BRITISH historian Thomas Carlyle in 1849 described economics as the "dismal science." Most economists have helped maintain that reputation over the past century by being a generally humorless bunch.

For the past three years, though, an unusual event in Ireland has been trying in its own way to prove Carlyle wrong.

Kilkenomics is an economics festival - and if that term sounds like the mother of all oxymorons, consider this: Kilkenomics puts economists, businessmen and finance executives on a stage together with stand-up comedians, where they engage one another in intense and highly irreverent debates.

Every November for the last three years, Irish citizens of all ages - and from a broad income and professional spectrum - have gathered from around the country in the small but beautiful riverside town of Kilkenny, located at the center of the Emerald Isle.

There they pay not-insignificant amounts of money to enter small theaters where economists interact with stand-up comedians and the audience.

Why do these folks come, pay, listen, ask questions and applaud - and then return for more the following year? Why do they do this in a country mired in a prolonged and disastrous recession, where the aftermath of a real-estate boom and bust cycle makes the American experience seem almost mild by comparison?

And why, for that matter, do some of the world's most famous economists (Jeffrey Sachs), most accomplished fund managers (Peter Schiff) and most scathing commentators (Max Keiser) agree to participate in small-scale events for no fee and only minimal expenses paid?

For answers to these questions, Knowledge@Wharton turned to Kilkenomics co-creators Richard Cook and David McWilliams.

"In early 2009, as the financial crisis got worse, I was saying to myself: ?I'm a bright guy, but I don't understand what's going on. Yet I want and need to understand,'" says Cook. "I went to see David McWilliams's one-man show about the economic crisis...It seemed to me to be part stand-up, part theater and part lecture. That's where I got the idea."

Cook is a 46-year-old entrepreneur and impresario who, inter alia, invented a comedy festival called "The Cat Laughs" back in 1995. Despite - or perhaps because of - its location in the backwater of Kilkenny, this show has developed into one of the most highly rated events of its kind.

McWilliams, also 46, has crammed being a central banker, an investment banker, a media personality - including presenting a radio breakfast program and TV quiz show - as well as the author of four bestsellers about contemporary Ireland and a TV documentary presenter into his career to date.

"In May 2009, Richard - we had known each other since university - came to me and said, ?I have this notion of a show that brings economists and stand-up comedians together'," McWilliams recalls.

In riso veritas

In Cook's vision, the object of the exercise was to create clarity in a situation in which everyone was floundering in fog.

To achieve that ambitious goal, he knew he needed not economists - left to themselves, they just obfuscate even the obvious - but funny guys. "A comedian can clarify things for his audience. The best stand-up artists have the ability to make complex ideas accessible," he notes and, armed with this insight, he went to work.

It's the same idea Chaucer had when he wrote, "Many a true word is spoken in jest." And famous Irishman James Joyce said, "In riso veritas - nothing so reveals us as our laughter."

For the purposes of Kilkenomics, Cook told the comedians that he did not want them to be funny all the time. "Sure, do gags whenever an opportunity arises, but I want you to represent the ordinary person," he recalls telling them. "You will be the conduit to bring sanity to the crazy situation unfolding in Ireland."

McWilliams - who, unlike Cook, is a trained economist and has a deep understanding of the issues at stake - is far more scathing about his professional peers.

Hijacked by mathematicians

"Economics is far too important to be left to economists," he says. "But it has been hijacked by mathematicians and rarified theorists who cannot explain their ideas to ordinary people."

Thus, the watchword for Kilkenomics is that "what is important is rarely complicated, and what is complicated is rarely important."

The stand-up comedians deliver this message through their roles in the shows and thereby give the average citizen the permission to ask the questions and engage with the economists. This, in turn, brings out a different side of the economists, who have to speak directly to average citizens in terms that they understand.

In an effort to strip economic conversations of their arcane jargon, McWilliams and his associates have also produced a series of short videos that they call, "Punk Economics."

Putting the stand-up comics in effective control and making them the true representatives of the people was probably the key to the festival's success. This abstract idea was concretized in a stroke of theatrical inspiration: Cook requires all the comedians to dress formally, while all the economists and businessmen, no matter how prestigious they are in "real life," must don casual gear in Kilkenny.

Cook's task of lining up the comics and persuading them to take him seriously was easier than McWilliams's parallel job. He had to tap into the large band of academics, businessmen and financiers across the world whom he had worked with or for or around - people like Paul McCulley, the former chief economist of PIMCO, a fund management firm that oversees assets of US$1.6 trillion, and Martin Lousteau, former economics minister of Argentina - and get them to do something unheard of, in a place they had never heard of, just for the heck of it.

Their generally positive response is a testimony to McWilliams's brand of charm, flattery and chutzpah - as well as to the importance of having friends like Bono, surely the world's best-known living Irishman, and someone whose requests very few people will turn down.

Public service

Nothing could better illustrate the unique format of interaction between expert invitees and their knowledgeable audiences, which has become the hallmark of Kilkenomics.

Cook sees Kilkenomics as "a public service. "I've done several festivals, but I never felt with Kilkenomics the sense of elation I had with the others. Instead, I had the sense that what we were doing was germane to people's lives and offered them a way to come to grips with the big issues affecting them."

Despite its very Irish flavor - the warm welcome of the town and its people, the friendly and knowledgeable audiences, the sharp tongues and talents of the stand-up comedians - there is general agreement that Kilkenomics could and should "go global."

"Take one of our regular and most popular shows," says McWilliams of the aptly named "Jargon busting."

"An economics term or concept is presented to two teams, each of which comprises a comedian and an economist, with a comedian chairing the show. The economist explains what the term means to him and then the comedian gives his understanding of it."

Faced with the concept of "real and nominal interest rates," Karl Spain - one of Ireland's top comics and a Kilkenomics fixture - shot back with, "The girls were checking me out in the bar before the show, and it's fair to say that their interest in me was nominal." The audience gets to laugh.

Cook sees a clear opportunity, based on his view of the festival as a service to the public. "We think there is a market for this kind of festival, because its central premise is universal - the need to reclaim the language and terminology mangled by economists and governments and bring them back to the ordinary people."

Adapted from China Knowledg@Wharton. To read the original, please visit: http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn/index.cfm?fa=article&articleid=2752