Wednesday, October 18th, 2023
2:30-4 p.m EDT
2115 G Street NW
The Columbian College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Economics presented a macro-international seminar with Oksana Leukhina, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Category: International Trade
Macro-International Seminar: Tony Zhang
Thursday, October 12th, 2023
2:30-4 p.m EDT
2115 G Street NW
The Columbian College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Economics held a macro-international seminar with Tony Zhang, senior economist at the Federal Reserve.
12th Annual WAITS
Friday, April 21st, 2023,
9:00 am – 7:00pm ET
134 Van Metre Hall Auditorium
George Mason University
Conference Program
08:30-08:55: Breakfast
08:55-09:00: Opening Remarks
Session I: Frictions and Trade
9:00-9:45: Brian Cevallos Fujiy (U.S. Census Bureau), “Cultural Proximity and Production
Networks”
Discussant: Yingyan Zhao (GWU)
9:45-10:30: Christian Volpe (Inter-American Development Bank), “The Value of International
Certifications”
Discussant: Andrew McCallum (Federal Reserve Board)
10:30-11:00: Coffee Break
Session II: Immigration
11:00-11:45: Mine Senses (JHU SAIS), “The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the United States:
Evidence at the Local Level”
Discussant: Charly Porcher (Georgetown)
11:45-12:30: Michael Clemens (GMU), “The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions on US
Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery”
Discussant: Juan Blyde (Inter-American Development Bank)
12:30-13:15: Lunch
Session III: Trade and Inequality
13:15-14:00: Miguel Acosta (Federal Reserve Board), “The Regressive Nature of the U.S. Tariff
Code: Origins and Implications”
Discussant: Daniel Bernhofen (American)
14:00-14:45: Kara Reynolds (American), “Backlash against Trade in an Unequal World”
Discussant: Cristina Tello-Trillo (U.S. Census Bureau)
14:45-15:15: Coffee Break
Session IV: The Pandemic Trade Shock
15:15-16:00: Ariel Weinberger (GWU), “Surviving Pandemics: The Role of Spillovers”
Discussant: Anne Beck (World Bank)
16:00-16:45: Dhevaki Ghose (World Bank), “Production Networks and Firm-Level Elasticities
of Substitution”
Discussant: Ritam Chauri (JHU SAIS)
16:45-17:30: Ferdinando Monte (Georgetown), “Remote Work and City Structure”
Discussant: Maurice Kugler (GMU)
17:30-18:30: Reception
The New Face of Globalization
Tuesday, April 11th, 2023
5-6:30 p.m EDT
In-Person
The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to a discussion of “The New Face of Globalization” featuring speakers Richard Baldwin, Professor of International Economics, Geneva Graduate Institute and Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Anabel González, Deputy Director General, World Trade Organization, Aaditya Mattoo, Chief Economist, East Asia and Pacific, The World Bank, and Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Growth Dialogue Director and IIEP faculty affiliate Danny Leipziger will moderate.
There is a sense that fragmented globalization is the new normal and this involves additional elements of explicit or implicit protectionism and national trade and industrial policies in some key countries. To better understand these new developments and to gauge their importance and the possible impact on global trade and finance, join us to hear from a high-level panel of experts who will be convened to discuss these issues
About the Speakers:
Anabel González (Costa Rica) has served as WTO Deputy Director-General since June 2021. Ms. González is a renowned global expert on trade, investment and economic development with a proven managerial track record in international organizations and the public sector. In government, Ms Gonzalez served as Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica; Special Ambassador and Chief Negotiator; Vice-Minister of Trade and Director-General for Trade Negotiations. She also worked as Director-General of the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE). Ms González also served at the World Bank as Senior Director of the Global Practice on Trade and Competitiveness, the WTO as Director of the Agriculture and Commodities Division and as Senior Consultant with the Inter-American Development Bank. More recently, Ms González has worked as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where she hosted the virtual series Trade Winds, and as Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group. Ms González obtained her master’s degree from Georgetown University Law Center with the highest academic distinction and has published extensively and lectured across the world on trade, investment and economic development.
Aaditya Mattoo is Chief Economist of the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank. He specializes in development, trade and international cooperation, and provides policy advice to governments. He is also Co-Director of the World Development Report 2020 on Global Value Chains. Prior to this he was the Research Manager, Trade and Integration, at the World Bank. Before he joined the Bank, Mr. Mattoo was Economic Counsellor at the World Trade Organization and taught economics at the University of Sussex and Churchill College, Cambridge University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and an M.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford. He has published on development, trade, trade in services, and international trade agreements in academic and other journals and his work has been cited in the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, and Time Magazine.
Richard Baldwin is Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva since 1991, and Editor-in-Chief of Vox since he founded it in June 2007. He was President/Director of CEPR (2014-2018), and a visiting professor at Oxford (2012-2015), and MIT (2003). In terms of government service, he was a Senior Staff Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in the Bush Administration (1990-1991) on leave from Columbia University Business School where he was Associate Professor. He did his PhD in Economics at MIT with Paul Krugman with whom he has co-authored several articles. He advises governments and international organisation around the world, and is the author of numerous books and articles on international trade, globalisation, regionalism, and European integration. His 2016 book, The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalisation, was listed by Lawrence Summers as one of the five most important books on globalisation ever. His latest book, The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work, was published in February 2019.
He wrote his PhD at MIT under the guidance of Paul Krugman, with whom he has co-author a half dozen articles. His MSc in economics is from LSE, his BA in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he has honorary doctorates from the Turku School of Economics and Business in Finland (2005), the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland (2012), and the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), in Peru (2014).
He is a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Stewardship Board on Trade and Investment Issues from 2016, having been a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Trade from 2009 to 2015. He was Vice Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) in Washington (2008 – 2012), and an Elected Member on the Council of the European Economic Association, (1999-2004, 2006-2011).
About the Moderator:
Dr. Danny Leipziger is a Professor of International Business and International Affairs at the George Washington University and Director of the Growth Dialogue. He is a faculty affiliate of the Institute for International Economic Policy. Prior to joining GW, Prof. Leipziger was Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management at the World Bank (2004-2009). Dr. Leipziger held senior management positions in East Asia and Latin America Regions. He was the World Bank’s Director for Finance, Private Sector, and Infrastructure for Latin America (1998-2004). He served previously in the U.S. Department of State and was a Member of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff. Dr. Leipziger was Vice Chair of the Spence Commission on Growth and Development, and he served on the WEF Council on Economic Progress.
An economist with a Ph. D. from Brown University, he has published widely in development economics, finance and banking, and on East Asia and Latin America. He is the author of several books, including Lessons of East Asia (U. of Michigan Press), Stuck in the Middle (Brookings Institution), and Globalization and Growth, and more than 50 refereed and published articles in journals and other outlets.
Cosponsored by GW-CIBER and the Growth Dialogue
Trade Secret? How AI is Changing Trade and How Trade Agreements Address AI
Friday, September 30th, 2022
Artificial intelligence is both expanding trade and altering trade. Moreover, a growing number of digital trade agreements include language to encourage AI. For example, some include provisions encouraging the free flow of data and/ or language requiring that public data when open be provided in a machine readable format. But policymakers are just beginning to figure out how encourage AI (as example to incentivize multi- sectoral data sharing). Meanwhile, more than 60 countries have AI strategies and 11 have data strategies. Policymakers could alter comparative advantage in data through various approaches to regulating data or the data giants. This webinar will feature two scholars who have recently written on the relationship between AI and trade.
Speakers:
Emily Jones, Associate Professor, Blavatnik School of Government Oxford University, author of Digital Disruption: AI and International Trade Policy.
Neha Mishra, Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute, Geneva, author of Regulating artificial intelligence through digital trade agreements
Moderator:
Research Professor Susan Aaronson, Director of the Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub, GWU
Are China and India Likely to Miss the Convergence?
Wednesday, April 13th, 2022
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. EDT / 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. IST
via Zoom
We were pleased to invite you to the sixth webinar in the 2021-2022 Envisioning India series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. This is a platform for dialogue and debate in a series of important discussions.
This event featured Arvind Subramanian, Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, and Kalpana Kochhar, Director of Development Policy and Finance at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, provided discussant remarks.
The event reflected on the development experiences, similar and different, of China and India, as well as their prospects going forward.
The Envisioning India series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh, Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber.
About the Speaker:
Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) to the Government of India between 2014 and 2018, is now Senior Fellow, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development. Previously, he was Professor at Ashoka University (2020-21), taught at the Harvard Kennedy School (2018-2020), and was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (2011-2014). Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers in 2011. As CEA, he oversaw the publication of the annual Economic Survey of India, which became a widely read document on Indian economic policy and development. For example, the 2018 Survey had 20 million views from over 190 countries in its first year of publication. Among the major ideas and policies he initiated and helped implement were a simplified goods and services tax (GST), attempts to tackle the Twin Balance Sheet challenge, creating the financial and digital platform for connectivity (the so-called JAM trinity), charting a new fiscal framework, and Universal Basic Income. Announcing his departure as CEA, the former Finance Minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley wrote a Facebook post, Thank You, Arvind. His award-winning book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance was published in September 2011 and had printed 130,000 copies world-wide in four languages. His latest, best-selling book, reflecting on his time in India, “Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Modi-Jaitley Economy,” was published by Penguin Random House in December 2018.
Joshua Felman is currently the head of JH Consulting, providing economic advice to academics and policy practitioners. Before that, he was for many years a senior official at the IMF, where he specialized in Asia and especially India.
His familiarity with India started in the 1980s, when he first began analyzing the economy, as it started to open up to the outside world. During the boom of the mid-2000s, he moved to Delhi to take charge of the IMF’s India office. And in 2015 he returned to India to work for several years in the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance.
Mr. Felman also has extensive familiarity with crises. During the East Asian crisis, he was posted to the IMF’s Jakarta office, where he worked closely with the authorities as they reconstructed a shattered financial system, following the collapse of more than 200 banks. Then, he led the IMF’s operations in the Philippines, as they sought to overcome the lingering effects of the crisis. And after that he led the IMF’s work in Korea, when that country was suffering from a household debt crisis.
Following the Global Financial Crisis, he was appointed Assistant Director in the IMF’s Research Department, where he worked closely with Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard, analyzing the implications for the global economy — and also for our understanding of economics.
Mr. Felman did his graduate work at Oxford University in England.
About the Discussants:
Dr. Kalpana Kochhar is Director, Development Policy and Finance at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to taking this position, she spent 33 years at the IMF, ending her career there as the Director of the Human Resources Department of the IMF between 2016 and 2021. She has also held positions as Deputy Director in the Asia and Pacific Department of the IMF where she worked on India, China, Korea, Japan and several other Asian countries, and in the Strategy, Policy and Review Department where she launched the IMF’s work on the macroeconomic implications of gender inequality and women’s economic empowerment. Between 2010 and 2012, she was seconded to the World Bank as the Chief Economist for the South Asia Region of the World Bank. Ms. Kochhar’s research interests and publications have been on emerging markets including India and China, and jobs and inclusive growth, gender and inequality issues, structural reforms, and regional integration in South Asia. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Economics from Brown University and an M.A. in Economics from Delhi School of Economics in India. She has a B.A in Economics from Madras University in India.
David Dollar
is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution and host of the Brookings trade podcast, Dollar&Sense. He is a leading expert on China’s economy and U.S.-China economic relations. From 2009 to 2013, Dollar was the U.S. Treasury’s economic and financial emissary to China, based in Beijing, facilitating the macroeconomic and financial policy dialogue between the United States and China. Prior to joining Treasury, Dollar worked 20 years for the World Bank, serving as country director for China and Mongolia, based in Beijing (2004-2009). His other World Bank assignments focused on Asian economies, including South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India. Dollar also worked in the World Bank’s research department. His publications focus on economic reform in China, globalization, and economic growth. He also taught economics at University of California Los Angeles, during which time he spent a semester in Beijing at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1986. He has a doctorate in economics from New York University and a bachelor’s in Chinese history and language from Dartmouth College.
China’s rebranding campaign during the Covid-19 pandemic: How successful is it?
Friday, April 22, 2022,
9:30-11 a.m. ET
Lindner Family Commons (in-person) and via Zoom
At this event Dr. Yanzhong Huang will examine China’s efforts to improve its international image and project global influence by looking at three key aspects of the campaign 1) the efforts to promote China’s pandemic response model; 2) its efforts to frame itself as a leader in the provision of global public goods; and 3) its efforts to dispute the Covid-19 origins.
Speaker:
Dr. Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directs the Global Health Governance roundtable series. He is also a professor and the director of global health studies at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations, where he developed the first academic concentration among U.S. professional schools of international affairs that explicitly addresses the security and foreign policy aspects of health issues. He is the founding editor of Global Health Governance: The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm.
Dr. Huang has written extensively on China and global health. He is the author of Governing Health in Contemporary China (2013) and Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State (2020). He has also published numerous reports, journal articles, and book chapters, including articles in Survival, Foreign Affairs, Public Health, Bioterrorism and Biosecurity, and China Leadership Monitor, as well as opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and the South China Morning Post, among others. In 2006, he co-authored the first scholarly article that systematically examined China’s soft power.
Dr. Huang has testified before U.S. congressional committees many times and regularly is consulted by major media outlets, the private sector, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations on global health issues and China. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and a board member of the Institute of Global Health (Georgia). In 2012, InsideJersey listed him as one of the “20 Brainiest People in New Jersey.” He previously was a research associate at the National Asia Research Program, a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, an associate fellow at the Asia Society, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University. He obtained his BA and MA from Fudan University and his PhD from the University of Chicago.
