal Economics (vols I & II) published by Palgrave-Macmillan in June 2019 which, to an extent, is a culmination of his research agenda. He is currently working on the third volume which is dealing with the social and political consequences of the critique of economics in the first two volumes. Throughout his academic career he has published numerous articles in journals and books as well as edited conference proceedings. He had also been an editor and the book review editor of Economica. He has been active in the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) where he served as the secretary as well as in the Guggenheim Programme for the History of Economics.