Speaker

2017 - Economics & do we have the right focus

Katrine Marçal is a Swedish economist, writer and journalist who has served as chief editorialist of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet where she wrote on Swedish and international financial politics and feminism. Katrine wrote Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner and will be talking about the relationship between economics and patriarchy.

Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, believed that our actions stem from self-interest and the world turns because of financial gain. But every night Adam Smith’s mother served him his dinner, not out of self-interest but out of love. Today, economics focuses on self-interest and excludes our other motivations. It disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking and its influence has spread from the market to how we shop, think and date.

Katrine journeys from Adam Smith’s dinner table to the recent financial crisis and shows us how different and how much better things could be.