Discussants:
Dr. Zoë McLaren is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and an Affiliate of the Health Econometrics and Data Group at York University. Dr. McLaren is a health economist whose research informs health and economic policy to combat infectious disease epidemics including HIV, tuberculosis and COVID19 in the United States and abroad. She develops rigorous applied statistical approaches to answer important policy questions using real-world data. Her work builds the evidence base in three key research areas: (1) the impact of health and economic policies to fight HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and COVID-19 globally, (2) the relationship between access to health resources and economic outcomes, and (3) the causes of persistent poverty. Dr. McLaren was formerly an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University Elliot School of International Affairs. She received her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Economics from the University of Michigan and her B.A. from Dartmouth College.
Joan Kaufman is the NY–based Senior Director for Academic Programs for the Schwarzman Scholars Program. She is Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University where she teaches on global health policy. Dr. Kaufman is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations. An expert on both China and global health policy, she was the Director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia (Beijing) from 2012-2016 and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. From 2002-2010 she was based at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where she founded and directed the AIDS Public Policy Project. She was Distinguished Scientist, Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of the Master Program in Health Policy and Management at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management from 2003-2012. She was selected as a Radcliffe fellow in residence at Harvard from 2001-2002. She has lived and worked in China for 15 years since 1980 for the United Nations (1980-1984) the Ford Foundation (1996-2001), as the China Team Leader for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (2002-2012), and Columbia University (2012-2016). She holds a Doctorate in Public Health from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, as well as a MA and BA cum laude in Chinese Studies. She serves on the Advisory Boards for Sup China, Uplift International, and several Chinese NGOs, has consulted for many foundations and international organizations and has published widely on global health policy, HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, reproductive health, population, emerging infectious diseases, and civil society with a focus on China.
This event is part of our China conference series and is cosponsored by the Sigur Center and GW-CIBER.
Trade Links: New Rules for a New World
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET
Lindner Family Commons, 6th floor at the Elliott School
and via Zoom
The World Trade Organization is undergoing an existential crisis. Trade links the world not only through the flow of international commerce in goods, services, and ideas; but also through its economic, environmental, and social impacts. Trade links are supported by a WTO trading system founded on rules established in the 20th century which do not account for all the modern changes in the global economy.
James Bacchus, a founder of the WTO, posits that this global organization can survive and continue to succeed only if the trade links among WTO members are revitalized and reimagined. He explains how to bring the WTO into the twenty-first century, exploring the ways it can be utilized to combat future pandemics and climate change and advance sustainable development, all while continuing to foster free trade.
This event was co-sponsored by the Washington International Trade Association (WITA).
About the Speaker
James Bacchus is Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity of the University of Central Florida. He was a founding judge and was twice Chairman – the chief judge – of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization. He is a former Member of the Congress of the United States, from Florida, and a former US trade negotiator. He serves on the United States Leadership Council of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, served on the High-Level Advisory Panel to the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, chaired the global council on governance for sustainability of the World Economic Forum, and chaired the Commission on Trade and Investment Policy of the International Chamber of Commerce. He is adjunct scholar for the Cato Institute in Washington, DC; global fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Canada; distinguished fellow of the European Institute for International Law and International Relations, and Pao Yue-Kong University Chair Professor of international law at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. Professor Bacchus is the author of Trade and Freedom (London: Cameron May, 2004); The Willing World: Shaping and Sharing a Sustainable Global Prosperity (London: Cambridge University Press, 2018), named one of the “Best Books of the Year” by the Financial Times of London; and, with co-author Inu Manak, The Development Dimension: Special and Differential Treatment in Trade (London: Routledge Press, 2021). His new book, Trade Links: New Rules for a New World, will be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2022.
Introductory Remarks
Alyssa Ayres is the Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Before joining the Elliott School, she was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia under the Obama administration. She holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago.
About the Moderator
Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
GW Students, Faculty, and Staff are welcome to attend this event in person at the address below or via Zoom:
Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Family Commons, Suite 602
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
Alumni, Guests, and General Public are also welcome to attend the event in person or via Zoom. We require that guests follow the George Washington University Visitor guidelines.
Looking for Balanced Growth in China: Insights from the latest IMF Staff report
Friday, March 4th, 2022
9:30 – 11:00 a.m. ET
via Zoom
The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to the fourth event in the 14th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference will take place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).
China’s recovery is well advanced—but it lacks balance and momentum has slowed, reflecting the rapid withdrawal of fiscal support, lagging consumption amid recurrent COVID-19 outbreaks despite a successful vaccination campaign, and slowing real estate investment following policy efforts to reduce leverage in the property sector. Regulatory measures targeting the technology sector, intended to enhance competition, consumer privacy, and data governance, have increased policy uncertainty. China’s climate strategy has begun to take shape with the release of detailed action plans. Productivity growth is declining as decoupling pressures are increasing, while a stalling of key structural reforms and rebalancing are delaying the transition to “high-quality”—balanced, inclusive and green—growth.
China rebounded strongly from the pandemic, but growth is losing momentum while remaining overly dependent on support from investment and exports. This imperils the nation’s long-sought transition to sustained high-quality growth that’s balanced, inclusive and green.
While China’s many challenges have no easy answer, the key message of the IMF’s annual Article IV review of the economy is that rebalancing toward a more consumption-based model will boost growth prospects in the short term and deliver high-quality expansion in the long run. Importantly, it will also help bring the country closer to achieving its climate goal of carbon neutrality before 2060.
About the Speakers:
Helge Berger is an Assistant Director in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department. He is also an adjunct professor of monetary economics at Free University of Berlin. He was educated in Munich, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. and the venia legendi for economics. Previously, he taught at Princeton University as a John Foster Dulles Visiting Lecturer, helped to coordinate the Munich-based CESifo network as its research director, and served as full professor (tenured) at Free University Berlin. At the IMF, he has worked in the Research and European Departments.
Wenjie Chen is a senior economist on the IMF’s China team. Prior to that, she worked in the Research Department, where she was part of the World Economic Outlook team. She has also worked in the African Department on South Africa and South Sudan. Before joining the IMF, Wenjie worked as a professor at George Washington University School of Business and Elliott School of International Affairs. She received her MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan.
About the Discussant:
Chao Wei is an associate professor of economics at the George Washington University who previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the 2010-2011 Economic Policy Fellow at the Congressional Budget Office. Her primary research areas are: Macroeconomics, Labor Economics, Financial Economics, China Economy, and Energy and Environmental Economics. She has published papers, including at the top journal of the economics field, on the impact of energy price shocks on the stock market, the effect of personal and corporate income taxes on asset returns, and the endogenous determination of gasoline use and vehicle fuel efficiency. Her recent research focuses on the relationship between family structure and parental human capital investment, marital and labor supply behaviors of older adults, and the trade-off between stimulus and environmental objectives in the green stimulus programs. She holds degrees from Fudan University (BA), Columbia University (M.A.) and Stanford University (Ph.D.).
About the Moderator:
Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
Trade Shocks and Supply Chains: What is Happening to the WTO and Globalization?
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. EST/6:30 – 7:30 p.m. CET
via Zoom
We were pleased to invite you to join the Insitute for International Economic Policy for a webinar featuring the Chief Economist of the WTO Bob Koopman discussing “Trade Shocks and Supply Chains: What is Happening to the WTO and Globalization?” Prof. Michael Moore moderated and IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh provided welcoming remarks. This event was in partnership with the GW Department of Economics Trade and Development Workshop organized by Yingyan Zhao and Remi Jedwab.
Since 2016 international trade has been subjected to increased geo-political uncertainty and more recently a major global health shock. How has the WTO and globalization responded? The initial Trump administration policy shocks resulted in mainly higher prices and trade diversion. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a number of restrictive trade policies mainly due to health policy restrictions, but also substantial fiscal and monetary policy responses in the advanced economies. The combination of economic and health policies brought about a dramatic compositional shift in demand from in-person services to tradeable goods stressing global and national supply chains. How has the global trading system responded? What role, if any, will globalization play in the future on the Phillips curve and inflation? These are important questions for the global trading system given the prospect of continued global health challenges and rising climate challenges.
About the Speaker:
Bob Koopman is currently the Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization and an Adjunct Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. At the WTO Bob serves as Chief Economic Counsellor to the Director-General, and provides the WTO Secretariat and Member Countries with analysis and information that promotes a deeper understanding of trade and trade policy’s role in economic growth and development. At the Graduate Institute Bob teaches courses on international trade. Bob also serves as the WTO representative to the G20 Trade and Investment Working Group and the G20 Framework Group. He is a research associate of CEPR, London, and an editor of the Springer Series on Advances in Applied General Equilibrium Modeling.
Prior to joining the WTO and the Graduate Institute Bob was Chief Operating Officer at the United States International Trade Commission and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at Georgetown University. Bob has also previously served as Chief Economist at the USITC, Deputy Administrator for social sciences at what is now the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, USDA, and various leadership and analyst positions at the Economic Research Service of USDA.
About the Moderator:
Michael Moore received his B.A. in liberal arts from the University of Texas at Austin and his M.S. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is Director of the Masters of Arts in International Economic Policy program and has been a faculty member at the Elliott School since receiving his doctorate in 1988. Professor Moore teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in international trade theory and policy as well as international macroeconomics. He also has taught international economics to US diplomats at the Foreign Service Institute and students at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (Sciences-Po) in Paris. He has published in numerous academic journals including the Journal of International Economics, International Trade Journal, Canadian Journal of Economics, Review of International Economics, European Journal of Political Economy, and Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, and has been a contributor to five books. His commentary has appeared in numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Financial Times, CNN, CBC, NPR, and NBC.
Professor Moore has served as Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy, Director of the International Trade and Investment Policy Program, and Associate Dean at the Elliott School.
Professor Moore served as Senior Economist for international trade on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors from 2002 to 2003.
Welcoming Remarks:
Jay Shambaugh is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
Escaping Sanctions? Iranian Firm Response and Market Reallocation Under International Trade Sanctions
Tuesday, November 9th, 2021
12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST
via Zoom
How do targeted firms respond to international trade sanctions? While the macroeconomic effect of trade sanctions has been extensively studied, little is known about how trade sanctions shape firm dynamics and their heterogeneous effects in a targeted country. Exploring detailed Iranian manufacturing firm surveys, I examine firm-level asymmetric effects of the 2012-2013 U.S. and EU trade sanctions against Iran due to Iran’s nuclear program. Empirical analysis shows that the sanctions cut Iranian firms’ exports in half and imports by over 30 percent and, on average, reduced firm-level productivity, profit, revenue, and employment. However, intriguingly, exporting firms were found to mitigate negative effects of sanctions through increased presence in the domestic market, transferring sanction shocks to non-exporting firms. At the same time, importing firms responded to sanctions by sourcing more domestic inputs at the expense of non-importing firms. Based on a stylized model featuring heterogeneous firms with capacity constraints, I show that the export sanctions increased consumer welfare by 4.35 percent with decreasing domestic prices for a given income level. In contrast, import sanctions led to a 7.5 percent consumer welfare loss by increasing prices. The stylized model implies alleviating exporting firm capacity constraints during adverse trade shocks increases positive impacts through export channels.
About the Speaker:
Ebad Ebadi is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at George Washington University, where he researches the impacts of economic sanctions on firms and individuals and gender inequality in the Iranian labor market. He has written for numerous publications, including the Atlantic Council. He holds M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of Tehran.
Linkages with Multinationals: The Effects on Domestic Firms’ Exports
Tuesday, November 16th, 2021
12.30 p.m. – 2.00 p.m. ET
via Zoom
Christian Volpe Martincus, Principal Economist at the Integration and Trade Sector (INT) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will present his paper, Linkages with Multinationals: The Effects on Domestic Firms’ Exports.
Abstract: Multinational firms’ affiliates are typically larger, more productive, and more likely to export. Existing empirical evidence suggests that domestic firms that are connected to these affiliates tend to have better export outcomes. However, this evidence relies on firm-to-firm connections that are assumed based on country-level input-output matrices rather than actually observed. In this paper, we examine, whether and how linking up with multinational firms results in improved export performance for domestic firms, using a unique dataset that includes data on firm-to-firm purchases and sales both within and across countries. Our estimation results indicate that selling to a multinational firm is associated with a significant increase in the probability that a domestic firm starts to export, especially to a country where the respective multinational firm is headquartered or has an affiliate. This estimated effect is larger when the multinational firms themselves sell abroad and when the linkage intensity is higher.
About the Speaker:
Christian Volpe Martincus is Principal Economist at the Integration and Trade Sector (INT) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). He previously worked for the Ministry of the Economy of the Province of Buenos Aires and was advisor at the MERCOSUR Commission of the National Representatives Chamber in Argentina.
He is the technical leader of INT impact evaluation work related to trade and investment operations and initiatives, the INT networks ELSNIT and TIGN, and the INT Trade Policy Research Seminar Series. He has also advised several governments in both Latin American and the Caribbean and OECD countries on export promotion, investment promotion, trade facilitation, and the evaluation of the respective programs.
Christian holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn, Germany and a Master in Economics from the National University of La Plata (Argentina). He has presented in numerous international academic and policy workshops and conferences and has published on international trade and economic geography in several international professional journals. Christian is a CESifo Research Fellow and serves as an Associate Editor for the Review of International Economics.
Taking on China – the Imperative and agenda for India
Wednesday, November 17th, 2021
8:30 – 10:00 am EDT / 7:00 – 8:30 pm IST
This was the third webinar in the 2021-2022 Envisioning India series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy, a platform for dialogue and debate. We invited you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.
