Research primarily in SOCIAL ECONOMICS, METHODOLOGY, and HISTORY of THEORY.
Economics typically studies markets, but I take a broader view. We actually live in a society of communities, governments, and markets – three “spheres” – all necessary, interacting, but operating on fundamentally different principles. Communities that people identify with – such as families, neighborhoods, and religious groups – affect markets, as in the current bubble and crash, driven by crowd behavior. On the other hand, markets affect communities, as when a suburban mall opens near a small town, and the town center dies. Economic theory also affects communities, by analyzing them as markets based on self-interest, ignoring and undermining the sense of identity, justice, and fairness that defines communities. I work on how communities and markets (and economic theory) interact.
A Model of Dynamic Balance among the Three Spheres of Society – Markets, Governments, and Communities – Applied to Understanding the Relative Importance of Social Capital and Social Goods (2009), International Journal of Social Economics 36:5:535-65 online at http://swopec.hhs.se/gunwpe/abs/gunwpe0292.htm
Modeling the Effects of Economic Behavior in Determining the Organization of Society (2006), working paper online at http://gupea.ub.gu.se/dspace/bitstream/2077/2726/1/gunwpe0195.pdf
Communities and Social Goods: The case of the missing social realm (2002), http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/StudentEssays/Wicks1.htm
Also DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS:
Used Clothes as Development Aid: The political economy of rags (1996), report of a study for Sida, with Arne Bigsten, http://swopec.hhs.se/gunwpe/abs/gunwpe0017.htm
Used Clothes Exports to the Third World: Economic Considerations (1996), Development Policy Review 14:4 (December), with Arne Bigsten.
Also COPY-EDITING (and more):
Stylebook: Tips on Organization, Writing, and Formatting, http://swopec.hhs.se/gunwpe/abs/gunwpe0295.htm
PERSONAL:
Born in Iowa City, Iowa (1946); moved to Alaska (1957); also lived in the Bay Area of northern California (1969-’75), Washington, D.C. (1986-’92), Sweden (1992-the present).
Married (to a Swede) with two children, born in 1991 and 1994.
EDUCATION:
Graduated as valedictorian of East Anchorage High School (class of 412), and named one of 121 “Presidential Scholars” by President Lyndon Johnson (1964).
Attended the St. John’s College “Great Books” program – consistently ranked as one of the best undergraduate programs in America – first in Annapolis, Maryland (1964-’66) and then in Santa Fe, New Mexico (graduated 1968).[1]
Attended Starr King School for the Ministry (Unitarian-Universalist) in Berkeley, California (1969-’70), concentrating on popular social-welfare movements.
Studied math and natural sciences (pre-medical chemistry and biology) at Grove Street College (Oakland, CA), UC-Berkeley, and San Francisco State U. (1971-’73).
Studied child development and therapy for schizophrenic (autistic) children, Napa College (1970) and University of Alaska, Anchorage (1977).
Attended graduate program in counseling and community psychology (completed all Masters-level courses), University of Alaska, Anchorage (1980-’82).
Occasional classes in economics at the University of the District of Columbia (1988-’90) and George Washington University (also in Washington, D.C., 1990-’92), then at Göteborg University (1992-98).
Admitted to graduate program in economics at Göteborg University in 1998; have completed all 120 course-credits required for the Ph.D., half with “high pass”.
Conferences attended year 2000: Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (London); European Assn. for the Study of Science and Technology and (jointly) Society for Social Studies of Science (Vienna); and European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (Berlin); 10th World Congress of Social Economics of the Assn. for Social Economics (Cambridge, UK), presented paper.
Attended 2001: University of Copenhagen Institute of Economics Ph.D. course on Social Capital and Development, including 3rd Nordic Workshop in Development Economics, presented paper.
Attended 2002: conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics (Dublin), presented paper; class in economic anthropology, University of Oslo Summer School in Comparative Social Science Studies.
Ekonomie Licentiatexamen granted by Göteborg University, 28 February 2003: http://gup.ub.gu.se/gup/record/index.xsql?pubid=38271
Attended 2003: American Economics Association and Allied Social Science Meetings (Washington, D.C.); “The Future of Heterodox Economics”, sponsored by the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics (Kansas City), presented paper and chaired session.
Attended 2004: joint conference (“Private Powers and Public Domains: Redefining Relations Among States, Markets, and Societies”) of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and the Communitarian Summit (Washington, D.C.), presented paper.
