Wednesday, May 4, 2022
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EDT
via Zoom
The global economic and financial system has been showing increasing signs of stress for many years, raising the likelihood of harmful “tipping points”. In large part, this has been due to the unintended consequences of well-meaning macroeconomic and regulatory policies. Now we must also confront negative supply shocks that will lower real growth and exacerbate inflationary tendencies over a number of years. Unfortunately, over recent years, many democratic countries have developed political “fault lines” that could now threaten the future of democracy itself. History provides many examples of political regime change triggered by environmental crises, pandemics, and above all economic and financial crises. In principle, these systemic fragilities could still be reduced but, in practice, there are many political obstacles to doing so.
Speakers:
William White is currently a Senior Fellow at the C D Howe Institute in Toronto. From 2009 until March 2018, he served as Chair of the Economic and Development Review Committee at the OECD in Paris. Prior to that, he spent fourteen years as Economic Adviser at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. In that role, he was responsible for all BIS research, data collection, and the organization of meetings for central bankers from around the world. Before joining the BIS in 1994, he was the Deputy Governor responsible for international affairs at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa.
In addition to publishing widely, Mr. White’s other activities have included membership of the Issing Committee, advising Chancellor Merkel on G20 issues. In addition to earlier prizes awarded in Europe, in 2016 Mr. White received the Adam Smith Award, the highest award of the National Association of Business Economists in Washington.
Discussants:
Martha Finnemore is University Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. Her research focuses on global governance, international organizations, cybersecurity, ethics, and social theory. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a non-resident scholar at the Cyber Policy Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been a visiting research fellow at the Brookings Institution and Stanford University, and has received fellowships or grants from the MacArthur Foundation, DoD’s Minerva Research Initiative, the Social Science Research Council, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace.
Alan Kirman is the Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (EHESS) in Paris, Professor Emeritus at Aix-Marseille University, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and Chief Adviser to the OECD NAEC (New Approaches to Economic Challenges) initiative. He has a B.A. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.
Alan was formerly a Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Warwick, and the European University Institute in Florence. He has a Ph.D. Honoris Causa from the Jaime 1 University in Castellon, Spain. He has published more than 160 articles in international journals and is the author of five books including Complex Economics: from Individual to Collective Rationality and editor of 18 others.
Professor Kirman is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, of the European Economics Association, and member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He was awarded the Humboldt Prize and is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. He is panel chair for the 2022 Advanced Grant programme of the ERC in SHS, Honorary Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Associate Editor of several other journals..
Moderator:
Sunil Sharma is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, and a Senior Associate at the Council on Economic Policies, Zurich, Switzerland. He was Assistant Director in the IMF’s Research Department from 2015-2018, and the Director of the IMF-Singapore Regional Training Institute (STI) in Singapore from 2006-2015. Before moving to Singapore in 2006, Sunil was Chief of the IMF Institute’s Asian Division in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the IMF in 1992, he was on the Economics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Sunil has a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Economics from Cornell University, a M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and a B.A. (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. He has published widely on economic and financial topics, and his current interests include governance, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.