The Envisioning India series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh, Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. The third event of the 2021-2022 series featured Ambassador (Retd) Gautam Bambawale (Distinguished Professor, Symbiosis University, Pune, India) and Dr. Ganesh Natarajan (5F World and Lighthouse Communities) to discuss “Taking on China – The Imperative and Agenda for India.” Manjeet Kripalani (Gateway House) and Dr. Jaimini Bhagwati (CSEP) provided discussant remarks.
India and China were more or less comparable in terms of economy size and global influence in the past but the rapid growth of China in the last five decades has taken China to near super power status and an economy which is over four times the size of India (14 trillion vs 3 trillion USD). This has seen increasing belligerence from China in the last year or so and we believe that India must act and act on multiple fronts if we are to retain our position on the High Table of global affairs.
Six senior members of the Pune International Center in India came together over a one year period in 2021-21 to produce a book Rising to the China Challenge: Winning Through Strategic Patience and Economic Growth that has been recently published and widely read in political, diplomatic and economic circles. Our submission is that there is a need for significant policy responses and diplomatic moves on the one hand and a renewed focus on restoring economic symmetry with China on the other to restore some level of equilibrium between the two nations. Two of the authors, Ambassador (Retd) Gautam Bambawale and Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, will present the book.
In the talk, three areas of great importance will be addressed.
1. Redressing the economic imbalance by focusing on industry sectors where India has the opportunity to redress the huge disparity that currently exists in domestic independence and global position, sectors where we have the imperative and the ability to catch up and build much higher values in the years to come and finally areas where India can indeed take the lead and build jobs for the future.
2. Diplomatic responses needed from India by having new models of engagement with global nations of importance, China’s neighbors and India’s own neighbors to counter China’s growing dominance in world affairs.
3. India’s own domestic and international imperatives and policies and programs that are essential to set India on a path of sustained and significant growth as a democratic force of significance to the world.
About the Speakers:
Ambassador (Retd) Gautam Bambawale was a member of the Indian Foreign Service from 1984 to 2018. He was India’s Ambassador to Bhutan, Pakistan and China. Bambawale was stationed in Washington DC in 2004-07 during the Indo-US nuclear deal which transformed ties between the two countries. He has been India’s first Consul General in Guangzhou (China) 2007-09. He was Director of the Indian Cultural Centre, Berlin 1994-98. Ambassador Bambawale worked in the Prime Minister’s Office 2002-04. At the Ministry of External Affairs he was Joint Secretary for East Asia from 2009-2014. Bambawale has dealt with China for 15 years of his 34 year diplomatic career. He is currently Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Symbiosis International University, Pune.
Dr. Ganesh Natarajan is Chairman and Co-Founder of 5F World and Lighthouse Communities. He is an investor and mentor to digital platforms and AI entrepreneurs in India and USA. Ganesh is a Board Director of SBI, Hinduja Global Solutions and Asian Venture Philanthropy Network and is Chairman of Honeywell Automation India. Ganesh is an alumnus of IIT Bombay and Harvard Business School and a recipient of IIT’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.
About the Discussants:
Manjeet Kripalani is Executive Director of Gateway House. Prior to the founding of Gateway House, she was India Bureau chief of Businessweek magazine from 1996 to 2009. During her extensive career in journalism (Businessweek, Worth and Forbes magazines, New York), she has won several awards, including the Gerald Loeb Award, the George Polk Award, Overseas Press Club and Daniel Pearl Awards. Kripalani was the 2006-07 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, which inspired her to found Gateway House. Her political career spans being the deputy press secretary to Steve Forbes during his first run in 1995-96 as Republican candidate for U.S. President in New Jersey, to being press secretary for the Lok Sabha campaign for independent candidate Meera Sanyal in 2008 and 2014 in Mumbai. Kripalani holds two bachelor’s degrees from Bombay University (Bachelor of Law, Bachelor of Arts in English and History) and a master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York. She sits on the executive board of Gateway House and is a member of the Rotary Club of Bombay.
Dr. Jaimini Bhagwati is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), Chairman of the Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (IDFC) Asset Management Trustee Company and Board member of IDFC Limited. Dr. Bhagwati was India’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and India’s Ambassador to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg. He has held senior positions in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Department of Atomic Anergy and the World bank Treasury. His responsibilities at the World Bank included bond funding including execution of over-the-counter derivatives transactions. Between 2013-2018 Dr. Bhagwati was the Reserve Bank of India Chair Professor at ICRIER. Dr. Bhagwati was educated at St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, Tufts University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.
Latin America: The Pandemic, Poverty, and Policy
Wednesday, November 17th, 2021
4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. EST
via Zoom
This was a panel discussion on Wednesday, November 17th on “Latin America: The Pandemic, Poverty, and Policy.” The event featured panelists Mauricio Cárdenas (Columbia University and former Minister of Finance, Colombia), Benigno López Benítez (Inter-American Development Bank and former Minister of Finance, Paraguay), Nora Lustig (Tulane University), and William Maloney (The World Bank). Danny Leipziger (GWU) moderated the event.
This panel discussion aimed to review the issues related to the direct impact of pandemics on the poor in Latin America. The discussion focused on the urgent need to design policies to lessen the negative impact on the most vulnerable in a region most affected by recent events.
This event is co-sponsored by the Growth Dialogue, the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER), the Latin American and Hemispheric Studies Program at the George Washington University, and the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP).
About the Panelists
Dr. Mauricio Cárdenas Santamaría is a former Minister of Finance and Public Credit of Colombia and Visiting Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. An economist and politician, he served as the 69th Minister of Finance and formerly as Minister of Mines and Energy of Colombia in the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón. Prior to this, he was a Senior Fellow and Director of the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution.
In a long and distinguished career in the Government of Colombia, he has also served as Minister of Economic Development, as Minister of Transport, and as Director of the National Planning Department. In the private sector, he has served as Director of the Higher Education and Development Foundation (Fedesarrollo) and as the 7th President of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
Since leaving government, Dr. Cardenas joined various academic institutions. In 2019, he became a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Since 2020, Dr. Cardenas has been serving in the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR), a group examining how the World Health Organization (WHO) and countries handled the COVID-19 pandemic. He received his doctorate in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Benigno López Benítez is Vice-President for Sectors and Knowledge at the Inter-American Development Bank since his appointment in November 2020. Prior to joining the IDB, he served as Minister of Finance of Paraguay. In that role, he led a comprehensive tax-reform initiative aimed at improving the progressive capacity of the tax system, increasing government revenue to finance health and education reforms, and incentivizing labor formalization.
Prior to his public service, Mr. Lopez served as Chairman of the Social Security Institute, Paraguay’s employer-based health insurance and pensions system. During his tenure, he aimed to restructure the institution’s debt, professionalize its administration and structure and diversify its investment portfolio. In 2013, Mr. Lopez was appointed Executive Legal Director and member of the board of Itaipú Bi-nacional, which administers the world’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Paraguay-Brazil border. From 2012-2013, Mr. Lopez served as Senior Advisor to the Executive Board of the IMF, Washington D.C. Previously, he worked for more than two decades at the Central Bank of Paraguay as Board Director from 2007 to 2012 and as head of the legal department.
Mr. Lopez holds a law degree from Paraguay’s Catholic University and a Master of Laws (LL.M) from Georgetown University.
Dr. Nora Lustig is Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and the founding Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQ) at Tulane University. She is also a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Dialogue.
Professor Lustig’s research is on economic development, inequality and social policies with emphasis on Latin America. Among her recent publications, the Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty is a step-by-step guide to assessing the impact of taxation and social spending on inequality and poverty in developing countries.
Prof. Lustig is a founding member and President Emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and was a co-director of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000: Attacking Poverty. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Inequality and is a member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality’s Executive Council. Prof. Lustig served on the Atkinson Commission on Poverty, the High-level Group on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress, and the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. William Maloney, a U.S. national, is Chief Economist for the Latin America and Caribbean Region at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 1998 as Senior Economist for the Latin America and Caribbean Region. He held various positions including Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America, Lead Economist in the Development Economics Research Group, Chief Economist for Trade and Competitiveness and Global Lead on Innovation and Productivity. He was most recently Chief Economist for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions (EFI) Vice Presidency. From 2011 to 2014 he was Visiting Professor at the University of the Andes in Bogotá and worked closely with the Colombian government on innovation and firm upgrading issues.
Dr. Maloney received his doctorate in Economics from the University of California Berkeley (1990), his BA from Harvard University (1981), and studied at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia (1982-83). His research activities and publications have focused on issues related to international trade and finance, developing country labor markets, and innovation and growth, including several flagship publications about Latin America and the Caribbean, including Informality: Exit and Inclusion and Natural Resources: Neither Curse nor Destiny. Most recently, he published The Innovation Paradox: Developing-Country Capabilities and the Unrealized Promise of Technological Catch-Up.
About the Moderator
Dr. Danny Leipziger is Professor of International Business and International Affairs at the George Washington University and Director of the Growth Dialogue. He is a faculty affiliate of the Institute for International Economic Policy. Prior to joining GW, Prof. Leipziger was Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management at the World Bank (2004-2009). Dr. Leipziger held senior management positions in the East Asia and Latin America Regions. He was the World Bank’s Director for Finance, Private Sector and Infrastructure for Latin America (1998-2004). He served previously in the U.S. Department of State and was a Member of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff. Dr. Leipziger was Vice Chair of the Spence Commission on Growth and Development and he served on the WEF Council on Economic Progress.
An economist with a Ph. D. from Brown University, he has published widely in development economics, finance and banking, and on East Asia and Latin America. He is the author of several books, including Lessons of East Asia (U. of Michigan Press), Stuck in the Middle (Brookings Institution), and Globalization and Growth, and more than 50 refereed and published articles in journals and other outlets.
IMF World Economic Outlook: Recovery During a Pandemic – Health Concerns, Supply Disruptions, and Price Pressures
Friday, October 29th, 2021
10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EDT
via Zoom
The Institute for International Economic Policy hosted a discussion of the International Monetary Fund’s October 2021 World Economic Outlook titled “IMF World Economic Outlook: Recovery During a Pandemic – Health Concerns, Supply Disruptions, and Price Pressures.” This event featured John Bluedorn (IMF), Christoffer Koch (IMF), Tara Sinclair (GWU), Jean-Marc Natal (IMF), and Benjamin Jones (Northwestern University). This event was moderated by IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh.
The global economic recovery is continuing, even as the pandemic resurges. The fault lines opened up by COVID-19 are looking more persistent—near-term divergences are expected to leave lasting imprints on medium-term performance. Vaccine access and early policy support are the principal drivers of the gaps.
The IMF World Economic Outlook — the flagship publication of the IMF — details the state of the global economy and its prospects going forward. It also includes two analytical chapters considering key policy issues facing the world economy. Chapter 2 considers the appropriate policy mix as many countries face elevated or rising inflation. Chapter 3 examines how countries could use science and innovation policy to boost long run economic growth. This event presents an opportunity for policymakers and academics to consider these crucial issues.
Event Agenda
Welcoming Remarks
Jay Shambaugh, George Washington University
Chapter 1: Global Prospects and Policies
Presenter: John Bluedorn, International Monetary Fund
Chapter 2: Inflation Scares
Presenter: Christoffer Koch, International Monetary Fund
Discussant: Tara Sinclair, George Washington University
Chapter 3: Research and Innovation: Fighting the Pandemic and Boosting Long-Term Growth
Presenter: Jean-Marc Natal, International Monetary Fund
Discussant: Benjamin Jones, Northwestern University
General Q&A and Concluding Remarks
Moderated by Jay Shambaugh, George Washington University
About the Speakers:
John Bluedorn is a deputy division chief on the World Economic Outlook in the IMF’s Research Department. Previously, he has been a senior economist in the Research Department’s Structural Reforms Unit, a member of the IMF’s euro area team in the European Department and worked on the World Economic Outlook as an economist, contributing to a number of chapters. Before joining the IMF, he was a professor at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, after a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. Mr. Bluedorn has published on a range of topics in international finance, macroeconomics, and development. He holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.
Christoffer Koch works in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that he had spent a decade as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. His policy and research interests are in macroeconomics, money and banking. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of St Andrews, and his PhD from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Jean-Marc Natal is Deputy Division Chief in the World Economic Studies Division in the IMF’s Research Department. Prior to joining the IMF, he was Deputy Director of Research at the Swiss National Bank where he advised the Board on quarterly monetary policy decisions and communication. Mr Natal has taught Monetary Theory and Policy at the University of Geneva and has published in various economics journals, including the Economic Journal and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. His research covers the study of monetary and exchange rate regimes, policy transmission, inflation dynamics and macroeconomic modeling. He holds a PhD in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
About the Discussants:
Tara M. Sinclair is a faculty affiliate of the Institute for International Economic Policy and professor of economics and international affairs at the George Washington University, where she has been on faculty since earning her PhD in economics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2005. Professor Sinclair is a senior fellow at job search site Indeed, the co-director of the H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting, a member of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Technical Advisory Committee, a research professor at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) in Germany, and a research associate at the Center for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA). She has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a visiting associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and an academic visitor at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales. Professor Sinclair also serves as the moderator for the monthly inflation meet-ups for the National Association for Business Economics. Professor Sinclair’s research focuses on developing new tools and data sources to improve decision making. Her early research built empirical models to study economic fluctuations and trends, and these models remain a continuing thread in her publications. As part of the Indeed Hiring Lab, Professor Sinclair uses Indeed’s unique labor market data to develop new economic indicators. As co-director of the H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting, she evaluates real time economic data and forecasts with a focus on their role in policy. Professor Sinclair regularly speaks at conferences and with the press on issues related to forecasting, recessions, labor markets, big data, macroeconomics, and policy issues.
