Festival of Economics: Debra Howcroft
Recent research predicts that about a third of UK jobs are at high risk of automation in coming decades. Is this to be welcomed, given our poor productivity performance and the growing needs of an ageing population? Or does it spell a future of high unemployment and great inequality? Should we welcome the robots or fear them? Debra Howcroft will discuss these issues with Richard Davies, Gavin Kelly and Diane Coyle on 22 November 2014. Event details can be found HERE.
Debra Howcroft is a Professor of Technology and Organisations at Manchester Business School. Her teaching interests are concerned with the social and organisational aspects of ICTs in a global context.
Debra is a member of the ESRC-funded Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). Her research interests are broadly concerned with the drivers and consequence of socio-economic restructuring in a global context. She is one of the editors of Work and Life in the Global Economy: A Gendered Analysis of Service Work. The book emerged from a CRESC workshop held in 2008, and aimed to explore the social and cultural issues within the economic changes that have given rise to service work. Read more about the book HERE.
Our 2014 Festival of Economics, programmed by Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics, looks at money, the benefits of a more local economy, the economics of obesity and diet, what happens when quantitative easing ends, whether robots will take all the jobs in the future, the economics of crime and punishment and what will make the housing market work for all. We’ve also got John Lanchester (author of Whoops) talking about understanding money with Izabella Kaminska from the Financial Times and a discussion between Adair Turner and BBC Economics Editor Robert Peston. Full programme HERE.
