Brent Wheeler Group

The continuing work of Brent Wheeler in:

  1. Economics and Investment
  2. Jazz and music
  3. Exploring understanding and explanation

The former brentwheeler.com site has been overtaken with a wider and slightly different view of the world but the fundamental drivers continue.

Economics – and the functioning of markets, transactions and trade in every day commercial and non commercial spheres continues to be a key focus of comments on this blog, ways to interest the world and insights into every day goings on. Main areas of interest continue to be financial markets and capital – and the investment processes, transactions, contracts and all that go with all that. Law and economics the productive and sometimes uneasy cluster of activity and institutional arrangements which set and incentivise so many relationships remains key. All of which spills out into natural resource use and the environments it occurs in and is hard to ignore also appears.

Jazz and music – are age old and everchanging interests that started in childhood. Main focus is no bebop and the hardbop/cool era that followed. The interest in contemporary works is selective and in all probability reflects those interests plus all classic jazz. Early playing and focus tended to be very much on rock and rock blues (of the Chicago ilk), and two dominant forces were Grateful Dead and Steely Dan. More recently the rise of home recording and production has led to the establishment of a “studio” for recording, mixing and all things production.

Understanding and Exploration – goes all the way back to my Ph.D work and the first geographers to delve into epistemology. That led the entire history and thinking in scientific explanation thread which has got broader not narrower as time has marched on. The compulsion to “try to explain” is fairly fundamental and I have written on and off about it for my entire career. It is abstract, rather conceptual, demanding but immensely rewarding and offers serious potential for improving welfare. An attempt to assemble a lifetime’s thoughts into systematic notes about all this has begun. No end is in sight and no apology is offered for the undoubted absence of simple, coherent framework.