Benjamin F. Jones is the Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor of Entrepreneurship, a Professor of Strategy, and the faculty director of the Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative. An economist by training, Professor Jones studies the sources of economic growth in advanced economies, with an emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurship, and scientific progress. He also studies global economic development, including the roles of education, climate, and national leadership in explaining the wealth and poverty of nations. His research has appeared in journals such as Science, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the American Economic Review, and has been profiled in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and The New Yorker. A former Rhodes Scholar, Professor Jones served in 2010-2011 as the senior economist for macroeconomics for the White House Council of Economic Advisers and earlier served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Professor Jones is a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
About the Moderator:
Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
IMF WEO Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1: Global Prospects and Policies
The global economic recovery continues amid a resurging pandemic that poses unique policy challenges. Gaps in expected recoveries across economy groups have widened since the July forecast, for instance between advanced economies and low-income developing countries. Meanwhile, inflation has increased markedly in the United States and some emerging market economies. As restrictions are relaxed, demand has accelerated, but supply has been slower to respond. Although price pressures are expected to subside in most countries in 2022, inflation prospects are highly uncertain. These increases in inflation are occurring even as employment is below pre-pandemic levels in many economies, forcing difficult choices on policymakers. Strong policy effort at the multilateral level is needed on vaccine deployment, climate change, and international liquidity to strengthen global economic prospects. National policies to complement the multilateral effort will require much more tailoring to country-specific conditions and better targeting, as policy space constraints become more binding the longer the pandemic lasts.
Chapter 2: Inflation Scares
Despite recent increases in headline inflation in both advanced and emerging market economies, long-term inflation expectations remain anchored. Looking ahead, headline inflation is projected to peak in the final months of 2021 but is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2022 for most economies. But given the recovery’s uncharted nature, considerable uncertainty remains, and inflation could exceed forecasts for a variety of reasons. Clear communication, combined with appropriate monetary and fiscal policies, can help prevent “inflation scares” from unhinging inflation expectations.
Chapter 3: Research and Innovation: Fighting the Pandemic and Boosting Long-Term Growth
How can policymakers boost long-term growth in the post–COVID-19 global economy? This chapter looks at the role of basic research—undirected, theoretical, or experimental work. Using rich new data that draw on connections from individual innovations and scientific articles, this chapter shows that basic research is an essential input into innovation, with wide-ranging international spillovers and long-lasting economic impacts.
Gender Inclusiveness in Trade: Barriers, Challenges, and Opportunities
Thursday, November 18th 2021
9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. ET
Lindner Commons and Online via Zoom
There was a networking portion for those in person from 10:30 – 11:00 a.m.
This was a discussion leading up to the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12), where the panel addressed the nexus between gender and international trade. As the issue of gender equality rises to the top of public policy debate globally, it is critical to consider how trade may impact gender, including the barriers, the challenges and opportunities women face as they participate in trade as entrepreneurs, traders or workers. This event featured panelists Renata Amaral (WTO Program on Women in Trade), Jamaica Gayle (Global Innovation Forum), and Nadia Bourely (Canadian Embassy to the U.S.A.). Lisa Schroeter (Dow Chemical and IIEP Executive Circle) moderated, and IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh provided welcoming remarks.
This event was organized by members of the recently launched Executive Circle of George Washington University’s Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP). Established by the IIEP, the Circle is a leadership group designed to support and disseminate research and policies connected to global finance, trade, and development. Its members are senior leaders at the highest levels of their fields, and dynamic mid-career and young professionals who exhibit extraordinary potential, all who believe in the power of academic research and analysis to improve policy and enhance the wellbeing and prosperity of people around the globe. The event was co-sponsored by the Association of Women in International Trade (WIIT) and the Washington International Trade Association (WITA). The Association for Women in International Trade (WIIT) works to promote the professional development of women in international trade and business and to raise public awareness of the importance of international trade to economic development.
About the Panelists:
Renata Amaral is an experienced international trade lawyer, with an extensive and proven record of successful engagement at the WTO dispute settlement, bilateral and regional trade negotiations. She holds a Ph.D. from Maastricht University and currently serves as Adjunct Professor at the American University Washington College of Law, where she co-directs the certificate program on WTO and US Trade Law and Policy. She is the founder of Women Inside Trade, a non-profit international organization that aims to contribute to the empowerment of women through its global network of professionals, specialized training and leadership development, and a member of the recently created WTO Gender Research Hub.
Jamaica Gayle serves as Acting Executive Director of the National Foreign Trade Council’s Global Innovation Forum (GIF), a nonprofit that connects small businesses and policymakers to highlight the opportunities and challenges of engaging in the global marketplace. In this role, she leads the organization’s work advocating for trade policies and technology solutions that enable inclusive, sustainable growth. She is also responsible for managing engagements with international organizations including the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) on issues related to small businesses and inclusive trade. Jamaica started her career with the National Association of Manufacturers, working with the policy and government relations division. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the American University in Washington, DC.
Nadia Bourély is the Minister Counsellor for Economic and Trade Policy at the Embassy of Canada in Washington D.C. In this capacity, she leads the Embassy’s economic and trade policy team. Prior to joining the Embassy in February 2020, Ms. Bourély held various positions at Global Affairs Canada, including Director for Trade Policy and Negotiations, Senior Legal Counsel in the Trade Law Bureau and Deputy Director for Strategic Policy Planning. She was also Senior Analyst for the Americas at the Foreign Affairs Secretariat of the Privy Council Office. Ms. Bourély served abroad as Senior Trade Commissioner and Counsellor at the Embassy of Canada to the Republic of Indonesia and as First Secretary at Canada’s Mission to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Prior to joining Global Affairs Canada, Ms. Bourély worked in private legal practice in Montréal, Québec, and at the Secretariat for Legal Affairs of the Organization of American States in Washington D.C. Ms. Bourély is a member of the Québec Bar and holds a LL.B. from the Université de Montréal and a LL.M. (Honours) from the McGill University Institute of Comparative Law.
About the Moderator:
Lisa Schroeter is the Global Director of Trade and Investment Policy for Dow. As part of the corporate Global Government Affairs team, Lisa’s responsibilities focus on trade policy and regulations, trade negotiations, and investment issues that foster growth in Dow’s global businesses. The role drives bilateral, regional and multilateral strategies to promote policies that secure market access and facilitates global trade across Dow’s value chains and manufacturing.
Her role has direct responsibility for developing corporate strategies across trade policy, from tariff reduction to regulatory simplification; from export controls and sanctions to IP protection and to promote growth of environmental markets and diverse, inclusive workforces. Lisa regularly works with international colleagues and business leaders to engage on trade policy issues critical to drive Dow’s operations around the world. For the industry, she leads the global chemical industry trade association (ICCA) work on trade policy and global regulatory cooperation.
Before joining Dow, Lisa was the Executive Director of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD). TABD was a unique trade-facilitation process by which American and European CEOs worked with the U.S. Administration and the European Commission to implement practical, detailed recommendations. Ms. Schroeter joined TABD in 1999 and managed the process on behalf of the Boeing Company, PricewaterhouseCoopers, United Technologies Corporation and Xerox.
Lisa is currently Chair of the WIIT Trust, driving a women’s empowerment and skills sharing program with local universities and was previously the President of WIIT (Association of Women in International Trade). In addition, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); and a Board member of the Washington International Trade Association (WITA). She recently and successfully completed the Georgetown University Qiyadat Women’s Leadership program.
As a long-term DC resident, Lisa is also a Board Member of Cultural Tourism DC, celebrating the unique heritage and history of the U.S. Capital.
Welcoming Remarks:
Jay Shambaugh is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
GW Students, Faculty, and Staff are welcome to attend this event in person at the address below or via Zoom:
Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Family Commons, Suite 602
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
Alumni, Guests, and General Public: Non-GW individuals are able to attend in person, but they have to complete the Covid registration form that GW now requires.
There will be a networking portion for those in person from 10:30-11:00 a.m.
A note about COVID-19: The health and well-being of GW students, alumni, friends, faculty, and staff remains a top priority for GW and all alumni events will proceed in compliance with all state, local, and public health guidelines.
Please complete the above form to officially register. Please register yourself individually for possible contact tracing or to ensure receipt of Zoom information. For questions, please contact the IIEP team at iiep@gwu.edu.
What Can We Hope For at MC12?
Thursday, November 18th, 2021
11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. EST
via Zoom
The 12th Ministerial Conference of the WTO, being held November 30 – December 3rd, comes at a critical time for organization and the world trading system. WITA and GWU discussed what might be achieved at the Ministerial, and what that may signal for the future of the organization – and the multilateral trading system as a whole.
This event was free to attend.
Featured Remarks:
Alan Wm. Wolff, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE); former Deputy Director General of the WTO
Discussion Featuring:
Jake Colvin, President, National Foreign Trade Council
Isabel Jarrett, Manager, Reducing Harmful Fisheries Subsidies, The Pew Charitable Trusts
Andrew Jory, Minister-Counsellor (Trade), Embassy of Australia
Sharon Bomer Lauritsen, Principal, AgTrade Strategies, LLC, on behalf of Aggies for WTO Reform; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Agricultural Affairs and Commodity Policy, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Catherine Mellor, Vice President, UPS
Moderator: Michael Moore, Director, MA in International Economic Policy (MIEP), Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Institute for International Economic Policy, George Washington University
Did U.S. Politicians Expect the China Shock?
Friday, October 15th, 2021
9:30 a.m. – 11 a.m. EDT
via Zoom
The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to the 14th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference takes place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).
In the two decades straddling China’s WTO accession, the China Shock, i.e. the rapid trade integration of China in the early 2000’s, has had a profound economic impact across U.S. regions. It is now both an internationally litigated issue and the casus belli for a global trade war. Were its consequences unexpected? Did U.S. politicians have imperfect information about the extent of China Shock’s repercussions in their district at the time when they voted on China’s Normal Trade Relations status? Or did they have accurate expectations, yet placed a relatively low weight on the subconstituencies that ended up being adversely affected?
In this inaugural event, HKU’s Bingjing Li discussed how information sets, expectations, and preferences of U.S. politicians are fundamental, but unobserved determinants of their policy choices in regards to the China Shock. Prof. Li applies a moment inequality approach designed to deliver unbiased estimates under weak informational assumptions on the information sets of members of Congress. Employing repeated roll call votes in the U.S. House of Representatives on China’s Normal Trade Relations status, she formally tests what information politicians had at the time of their decision and consistently estimates the weights that constituent interests, ideology, and other factors had in congressional votes. She will show how assuming perfect foresight of the shocks biases the role of constituent interests and how standard proxies to modeling politician’s expectations bias the estimation. She cannot reject that politicians could predict the initial China Shock in the early 1990’s, but not around 2000, when China started entering new sectors, and find a moderate role of constituent interests, compared to ideology. Overall, she will show how U.S. legislators appeared to have had accurate information on the China Shock, but did not place substantial weight on its adverse consequences.
Boston University’s James Feigenbaum served as a discussant and IIEP’s Maggie Chen moderated with an introduction from IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Bingjing Li is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Hong Kong. Her main research fields are international trade and applied microeconomics. Using both micro data and quantitative models, her works focus on understanding the interactions of international trade with development and political economy factors, and their consequences.
About the Discussant:
James Feigenbaum is an Assistant Professor in the Boston University Department of Economics. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER in the Development of the American Economy program and a Junior Faculty Fellow at BU’s Hariri Institute for Computing. James studies economic history, labor economics, and political economy. His research interests include understanding the effects of economic shocks on politics and politicians. Prof. Feigenbaum received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University and his B.A. with High Honors in Economics and Mathematics from Wesleyan University.
About the Moderator:
Maggie Chen is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. She has served as Director of GW’s Institute for International Economic Policy and worked as an economist in the research department of the World Bank and a consultant for the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Professor Chen’s research areas include multinational firms, international trade, and regional trade agreements. Her work has been published in academic journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of Development Economics. She is a co-editor of Economic Inquiry and an associate editor of Economic Modeling.
Introduction by:
Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
Governing the New Voluntary Carbon Markets
Tuesday, October 19th, 2021
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. EDT
via Zoom
We were pleased to invite you to an IIEP/ASU-Thunderbird event on Tuesday, October 19th, entitled “Governing the New Voluntary Carbon Markets.” This event will feature Mark Kenber (VCMI) and Kavita Prakash-Mani (Mandai Nature).
Averting climate catastrophe will require every available tool, including markets. Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) could complement government policies and drive tens of billions of dollars into activities that sequester greenhouse gases, avoid new emissions, and help move the global economy toward net zero as well as protect and restore nature and benefit people. But markets do not naturally focus on such public purposes. A new multi-stakeholder initiative, the outcome of the recent high-level Task Force on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, now aims to ensure that these markets scale quickly while maintaining their public purpose at the core. Two members of the initiative’s newly formed Board of Directors will draw on their extensive experience to provide insights into the urgent challenges and opportunities of this new kind of market.
This webinar was moderated by Ann Florini of ASU-Thunderbird. IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma provided welcoming remarks. This event was co-sponsored by the Thunderbird School of Management, Arizona State University, and the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU.
About the Speakers:
Mark Kenbar serves as VCMI’s co-Executive Director for External Affairs. He has worked on environment, climate and energy issues for over two decades, in government, NGOs and the private sector. He is currently Managing Director of Orbitas, a Climate Advisers initiative that aims to make capital providers aware of climate transition risks to investments in tropical soft commodity production and shift their lending and investment decisions accordingly. With a background in development and environmental economics, Mark has worked across various areas of environmental and climate policy, with a particular focus on the use of economic instruments in the pursuit of sustainable development. His previous roles include: Chief Executive of Mongoose Energy Ltd, the UK’s largest developer and manager of community energy projects; Policy Director and later Chief Executive at The Climate Group; Senior Policy Officer at WWF International’s Climate Change Programme; Policy and Programme Director at Fundación Natura in Quito; Climate Change Advisor to the Ecuadorian government; and lecturer at both the Catholic University in Quito and the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. He has recently been elected to the Board of Directors of the TSVCM and is currently also a board member of Community Energy England and Verra, Chair of the Reneum Advisory Council and Brighton and Hove Energy Services Coop and a member of the RE100 Advisory Committee.