Attended 2005: conference on Social Capital (Definitions, Measurement, and Applications) in Malta, sponsored by The Social Capital Foundation, presented paper.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE in ACCOUNTING/BUSINESS MANAGEMENT (also see next):
Professional tax-preparer, Anchorage, Alaska (1976).
Full-charge bookkeeper for an international law firm, Anchorage (1979-’80).
Accounting supervisor for a title insurance company, Anchorage (1985-’86).
Accountant and manager of a project (in Indonesia) for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI, an international economic development consulting firm), Washington, D.C. (1987-’90).
Manager, accountant, and chief financial officer, Boston Institute for Developing Economies (BIDE), Washington, D.C. (1987-’92).
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE in SOCIAL WELFARE WORK (also see previous):
Taught 4th and 5th grades in a remote Indian village, Alaska (1968-’69).
Worked with autistic children in a mental hospital, Napa, California (1970-’71).
Worked with disturbed teenagers, Berkeley, California (1971-’72).
Founded and directed a daycare center/preschool for 40-60 kids, Anchorage (1976-’78).
Counseled street alcoholics in a Salvation Army residential detoxification center, Anchorage (1980-’82).
Administrative director, Assn. to Unite the Democracies, Washington, D.C. (1986-’87); Board of Directors (1990-the present: now called Streit Council for a Union of Democracies).
Leadership Council, Alliance for our Common Future, Wash. DC (1988-’90).
Vice President and President, World Government Organizations Coalition, Washington, D.C. (1988-’90).
Co-organizer, international political and academic conference on "Euro-Atlantic Integration and Russia after September 11", Moscow (May 29-31, 2002).
OTHER WRITING and EDITING:
Co-founder and editor (1987-’89), World Democracy News (semi-annual newsletter, circulation up to 10,000), Washington, D.C.
Copy-editing: freelance, many thousands of pages, both in the GU economics department and elsewhere, including numerous articles for economics journals, World Bank and Sida reports, licentiate and doctoral theses, and many book chapters, as well as articles for medical journals (1993-the present);
OTHER EXPERIENCE:
Residence in a Zen Buddhist monastery, San Francisco and Tassajara, California (1973-’75).
5 months travel in Japan, China, SE Asia, India, Nepal, and the South Pacific (1978).
13 months travel in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh (1983-’84).
11 months travel, primarily in Sweden, the rest of Scandinavia, and the rest of Western Europe, but also a bit in the USSR and Eastern Europe (1984-’85).
I have also worked (during high-school and college years, or just after):
in construction (carpentry, electrical, plumbing);
in manufacturing (a cement-manufacturing plant, a sawmill, and a railroad-tie mill);
in law enforcement (as a deputized patrol-boat operator for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game in Prince William Sound);
in distribution (in retail, as well as in the U.S. Post Office);
in healthcare and natural sciences (as a veterinary assistant, and as a chemistry and physics laboratory assistant); and
in other services (in a restaurant; in a real estate appraisal agency; as a sailing instructor on Chesapeake Bay, Maryland; and as an elevator operator/tourist guide in the U.S. Senate).
[1] The St. John’s College “Great Books” program seeks to teach not so much knowledge as skills – the liberal arts of language and mathematics (or more completely, the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy), and to merge them not only with a reading of the great works in philosophy and theology, history and political science, literature and psychology, economics, etc., but also with the basic natural sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology. There are no lecture classes – all classes are run on student participation, questioning and discussion. There are lectures, but only as part of a special Friday night lecture series – often with guest lecturers from other colleges and universities – followed by a vigorous and lively “question period”. With a couple of small exceptions, the program is entirely “required” – that is, virtually no elective courses. In addition to twice-weekly seminars on “the Great Books” (consisting of two “tutors” and about 20 students, all of whom have read the work and are prepared to discuss it) and mostly experimental laboratory sessions, the program is organized into language tutorials (classes of perhaps 10 students and a “tutor”) which study Greek and English during the first two years, French and English the last two, and math tutorials, which start out with Euclid and work their way through Ptolemy to Copernicus and Kepler, Galileo and Newton, Lobachevsky and Einstein (among others). St. John’s has two campuses, the original one in Annapolis, Maryland, and a newer one in Santa Fe, New Mexico.