Kavita Prakash-Mani is the CEO for Mandai Nature, a new environmental conservation NGO established in Singapore by Temasek and Mandai Park Holding, with a focus on SE Asia. Mandai Nature helps protect threatened species from extinction, especially those endemic to Asia and often overlooked, addressing such issues as wildlife trade and the fragmentation of habitats. It works with partners to drive nature-based solutions for climate change, and it works closely with local communities and organizations to create economic opportunities and invest in building skills and conservation capacity on the ground. Prior to this, Kavita was the Global Conservation Director at WWF, leading the development of WWF strategy and approach, partnership development and engagement, planning and performance as well as campaigns. Before this position, she led WWF’s global practice on Markets – engaging companies, communities and citizens/consumers. Previously, Kavita was Executive Director of Grow Asia in Singapore (a World Economic Forum initiative); the Global Head, Food Security Agenda at Syngenta International; and Executive Director, SustainAbility in London. She has worked at the World Resources Institute in Washington DC and Glaxo SmithKline in India. Kavita is a member of Unilever Sustainability Advisory Council. She has been on numerous councils and boards including the Tropical Forest Alliance, Science Based Targets for Nature, World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Food Security and Nutrition, Volans, SustainAbility Inc., and the Institute for Human Rights and Business. She recently joined the Board of Directors of the new governance body for voluntary carbon markets.
About the Moderator:
Ann Florini is Clinical Professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, where she directs programs at the Washington, D.C. campus. She was previously Professor of Public Policy at Singapore Management University founding director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore; and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has spearheaded numerous international initiatives on global governance, energy and climate policy, and cross-sector collaborations including government, civil society, and the private sector. Her many books and articles have addressed governance in China, transparency in governance, transnational civil society networks, and the role of the private sector in public affairs. Dr. Florini received her Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University.
Welcome Remarks:
Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
Sunil Sharma is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 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, he was Chief of the IMF Institute’s Asian Division in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the IMF in 1992, Dr. Sharma was on the Economics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has a Ph.D. and 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. His current interests include rethinking capitalism and democracy, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.
IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series
The COVID-19 pandemic, like the global financial crisis a decade ago, has laid bare the cracks in the leading capitalist democracies. Fissures in the political, social, economic, and financial orders, accompanied by an increasingly stressed natural environment, pose serious and possibly existential threats to these societies, as exploding income and wealth inequality subverts the integrity and fairness of markets and elections, weak regulatory oversight increases the likelihood and severity of the next crash, and the visible effects of climate change threaten lives and livelihoods and drive migrations. The three spheres of wellbeing – political and social, economic and financial, and the natural environment, are each becoming more fragile while their complex interrelationships are producing wicked challenges. The IIEP webinar series on Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy examines these difficult questions and possible policy responses.
Thunderbird Finance and Sustainability Series
The global financial system is facing new pressures to become “sustainable” – not only financially stable, but simultaneously environmentally friendly and socially inclusive. These pressures are partly political, in reaction to the increasing financialization of the global economy and the sector’s failure to steer investment to meet the needs of society. New financial technologies (“fintech”) pose yet more pressures on incumbent financial institutions but also offer great opportunities for the creation of what some are calling “citizen-centric” finance. Top public authorities are convening in the new Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System. The private sector has already moved rapidly from CSR to considering broader forms of ESG (environmental, social, governance) risks and opportunities in investments. Thunderbird’s Finance and Sustainability webinar series explores these urgent questions with leading practitioners and thinkers.
The Diffusion of Female Empowerment: Evidence from Social Networks in India
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021
12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
via Zoom
Trade & Development Workshop
Speaker: David Yanagizawa-Drott (Zurich, formerly Harvard HKS)
The Diffusion of Female Empowerment: Evidence from Social Networks in India
Abstract: Do men may maintain privileged positions in society simply because most such positions are held by other men? If some women gain access to positions of power, does female empowerment diffuse via social networks? We study these questions in the political context of elections to the Parliament of India, Lok Sabha. To measure social networks, we make use the universe of Facebook friendship links between constituencies across the country. To identify causal effects, we exploit variation in close election wins in the network of each constituency. The results show that male incumbents benefit from having other male incumbents in the social network of the voters; they are more likely to remain in power. When females randomly win seats, female empowerment (entry, votes, representation) diffuses to other constituencies depending on pre-existing conditions. There is little to no diffusion to areas where female empowerment is very weak to begin. Diffusion appears to occur only when empowerment is already relatively high. Together, the results indicate that unequal representation in the status quo tends to be self-reinforcing, but dynamic trajectories towards equality are possible once sufficient conditions are met.
India’s Economy in a Post-Pandemic World
Wednesday, October 20th, 2021
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. EDT / 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. IST
via Zoom
We were pleased to invite you to the second webinar in the 2021-2022 Envisioning India series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. This was a platform for dialogue and debate, and we invited you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.
The Envisioning India series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh, Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. The second event featured Dr. Sajjid Z. Chinoy, J.P. Morgan’s Chief India Economist, discussing “India’s Economy in a Post-Pandemic World.” Dr. Poonam Gupta (Director General of NCAER) and Dr. Shankar Acharya (former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India) provided discussant remarks.
What is the nature of India’s recovery from COVID? Where are pressures most evident and what opportunities has COVID-19 thrown up? Why is inflation so sticky in the wake of ostensible slack? What role can monetary and fiscal policy play in the near term? Where will India’s growth come from in a post-pandemic world: Consumption? Investment? Exports? Public Investment? Finally, what do we know about India’s underlying growth potential, particularly investment and productivity growth? Our distinguished speaker and discussants will address these and related issues in this second talk of 2021-22 on Envisioning India.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Sajjid Z. Chinoy is J.P. Morgan’s Chief India Economist and a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He served as a member of the Advisory Council to India’s 15th Finance Commission and has previously served on several RBI committees and task-forces (Offshore Rupee Markets, Secondary Market for Corporate Loans) including the RBI’s “Expert Committee to Revise and Strengthen the Monetary Policy Framework” that proposed inflation targeting in 2014. He was a consultant to the FRBM Review Committee that proposed a new fiscal anchor in India in 2016. He has been ranked by Asset Magazine as one of the best individuals in fixed income research in India for every year since 2014. Sajjid has authored several publications on the Indian economy including co-editing a book on Indian economic reform with Dr. Anne O. Krueger, former First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF. He has previously worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and McKinsey & Company, and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.
About the Discussants:
Dr. Poonam Gupta is the Director General of NCAER. Before joining NCAER, she was Lead Economist, Global Macro and Market Research, International Finance Corporation (IFC); and Lead Economist for India at the World Bank. Her prior appointments include the Reserve Bank of India Chair Professor at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP); Professor at Indian Council for Research on International Economics Relations (ICRIER); Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics; and, Economist at the International Monetary Fund. Her research has been published in leading scholarly journals and featured in The Economist, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. She holds a PhD in International Economics from the University of Maryland, USA and a Masters in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.
Dr. Shankar Acharya is one of India’s leading policy economists. As the longest-serving Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India (1993-2001), he was deeply involved in the economic reforms of the 1990s and served three successive governments of the Congress, the United Front and the National Democratic Alliance. He also served as Member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (1997-2000), Member, Twelfth Finance Commission (2004) and Member, National Security Advisory Board (2009-2013). He was non-executive Chairman of Kotak Mahindra Bank for 12 years (2006-2018), one of India’s newest and most successful private commercial banks. He also served as a member of the Reserve Bank of India’s Advisory Committee on Monetary Policy (2005-2016). Earlier, he worked in the World Bank (1971-1982 and 1991-1993), where he led the World Development Report team for 1979 and was Research Adviser to the Bank. He returned to India in 1982 as Senior Fellow, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), before joining the Government as Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance (1985-90).
Since 2001 he has been Honorary Professor at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). He has authored eleven books (mostly on Indian economic issues and policies) and numerous scholarly articles in academic journals. His eight most recent books are Essays on Macroeconomic Policy and Growth in India (2006, Oxford University Press, Delhi); Can India Grow without Bharat? (2007, Academic Foundation, Delhi); India and Global Crisis (2009, Academic Foundation, Delhi); (edited with Rakesh Mohan) India’s Economy: Performance and Challenges (2010, Oxford University Press, Delhi; paperback edition, 2011); India after the Global Crisis (2012, Orient BlackSwan, Delhi), Towards Economic Crisis (2012–14) and Beyond (2015, Academic Foundation, Delhi), India’s Economy 2015-2000 (2021, Academic Foundation, Delhi) and An Economist at Home and Abroad (Harper Collins, 2021, Delhi).
Dr Acharya did his B.A. from Oxford, graduating with First Class honours in Politics, Philosophy and Economics in 1967, before proceeding to Harvard University to earn his Ph.D. in Economics in 1972.
Are Pitcairn Island (UK), China and Taiwan really joining CPTPP?
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST
via Zoom
WITA and the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University discussed the potential for the UK and China to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Ken Levinson, WITA Executive Director, provided welcoming remarks.
Panel Discussion:
The Honorable Tim Groser, former Ambassador of New Zealand, and former Minister of Trade
Wendy Cutler, former US negotiator of the original TransPacific Partnership, and current Senior Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute
Shanker Singham, CEO, Competere, and Director of the International Trade and Competition Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and Head of Trade at the Centre for Economics and Business Research
Led and moderated by Jay Shambaugh, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University, and former Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors
One Currency, Two Markets: China’s Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi
Friday, November 5th, 2021
9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EDT
via Zoom
This was the second event in the 14th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference takes place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).
This event featured HKU’s Edwin Lai to discuss his recent book titled “One Currency, Two Markets: China’s Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi.” The Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA) Representative Director Dr. Masahiro Kawai provided discussant remarks. In this book, Edwin Lai discusses economic analysis of the future of the international monetary system and the USD, and the rising importance of the RMB. He points out the unsustainability of the dollar standard in the long run, that China has unique incentives to internationalize its currency, and how Hong Kong plays an important role. He explains the real reasons for China to internationalize its currency, including using external commitments to force financial sector reforms (‘daobi’ in Chinese). His book applies economic theories accessible to laymen to establish that financial development and openness are crucial for RMB internationalization to succeed, and that greater exchange rate volatility is inevitable due to the ‘open-economy trilemma’. Employing the ‘gravity model’, the book predicts quantitatively that the RMB is likely to be a distant third payment currency after the USD and the euro, but surpassing the Japanese yen in the next decade.
IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh and Elliott School Vice Dean James Foster provided welcome and introductory remarks. Barbara Stallings moderated the event. James Foster introducde Edwin Lai and Barbara Stallings introduced Dr. Masahiro Kawai.
About the Speaker:
Edwin Lai is Professor of Economics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since July 2009, and later jointly appointed as the Director of the Center for Economic Development and jointly appointed as Professor in the Division of Public Policy. He was Senior Research Economist and Adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas of the Federal Reserve System of the USA, from August 2007 to June 2009. Before that he was Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong and Associate Professor at Singapore Management University. His main research areas are international economics, industrial organization, growth and internationalization of renminbi. He is a leading scholar in the study of intellectual property rights in the global economy. He has published in American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of International Economics and other highly respected journals in economics.
Prof. Lai has been a consultant to the World Bank, visiting scholar/fellow with Boston University, Princeton University, Kobe University, CESifo (University of Munich), Hitotsubashi University, and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. He is Associate Editor of Review of International Economics (Wiley Publisher), a Fellow of the CESifo Research Network (U of Munich), and a board member of Asia-Pacific Trade Seminars (APTS) Group. He obtained his B.Sc. in engineering from the University of Hong Kong of Science and Technology and A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.
About the Discussant:
Dr. Masahiro Kawai is the Representative Director of the Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA) in Niigata, Japan. While teaching Asian finance at the University of Tokyo as Professor Emeritus, he also serves as a Councilor of the Bank of Japan, a Senior Fellow of the Policy Research Institute of Japan’s Finance Ministry, and a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Japan Forum on International Relations. Dr. Kawai has published numerous books and articles on open-economy macroeconomics, economic and financial globalization, regional economic integration in Asia, and the international monetary system. He co-edited a book with Barry Eichengreen, entitled Renminbi Internationalization: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).
Previously, Dr. Kawai held positions as: Dean of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Institute; Special Advisor to the ADB President in charge of regional economic cooperation and integration; Deputy Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs and President of the Policy Research Institute of Japan’s Ministry of Finance; Chief Economist for the World Bank’s East Asia and the Pacific Region; a Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo and an Associate Professor of Economics at The Johns Hopkins University; and a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
He graduated with his B.A. degree in Economics from the University of Tokyo’s Economics Department. He earned his M.S. degree in Statistics and Ph.D. degree in Economics from Stanford University.
About the Moderator:
Barbara Stallings is William R. Rhodes Research Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of Studies in Comparative International Development. She is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University. Before arriving at Brown in 2002, she was director of the Economic Development Division of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile (1993–2002), and professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1977–1993). She has doctorates in economics (University of Cambridge) and in political science (Stanford University) and is a specialist in development economics, with an emphasis on development strategies and international finance. In addition, she works on issues of economic relations between Asia and Latin America and comparisons between the two regions. Her recent books are Innovation and Inclusion in Latin America: Strategies to Avoid the Middle Income Trap (2016) and Promoting Development: The Political Economy of East Asian Foreign Aid (2017). Her most recent book, Dependency in the Twenty-First Century?: The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations (2020), was selected as one of Foreign Affairs’ best books of 2020. She has taught at various universities in China and elsewhere in Asia; currently she is a distinguished visiting professor at the Schwarzman Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Welcome and Introductory Remarks:
Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Vice Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).
The Growing Importance of Decision-Making on the Job
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
via Zoom
Joint Macro-International / Trade & Development Workshop
David Deming (Harvard University and NBER) presented his paper, “The Growing Importance of Decision-Making on the Job.”
Abstract: Machines increasingly replace people in routine job tasks. The remaining tasks require workers to make open-ended decisions and to have “soft” skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability. This paper documents growing demand for decision-making and explores the consequences for life-cycle earnings. Career earnings growth in the U.S. more than doubled between 1960 and 2017, and the age of peak earnings increased from the late 30s to the mid-50s. I show that a substantial share of this shift is explained by increased employment in decision-intensive occupations, which have longer and more gradual periods of earnings growth. To understand these patterns, I develop a model that nests decision-making in a standard human capital framework. Workers predict the output of uncertain, context-dependent actions. Experience reduces prediction error, improving a worker’s ability to adapt using data from similar decisions they have made in the past. Experience takes longer to accumulate in high variance, non-routine jobs. I test the predictions of the model using data from the three waves of the NLS. Life-cycle wage growth in decision-intensive occupations has increased over time, and it has increased relatively more for highly-skilled workers.
Food Systems at a Crossroads: How to fix them and help people, economies, and the planet
Thursday, June 24, 2021
12 p.m. EDT
via Zoom
The empty grocery shelves and miles-long food bank queues we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the fragility of the highly centralized, “just-in-time” global food supply chain on which we all depend. But the food system’s weaknesses extend far beyond vulnerability to shocks. Food produced through the overuse of chemicals, in monoculture cropping systems, and intensive animal farming on land and at sea degrades natural resources faster than they can regenerate and causes over a third of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Crucially, this flawed system fails to feed the world, with billions of people chronically under- or over-nourished.
Nicoletta Batini and Bruce Friedrich in conversation with moderator Ann Florini explored the economic and financial policies needed to make food systems healthy for people and planet, alongside measures to boost ecosystem conservation to preserve the future of food security, providing several examples of successful country cases. The role of disruptive technologies and markets, like the booming sector of alternative proteins, will receive special attention.
Opening Remarks:
Sunil Sharma is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 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, he was Chief of the IMF Institute’s Asian Division in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the IMF in 1992, Dr. Sharma was on the Economics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Cornell University, and his current interests include rethinking capitalism and democracy, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.
About the Speaker:
Nicoletta Batini is the Lead Evaluator of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Independent Evaluation Office. Prior to the IMF, she was Advisor of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey, and Director of the International Economics and Policy Office of the Treasury in Italy. She holds a Ph.D. in international finance (S.S.S.U.P. S. Anna) and a Ph.D. in monetary economics (University of Oxford). Today her research focuses on the economics of energy and land and sea use transitions for climate mitigation. Her new book “The Economics of Sustainable Food: Smart Policies for People and the Planet” was just published by Island Press and the International Monetary Fund.
About the Discussant:
Bruce Friedrich is co-founder and executive director of the Good Food Institute. With branches in the United States, India, Israel, Brazil, Europe, and Asia Pacific, GFI is accelerating the production of plant-based and cultivated meat in order to bolster the global protein supply while protecting our environment, promoting global health, and preventing food insecurity. Bruce oversees GFI’s global strategy, working with directors and international managing directors to ensure that GFI is maximally effective at delivering mission-focused results. Bruce graduated from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics. Bruce was named 2021 “American Food Hero” by @EatingWell Magazine.
About the Moderator:
Ann Florini is Clinical Professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, where she directs programs at the Washington, DC campus. She was previously Professor of Public Policy at Singapore Management University; founding Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalization at the National University of Singapore; and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has spearheaded numerous international initiatives on global governance, energy and climate policy, and cross-sector collaborations involving government, civil society and the private sector. Her many books and articles have addressed governance in China, transparency in governance, transnational civil society networks, and the role of the private sector in public affairs. Dr. Florini received her Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University.
IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series
The COVID-19 pandemic, like the global financial crisis a decade ago, has laid bare the cracks in the leading capitalist democracies. Fissures in the political, social, economic, and financial orders, accompanied by an increasingly stressed natural environment, pose serious and possibly existential threats to these societies, as exploding income and wealth inequality subverts the integrity and fairness of markets and elections, weak regulatory oversight increases the likelihood and severity of the next crash, and the visible effects of climate change threaten lives and livelihoods and drive migrations. The three spheres of wellbeing – political and social, economic and financial, and the natural environment, are each becoming more fragile while their complex interrelationships are producing wicked challenges. The IIEP webinar series on Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy examines these difficult questions and possible policy responses.
Thunderbird Finance and Sustainability Series
The global financial system is facing new pressures to become “sustainable” – not only financially stable, but simultaneously environmentally friendly and socially inclusive. These pressures have emerged in reaction to the increasing financialization of the global economy and the sector’s failure to steer investment to meet the full needs of society. Top public authorities are rethinking financial regulation, coming together, for example, in the new Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System. The private sector has already moved rapidly from CSR to considering broad ESG (environmental, social, governance) risks and opportunities in investments. Some investors are exploring natural and social capital returns, along with financial metrics. New financial technologies (“fintech”) impose yet more pressures on incumbent institutions, but also offer opportunities for the creation of “citizen-centric” finance. Thunderbird’s Finance and Sustainability webinar series explores these developments with leading practitioners and thinkers.
The Spatial Economic Effects of Conflict
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EDT
via Webex
This workshop showcased the most recent advances in the field of economics on conflict with a particular focus on the local and spillover effects of conflict, conflict and spatial poverty traps, and policies to mitigate potential negative effects of conflict such as infrastructure investment. While the policy focus of this workshop was on Africa, the presentations included a larger geographical coverage. The workshop was divided into two sessions. First there was a round table discussion with two presentations by the main keynote speakers, followed by a Q&A session. Second, authors presented their research papers, followed by feedback by a discussant and a Q&A session.
This event was jointly organized by the World Bank Poverty and Equity Global Practice, the Office of the Director for Regional Integration for Africa of the World Bank, and the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University.
Welcome Remarks
Deborah Wetzel, a U.S. national with more than 25 years of experience in development work around the world, is the World Bank Director for Regional Integration for Africa, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Prior to her current appointment, Wetzel was the Senior Director for Governance from April 2016 to April 2019. She also served as the Director of Strategy and Operations for the Middle East and North Africa Region, as well as Country Director for Brazil, from March 2012 until July 2015. Previous roles include World Bank Group’s Chief of Staff to the World Bank President from 2010 to 2012, and Director for Governance and Public Sector, where she directed the Bank’s work on taxation, public expenditures, decentralization, public sector reform and strengthening, governance and anti-corruption. From 2006 to 2009, she led the World Bank’s Economic and Public Sector Programs in Brazil, based in Brasilia. During that period, she developed numerous programs with state and federal governments to help improve the effectiveness of public expenditures and achieve better results. Wetzel has a Doctorate in Economics from the University of Oxford and a Masters in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. Her BA is from Smith College. She is the author of publications on fiscal decentralization, public finance, governance, and sub-national affairs.
Roundtable
Moderator:
Carolina Sánchez-Páramo, a Spanish national, is currently the Global Director of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice (GP) at the World Bank. Prior to this assignment, she was the Poverty and Equity GP Practice Manager in the Europe and Central Asia region. Carolina has worked on operations, policy advice and analytical activities in Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Asia, and was part of the core team working on the WDR2012, “Gender Equality and Development”. Her main areas of interest and expertise include labor economics, poverty and distributional analysis, gender equality and welfare impacts of public policy. She has led reports on poverty and equity, labor markets and economic growth in several countries, as well as social sector operations. She has published articles in refereed journals and edited books on the topics described above. Carolina has a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
Keynote Speakers:
Chris Blattman is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute and Harris Public Policy. He is an economist and political scientist who studies poverty, violence and crime in developing countries. He has designed and evaluated strategies for tackling poverty, including cash transfers to the poorest. Much of his work is with the victims and perpetrators of crime and violence, testing the link between poverty and violence. His recent work looks at other sources of and solutions to violence. These solutions range from behavioral therapy to social norm change and local-level state building. He has worked mainly in Colombia, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chicago’s South Side. Dr. Blattman was previously faculty at Columbia and Yale Universities, and holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School. He chairs the Peace & Recovery sector at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Crime, Violence and Conflict initiative at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (JPAL).
Dominic Rohner (PhD, University of Cambridge) is a Professor and co-director of the economics department at HEC Lausanne, the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne. He is also Associate Editor at the Economic Journal, the PI of a European Research Council grant, the leader of the CEPR Research and Policy Network on “Policies for Peace”, a member of the Swiss National Research Council, and co-leader of the E4S group on “Evidence-based environmental policies”. Prior to joining UNIL, he held positions at the universities of York and Zurich. His research focuses on political and development economics, has won several prizes and has been widely published in journals such as American Economic Review, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, and PNAS.
Academic Presentations
Speakers:
Nathan Nunn is Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Professor Nunn’s primary research interests are in political economy, economic history, economic development, cultural economics, and international trade. He is an NBER Faculty Research Fellow, a Research Fellow at BREAD, a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in the Boundaries, Membership & Belonging program. One stream of Professor Nunn’s research focuses on the historical and dynamic process of economic development. In particular, he has studied the factors that shape differences in the evolution of institutions and cultures across societies. He has published research that studies the historical process of a wide range of factors that are crucial for economic development, including distrust, gender norms, religiosity, norms of rule-following, conflict, immigration, state formation, and support for democracy. His current research interests lie in better understanding the importance of local culture and context for economic policies, particularly in developing countries.
Rémi Jedwab is an associate professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University and an Affiliated Scholar of the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Professor Jedwab’s main fields of research are development and growth, urban economics, labor economics and political economy. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, the relationship between population growth and economic growth, the economic effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of institutions, human capital and technology in development. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the World Bank-GWU Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference and the Washington Area Development Economics Symposium. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Urban Economics. Finally, he is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Urban Economics and Regional Science and Urban Economics.
Maria Micaela Sviatschi is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She is also an affiliate at the CESifo Research Network, NBER development and political economy group, the African School of Economics and the International Crisis Group. Her research interests are labor and development economics, with a focus on human capital, gender-violence and crime. One strand of her research explores how children start a criminal career in drug trafficking and gangs as well as the consequences of organized crime on economic development and state capacity. In particular, she has worked on the development of criminal skills in drug trafficking organizations in Peru and gangs in El Salvador. In addition, she studies how criminal organizations such as gangs and drug trafficking groups affect household’s behavior and state presence in the areas they control. Another strand of her research studies the role of state capacity to deter and improve service-delivery to reduce gender-based violence. In particular, studying the effects of women police officers in Peru and police street patrolling in India. In addition to this research, she has ongoing collaborative research projects in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Mozambique, Jordan, Bangladesh and the US.
Mathias Thoenig is a Professor of Economics at the School of Business and Economics (HEC) at the University of Lausanne, a CEPR Research Fellow in the international trade and macro programs and an elected Council Member of the European Economic Association. He is a Distinguished Scholar at IMD Business School and a Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. Mathias Thoenig received his Ph.D. from University Paris-1 Sorbonne and his B.A. in engineering from Ecole Polytechnique. He has held visiting appointments at International Monetary Fund, MIT, SciencesPo Paris, University of British Columbia and University Pompeu Fabra. He also served on the editorial boards of Journal of European Economic Association and International Economics. His research interests include development, international trade and political economy of conflicts and migration. He has published and forthcoming papers in several international journals, including, among others: American Economic Review, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Harvard Business Review, Journal of European Economic Association. He has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2013 for his work on the role of distrust and grievances in ethnic conflicts.
Discussants:
Roland Hodler is Professor of Economics at the University of St.Gallen and Research Fellow at CEPR, CESifo and OxCarre. His research covers topics in development and political economics. His interests include how ethnic diversity, natural resources and foreign aid influence economic and human development as well as conflict, corruption and favoritism. His research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; and covered by the BBC, the Economist, the Guardian, Le Monde, NZZ, and the Washington Post. He is also a member of the Bayelsa State Oil & Environmental Commission.
Mathieu Couttenier has obtained his PhD in Economics in 2011 at the University Paris 1 Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics. Before to join the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon as Professor, he was post-doc at the University of Lausanne and assistant professor at the University of Geneva. He was also visiting researcher at the department of political sciences at Stanford and at the economic department at Sciences Po Paris. His research is filled with interactions between economics and political sciences but also cultural, institutional and geographical issues. He focuses on microeconomic questions, in particular in the fields of applied political economy and economic development. His main research interests are in the understanding of violence and civil wars. He has published many academic papers on the role played by income shocks, natural resources or climate on the diffusion of conflicts over space and time. Some of his present research agenda also studies the role of natural resources in the local economic development. He has published in many leading peer-refereed journals, such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Economic Journal, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Development Economics and the Journal of Comparative Economics.
Elena Esposito is Assistant Professor at HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne. She is an applied economist with research interests in the fields of development economics, economic growth, political economy, and economic history. Elena Esposito earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Bologna in 2014 and she joined the department of Economics at the European University Institute (Italy) as “Max Weber Fellow”. She spent research periods at the departments of economics at universities in the USA. She also worked as an economic researcher and consultant for several international organizations, participating to projects with UNICEF, the European Commission and the World Bank, among others.
Eoin McGuirk is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Neubauer Faculty Fellow at Tufts University. His research interests are in development and political economics, with a particular focus on the causes and consequences of political violence and social divisions. In his research, he has examined how variation in world food prices can affect the type and location of conflict events in Africa, and how politicians are more likely to perpetuate conflict when they are sheltered from its costs. Most of his research employs natural experiments in order to identify causal relationships. He has Ph.D. in Economics from Trinity College, University of Dublin, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
India’s Trade Policy: Past, Present, Future
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2021
9:00am – 10:30 am EDT
via Zoom
This was the ninth webinar in the “Envisioning India” series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. This is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invited you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.
The “Envisioning India” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Co-Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. The ninth event featured Harsha Vardhana Singh, Chairman, IKDHVAJ Advisers LLP and Former Deputy Director-General at WTO, discussing “India’s Trade Policy: Past, Present, Future.” Dean Alyssa Ayres (GWU), Judith Dean (Brandeis), and Rajeev Kher provided discussant remarks. IIEP Co-Director Jay Shambaugh moderated.
India liberalised its trade regime in 1991 as part of a larger reform initiative. India’s trade surged and the economy grew to become the world’s 5th largest in 2019. Since 2018, India’s trade regime has become more protectionist with an aim to stem the trade deficit and promote domestic industry. India’s concern with a high trade deficit, in particular with China and ASEAN, has also impacted its approach to trade agreements. More recently, India opted out of RCEP. In 2020, India announced a new program of self-reliance (Atmanirbharta). Some fear that this is a signal of turning further inward. Yet India’s stated goals are to attract more FDI – especially as an alternative to China, enter global value chains, and encourage exports. How should we assess India’s recent policy changes and reconcile these shifts? What are the likely pathways for India’s future trade stance? Will India seek to substantively enhance growing US-India trade ties? Will its renewed interest in trade agreements with others such as the EU move forward giving some substantive results? Is it permanently out of RCEP? What steps by other nations could facilitate India’s increased trade engagements with major economies? What choices India makes will affect India and the world. Our distinguished speakers addressed these and related issues in this 9th talk on Envisioning India.
About the speakers:
Harsha Vardhana Singh is Chairman, IKDHVAJ Advisers LLP, a consulting firm working on trade policy, industrial policy and regulatory issues. He has been a member of High-Level Expert Groups within India and abroad that inter alia address policy concerns related to trade policy, industrial policy, competition and regulatory policy. Earlier, he has worked at the GATT/WTO for 20 years (eight years as Deputy Director General, WTO), was Secretary Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Executive Director of Brookings India, Senior Fellow at Think Tanks in Switzerland and Canada, taught at Universities in the US and China, and been Chair/secretary of GATT/WTO Dispute Settlement Panels. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Oxford, where he went as a Rhodes Scholar from India in 1979.
As WTO Deputy Director General, he had direct responsibility for Trade in Services, Trade in Agriculture, Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, Trade and Environment, Technical Barriers to Trade, Chairman of the Groups on E-Commerce Program and the Cotton Development Agenda. As Economic Advisor and Secretary of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, he was part of the small group of officials that conceptualized and implemented a number of telecom sector policy reforms, resulting in large growth in the sector.
His recent engagements include: Senior Fellow, Council on Emerging Market Enterprises, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, USA (ongoing); Member of the Advisory Board of UNCTAD’s “Transnational Corporations Journal” (ongoing); Member of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) International Trade Policy Council (ongoing); Non-Resident Senior Fellow, South Asia Center, Atlantic Council (ongoing); Senior Research Affiliate, Berkeley APEC Study Center, US (ongoing); Member, High Level Advisory Group on International Trade, established by Government of India; Member, Competition Law Review Committee to revise the Competition Act, established by Government of India; Member, Expert Enquiry Committee Set Up by UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Trade Out of Poverty on “Can the Commonwealth help countries trade out of poverty?”; Member, High Level Board of Experts on the Future of Trade Governance, set up by Bertelsmann Stiftung; Senior Adviser to the Global Commission on Internet Governance on the topic, “Governance of International Trade and the Internet: Existing and Evolving Regulatory Systems”; Senior Advisor, Asia Society Policy Institute, on the topic “India and APEC: Charting a Path to Membership.”
Alyssa Ayres was appointed Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University effective February 1, 2021. Ayres is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. From 2013 to 2021, she was senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she remains an adjunct senior fellow. From 2010 to 2013 Ayres served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia. During her tenure at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration, she covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people at the time (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates.
Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018 and was selected by the Financial Times for its “Summer 2018: Politics” list. An updated paperback edition was released in 2019. She served as the project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S.-India relations, and, from 2014 to 2016, as the project director for an initiative on the new geopolitics of China, India, and Pakistan supported by the MacArthur Foundation.
Judith Dean is the Professor of International Economics in the Brandeis International Business School. Her research focuses on international trade and economic development. Much of her work examines the relationship between trade and the environment. In a series of empirical studies using Chinese data, she has been exploring the possibility that trade growth, foreign investment and production fragmentation may have beneficial effects on the environment. In other work, she studies global value chain trade, non-tariff barriers. and trade preferences for developing countries. Her new work on India explores the impact of trade liberalization on Indian poverty. Judy came to Brandeis from the US International Trade Commission (USITC) where she was a Senior International Economist in the Research Division of the Office of Economics. Prior to joining the USITC, Judy was Associate Professor of Economics at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, and Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College. She has been a consultant to the World Bank and the OECD, and a Visiting Scholar at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, India. She has also helped facilitate research collaboration for the USITC with Tsinghua University and the India Development Foundation. Judy was named one of six Visiting Scholars in the Clayton Yeutter International Trade Program, University of Nebraska, 2012-13. In 2018, she gave the 4th Annual John Mason Lecture at Gordon College in 2018. Judy recently completed many years of service on the Board of Directors of World Relief, and the Board of Trustees of Gordon College.
Rajeev Kher superannuated as Commerce Secretary, Government of India in 2015 after a career of 35 years in the Indian Administrative Service. He then worked as a Member in the Competition Appellate Tribunal for two years. He has now associated himself with some leading think tanks. He also advises a Private Equity. His field of experience includes broad areas of International Trade and Commerce, Competition Law and Policy, Sustainable Development Policy, Environmental Management, Global Governance, particularly with reference to trade and environment and Decentralised Governance. He has held several important assignments in the Central Government and the State Government of UP. Some of the more prominent once include a tenure of 9 years in the Department of Trade and Commerce, a stint of 8 years in the Ministry of Environment and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi and senior level assignments in the Departments of Renewable Energy, Finance, Planning and Science and Technology, besides administering two very challenging charges of District Magistrates. He is credited with bringing in the first comprehensive Foreign Trade Policy for India. His vision on international trade issues has been well respected by the stakeholder community within India and abroad. He led negotiations on behalf of his country for Trade Agreements with major blocks such as EU, EFTA, RCEP and ASEAN. His initiatives to bring discourse on India’s competitiveness in Trade in Services, evolution of Policy on Technical Regulations and Standards and India’s position on the Global and Regional value chains in the forefront of Policy making are much recognised by the stakeholder community. He is also credited with hand holding the Pharmaceutical sector in its pursuit to become global leader in Generic Medicine and his work is highly appreciated by the industry. He has published work on India’s Patent Policy, Trade Policy, WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism, Product standards and Technical Regulations and several other related areas.
About the Moderator:
James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autónoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).
This event and seminar series was jointly organized with the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the UNDP Human Development Report Office.
10th Washington Area International Trade Symposium (WAITS) Conference
Thursday, April 29, 2021 – Friday, April 30, 2021
8:45 a.m. – 01:00 p.m. EDT
via Zoom
Belt and Road Initiative
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
via Zoom
The Undergraduate Economics Society is proud to announce a discussion with Jennifer Hillman, Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. In this conversation, we discussed China’s Belt and Road Initiative and a new CFR Independent Taskforce Report on the topic directed by Hillman. The dialogue addressed topics ranging from the effects of the COVID-19 economy on BRI’s sustainability to forecasting the initiative’s future amid a pullback in official Chinese investments.
Co-sponsors:
The Undergraduate Economics Society
Experts Weigh In: The future of U.S.-Latin America relations under a Biden administration
Monday, November 23rd, 2020
6:30 PM EST
According to Shakespeare, “Every Cloud Engenders Not a Storm”
Monday November 23, 2020
10:30AM-12:00PM EST
via Zoom
Users were first introduced to the idea that their data was stored somewhere in the ether, aka “the cloud” around 2010. But that vague notion of the cloud was not reality. In the decade that followed, cloud computing has shaped how firms store, utilize and assess data. Despite its many benefits, the cloud presents new challenges for data security. Some nations have responded to this challenge by asserting that they must have their own national cloud. Our webinar on November 23, at 10:30 focused on the role of data in cloud computing, data sovereignty, and related security issues. Our three speakers examined cloud computing from different vantage points in a moderated discussion.
Speakers:
Trey Herr, Director, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, The Atlantic Council
Josephine Wolff, Assistant Professor, Cybersecurity Policy, Tufts University
Chelsea J. Smethurst, Senior Security Strategy, Cybersecurity Strategy, Microsoft
Moderator:
Professor Costis Toregas, Director, Cyber Security and Privacy Research Institute, George Washington
You can email questions in advance to datagovhub@gwu.edu or by using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen during the webinar. Please note that we will disable chats, video, and audio of attendees.
Please contact saaronso@gwu.edu with any questions. See you soon.
Valuing Nature: Whales, Elephants, and the Global Economy
Thursday, November 19, 2020
12:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
via WebEx
Economic systems and human well-being depend critically on natural services provided by a huge range of ecosystems. But those ecosystems are being rapidly destroyed by failure to value those services. As the understanding grows that nature provides finite and often irreplaceable inputs into human lives and livelihoods, new methods are emerging to value natural capital and incorporate those valuations into markets and public policy.
In this webinar, IMF economist Ralph Chami builds on his pathbreaking studies on whales, elephants, and other natural service-providers to lay out an accessible valuation framework that decision makers can use to build public-private partnerships, create employment opportunities, and build a nature-friendly and inclusive global economy. ASU-Thunderbird professor Ann Florini will provide discussant remarks.
This webinar was moderated by Dr. Sunil Sharma, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, alongside IIEP Co-Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics. This event is co-sponsored by the Thunderbird School of Management at Arizona State University and the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU.
Meet the Discussants:
Ralph Chami is currently an Assistant Director at the IMF and leads the Western Hemisphere Division of the Institute for Capacity Development (ICD). Previously, he was Assistant Director and Division Chief in the Middle East and Central Asia Department responsible for the Regional Economic Outlook, and then the surveillance and program work on fragile states. His forthcoming book on Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States, co-edited with Raphael Espinoza and Peter Montiel, will be published by Oxford University Press in January 2021. Before joining the IMF in 1999, he was on the Finance faculty of the Mendoza School of Business, University of Notre Dame, USA. Dr. Chami has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University, and his areas of interest include banking regulation and supervision, financial markets, remittances, and climate change.
Ann Florini is Clinical Professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, where she directs programs at the Washington, D.C. campus. She was previously Professor of Public Policy at Singapore Management University founding director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore; and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has spearheaded numerous international initiatives on global governance, energy and climate policy, and cross-sector collaborations including government, civil society, and the private sector. Her many books and articles have addressed governance in China, transparency in governance, transnational civil society networks, and the role of the private sector in public affairs. Dr. Florini received her Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University.
James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).
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, he 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). He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Cornell University, and his current interests include rethinking capitalism and democracy, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.
More info can be found here.
Long-Run Effects of Incentivizing Work After Childbirth
May 2020
Elira Kuka (George Washington University, IZA, and NBER) and Na’ama Shenhav (Dartmouth College and NBER)
Abstract: This paper uses a panel of SSA earnings linked to the CPS to estimate the impact of increasing post-childbirth work incentives on mothers’ long-run career trajectories. We implement a novel research design that exploits variation in the timing of the 1993 reform of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) around a woman’s first birth and in eligibility for the credit. We find that single mothers exposed to the expansion immediately after a first birth (“early-exposed”) have 3 to 4 p.p. higher employment in the 5 years after a first birth than single mothers exposed 3 to 6 years after a first birth (“late-exposed”). Ten to nineteen years after a first birth, early-exposed mothers have the same employment and hours as late-exposed mothers, but have accrued 0.5 to 0.6 more years of work experience and have 6 percent higher earnings. Incorporating long-run effects on EITC benefits and earnings increases the implied marginal value of public funds (MVPF) of the expansion. Our results suggest that there are steep returns to work incentives at childbirth that accumulate over the life-cycle.
JEL Codes: J16, J31, H2
Key Words: child penalty, EITC
Medieval Cities Through the Lens of Urban Economic Theories
May 2020
Remi Jedwab (George Washington University), Noel D. Johnson (George Mason University), and Mark Koyama (George Mason University)
Abstract: We draw on theories and empirical findings from urban economics to explore and explain patterns of city growth in the Middle Ages (c. 800-1500 CE). We discuss how agricultural development and physical geography determined the location and size of cities during the medieval period. We also consider the relative importance of economies of scale, agglomeration, and human capital spillovers in medieval cities and discuss how their growth was limited by disamenities and constraints on mobility. We discuss how medieval cities responded to shocks such as the Black Death and describe how institutions became increasingly important in determining their trajectories. Avenues for future research are also laid out.
JEL Codes: R11; R12; R19; N9; N93; N95
Key Words: Medieval Era; City Growth; Urbanization; Food Surplus Hypothesis; Agglomeration Effects; Labor Mobility; Pandemics; Institutions; Europe; Asia
IMF World Economic Outlook
Schedule
| 9:30 – 9:45 | Opening Remarks: Maggie Chen, Director, Institute for International Economic Policy, George Washington University |
| 9:45 – 10:15 |
Chapter 1: Global Prospects and Policies • Presenter: Malhar Nabar, Deputy Division Chief, WEO Division, Research Department, International Monetary Fund |
| 10:15 – 10:30 | Coffee Break |
| 10:30 – 11:15 |
Chapter 2: The Rise of Corporate Market Power and Its Macroeconomic Effects • Presenter: Romain Duval, Advisor to the Chief Economist, Research Department, International Monetary Fund • Discussant: Zia Qureshi, Visiting Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institution |
| 11:15 – 11:30 | Coffee Break |
| 11:30 – 12:15 |
Chapter 3: The Price of Capital Goods: A Driver of Investment Under Threat? • Presenter: Natalija Novta, Economist, WEO Division, Research Department, International Monetary Fund |
| 12:15 | Concluding Remarks |
Maggie Chen
George Washington University
Maggie Chen is a professor of economics and international affairs at The George Washington University. Her areas of research expertise include foreign direct investment, international trade, and regional trade agreements and her work has been published extensively in academic journals such as American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and Journal of International Economics. She has worked as an economist in the research department of the World Bank, a trade policy advisor at the U.S. Congressional Budget Office leading policy analysis on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and a consultant for various divisions of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation advising issues ranging from foreign direct investment and technical trade barriers to the Belt and Road Initiative and contributing to various World Bank flagship studies and the World Development Report. She is a co-editor of the Economic Inquiry. Professor Chen received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her B.A. in Economics from Beijing Normal University.
Malhar Nabar
International Monetary Fund
Malhar Nabar is Deputy Division Chief in the World Economic Studies Division, where he is part of the core team that produces the WEO. In previous roles at the IMF, Malhar has covered China and Japan, and was Mission Chief to Hong Kong SAR. Prior to joining the IMF, Malhar taught at Wellesley College. His research interests are in investment and productivity growth, and he has published in various journals including Journal of Development Economics, Economic Inquiry, and Journal of Macroeconomics. He holds a PhD from Brown University and a BA from Oxford University.
Romain Duval
International Monetary Fund
Romain Duval is an advisor to the Chief Economist in the IMF Research Department, where he also leads the Structural Reforms Unit. Previously he was the division chief for Regional Studies of the IMF Asia Pacific Department and led the Regional Economic Outlook. Prior to joining the Fund, he was the division chief for Structural Policies Surveillance at the OECD Economics Department, where he was also the editor of the flagship publication Going for Growth. He has published extensively in leading academic and policy-oriented journals on a wide range of topics including the economics and political economy of labor and product market regulations, growth, productivity, trade, monetary policy, equilibrium real exchange rates, and climate change economics. Over the years his research has also been profiled numerous times in leading global newspapers and magazines such as The Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
Zia Qureshi
Brookings Institution
Zia Qureshi is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He also advises and consults for several other organizations. His research and commentary cover a broad range of global economic issues, including a recent focus on how technology is reshaping the economic agenda. He has published widely on these issues. Prior to joining Brookings, he worked at the World Bank and the IMF for thirty-five years, holding several leadership positions, including serving as Director, Development Economics, at the Bank and as Executive Secretary of the Joint Bank-Fund Ministerial Development Committee. He represented the Bank at major international forums, including the G20. He led a number of Bank and Fund flagship publications. He holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Natalija Novta
International Monetary Fund
Natalija Novta is an Economist at the IMF’s Research Department, where she works on the World Economic Outlook. She previously worked in the Western Hemisphere and the Fiscal Affairs Departments contributing to the Regional Economic Outlook and the Fiscal Monitor, respectively. Before joining the Fund, she worked at the Fiscal Council of Serbia, the Serbian Ministry of Finance, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. She holds a PhD in Economics from New York University, and a BA from Harvard University. Her research has focused on economic development, conflict, climate change, trade flows, and public sector employment. She has published at the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Conflict Research and International Tax and Public Finance.
Paulo Bastos
World Bank
Paulo Bastos is a Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank in the Trade and International Integration Unit (DECTI). His research interests include the drivers of firm performance in export markets, links between globalization and technological change, and the distributional impacts of trade and FDI. His recent research exploits large administrative data sets to address these topics. He has published in scholarly journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics and International Journal of Industrial Organization. Prior to joining the World Bank, he held positions at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Commission and the University of Nottingham. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Nottingham and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Porto.
Can Globalization Be Saved?
Thursday, April 11, 2019
2:15- 3:40pm
Panel of discussion and conversation between high-level senior officials in the field of globalization and economics.
Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Family Commons
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
Economic Diversification in the Post-Oil Era
Friday, April 12, 2019
9:00 am – 10:30 am
Hosting Kuwait’s Minister of Finance
Elliott School of International Affairs
State room, 7th floor
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
Schedule
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09:00-09:30 a.m |
Registration, Light Refreshments, and Networking |
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09:30-09:40 a.m. |
Welcome Remarks by Amb. Ghnem |
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09:40-10:20 a.m |
one -on-one discussion with H.E. Dr. Nayef F. Al-Hajraf moderated by Prof. Robert Weiner |
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10:20 a.m.-10:30 a.m |
Audience Q&A |
India and USA: Shared Prosperity, Opportunities, and Challenges
Tuesday, March 19th, 2019
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: City View Room
About the Event:
This event is hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP), the Federation of India’s Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. Elliott School Dean Reuben Brigety III will provide welcoming remarks, which will be followed by a fireside chat with H.E. Amb. Shringla moderated by IIEP Visiting Scholar and FICCI Chief Economic Advisor, Ajay Chhibber. A panel of experts on education, infrastructure investments, and pharmaceuticals will conclude the event.
Schedule:
Welcome remarks………………… Professor Maggie Chen
Director, Institute for International Economic Policy, GWU
………………… Ambassador Reuben E. Brigety II
Dean, Elliot School of International Affairs, GWU
Fireside chat………………………… H.E. Harsh Vardhan Shringla
Ambassador of India to the United States of America
…………………………. Ajay Chhibber
Visiting Scholar, Institute for International Economic Policy, GWU
Chief Economic Advisor, Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce and Industry
Expert panel……………………..… Subir V. Gokarn
Executive Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and SriLanka, International Monetary Fund
…………………..…… Sofia Mumtaz
President, Lupin Limited
……..………………… Adrian Mutton
Founder & CEO, Sannam S4 Group of companies & U.S.
Business Centers
Moderated by………………….… Ridhika Batra
Country Head / Director, Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce and Industry, U.S.
What Are We Talking about When We Talk about Digital Protectionism?
December 2018
Susan Ariel Aaronson
Abstract: For almost a decade, executives, scholars, and trade diplomats have argued that filtering, censorship, localization requirements, and domestic regulations are distorting the cross-border information flows that underpin the internet. Herein I use process tracing to examine the state and implications of digital protectionism. I make five points: First, I note that digital protectionism differs from protectionism of goods and other services. Information is intangible, highly tradable, and some information is a public good. Secondly, I argue that it will not be easy to set international rules to limit digital protectionism without shared norms and definitions. Thirdly, the US, EU, and Canada have labeled other countries policies’ protectionist, yet their arguments and actions sometimes appear hypocritical. Fourth, I discuss the challenge of Chinese failure to follow key internet governance norms. China allegedly has used a wide range of cyber strategies, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks (bombarding a web site with service requests) to censor information flows and impede online market access beyond its borders. WTO members have yet to discuss this issue and the threat it poses to trade norms and rules. Finally, I note that digital protectionism may be self-defeating. I then draw conclusions and make policy recommendations.
Data is Different: Why the World Needs a New Approach to Governing Cross-border Data Flows
November 2018
Susan Ariel Aaronson
Executive Summary: Companies, governments and individuals are using data to create new services such as apps, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). These data-driven services rely on large pools of data and a relatively unhindered flow of data across borders (few market access or governance barriers). The current approach to governing cross-border data flows through trade agreements has not led to binding, universal or interoperable rules governing the use of data. Trade diplomats first established principles to govern cross-border data flows, and then drafted e-commerce language in free trade agreements (FTAs), rather than through the World Trade Organization (WTO), the most international trade agreement. Data-driven services will require a different domestic and international regulatory environment than that developed to facilitate e-commerce. Most countries with significant datadriven firms are in the process of debating how to regulate these services and the data that underpins them. But many developing countries are not able to participate in that debate. Policy makers must devise a more effective approach to regulating trade in data for four reasons: the unique nature of data as an item exchanged across borders; the sheer volume of data exchanged; the fact that much of the data exchanged across borders is personal data; and the fact that although data could be a significant source of growth, many developing countries are unprepared to participate in this new data-driven economy and to build new data-driven services. This paper begins with an overview and then describes how trade in data is different from trade in goods or services. It then examines analogies used to describe data as an input, which can help us understand how data could be regulated. Next, the paper discusses how trade policy makers are regulating trade in data and how these efforts have created a patchwork. Finally, it suggests an alternative approach.
Data Minefield: How AI is Prodding Governments to Rethink Trade in Data
April 2018
Susan Ariel Aaronson
Key Points: No nation alone can regulate artificial intelligence (AI) because it is built on crossborder data flows; countries are just beginning to figure out how best to use and to protect various types of data that are used in AI, whether proprietary, personal, public or metadata; countries could alter comparative advantage in data through various approaches to regulating data — for example, requiring companies to pay for personal data; and Canada should carefully monitor and integrate its domestic regulatory and trade strategies related to data utilized in AI.
Information Please: A Comprehensive Approach to Digital Trade Provisions in NAFTA 2.0
Uncertainty and Trade Elasticities
March 2017
by Olga A. Timoshenko (George Washington University) & Erick Sager (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms
August 2016
by Maggie Xiaoyang Chen (George Washington University) & Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School and NBER)
The Value of Reputation in Trade: Evidence from Alibaba
April 2016
by Maggie X. Chen (George Washington University) & Min Wu (George Washington University)
The EMG Distribution and Aggregate Trade Elasticities
May 2016
by Olga A. Timoshenko (George Washington University) & Erick Sager (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Learning, Prices, and Firm Dynamics
Surge Pricing and Price Gouging: Public Misunderstanding as a Market Imperfection
Firm Learning and Growth
February 2015
by Costas Arkolakis (Yale University), Theodore Papageorgiou (NBER McGill University), and Olga Timoshenko (The George Washington University)
The Meaning of Fair Trade
Foreign Rivals are Coming to Town: Responding to the Threat of Foreign Multinational Entry
May 2014
by Maggie X. Chen (The George Washington University) and Cathy Ge Bao (The George Washington University)
The Global Agglomeration of Multinational Firms
April 2014
by Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School) and Maggie Chen (George Washington University)
Routes, Exports, and Employment in Developing Countries: Following the Trace of the Inca Road
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
How the Internet is Changing Who Trades and How We Trade
Monday, October 7, 2013
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
Market Reallocation and Knowledge Spillover: The Gains from Multinational Production
June 2013
by Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School) and Maggie Chen (George Washington University)
Market Reallocation and Knowledge Spillover: The Gains from Multinational Production
June 2013
by Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School) and Maggie Chen (George Washington University)
US-Tyres: Upholding a WTO Accession Contract – Imposing Pain for Little Gain
April 2013
by Steve Charnovitz (George Washington University) and Bernard Hoekman (World Bank)
Sanctuary Markets and Antidumping: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Exporters
Product Switching in a Model of Learning
September 2012
by Olga Timoshenko
IIEP Working Paper 2012-10
Argentina: There and Back Again?
Israel – Middle East North Africa (MENA) Trade: Is There Any Truth to the NEG Theory as Applied to the Israel-Jordan QIZs?
Vietnam’s Transition to a Market Economy: The Use of NME Standards in Dumping and Countervailing Investigations: or What Happened to Me On the Way to Rome?
US-Regional Agreements with Latin America – The Long and Unsuccessful Saga of CAFTA and the FTAA
Differences in PRC and Indian Textile and Apparel Industry Response to the Elimination of the MFA: Do Cultural Differences Matter?
Patent Protection and Strategic Delays in Technology Development: Implications for Economic Growth
Interdependence in Multinational Production Networks
Implementing Carbon Tariffs: A Fool’s Errand?
The Global Agglomeration of Multinational Firms
Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Foreign Direct Investment and Establishment Performance
“Womb for Rent” – Gestational Surrogacy Contracts – A New Path for Outsourcing Service Contracts
Third Country Effects on the Formation of Free Trade Agreements
A Post-Montesquieu Analysis of the WTO
Location Decision of Heterogeneous Multinational Firms
The Matching of Heterogeneous Firms and Politicians
Third-Country Effects in Multinational Production Networks
March 2009
by Maggie Chen
Location Decision of Heterogeneous Multinational Firms
Why Don’t Foreign Firms Cooperate in U.S. Antidumping Investigations?: An Empirical Analysis
Estimating Import Demand Function in Developing Countries: A Structural Econometric Approach with Applications to India and Sri Lanka
Regionalism in Standards: Good or Bad for Trade?
Trade Liberalization and Antidumping: Is There a Substitution Effect?
July 2008
by Michael Moore
Does Antidumping Use Contribute to Trade Liberalization in Developing Countries?
Regional Economic Integration and Geographic Concentration of Multinational Firms
A Match Made in the Corporate and Public Interests: Marrying Voluntary CSR Initiatives and the WTO
June 2007
by Susan Aaronson
