Financial Globalization – Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP)

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023
Reception 5:00 – 5:30 ET
Lecture 5:30-6:30 pm ET
City View Room, Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, 7th Floor

We were pleased to invite you to join us on March 23rd, 2023 from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm EST for a conversation with Carl Richardson, MA ’99, and Sarah Hirsch, BA ’10, as part of the Wenger Family Lecture series on International Business and Finance. This lecture discussed “The Global Economy Post-Brexit: UK and US Perspectives.” IIEP Director Remi Jedwab will serve as the moderator. The event began with a reception from 5:00 – 5:30 pm, followed by the discussion from 5:30 – 6:30 pm.

This event was presented by the Elliott School Office of Development and Alumni Relations and underwritten by the Henry E. & Consuelo S. Wenger Foundation. It is co-sponsored by the Institute for International Economic Policy.

About the Speakers

Carl A. Richardson, ESIA MA ’99, leads the Richardson family business, alongside his brothers. Richardson is a multi-generational independent family-run trading and investment business which has a real estate and growth capital portfolio that is embedded across the world. Current growth capital investments include an award- winning Swiss technology company, a UK financial services business, the fastest growing automated carwash business in the US, and the largest avocado grower in New Zealand. Real estate holdings are significant in scale and content, encompassing office, residential, distribution centres, leisure and infrastructure properties both nationally and internationally.

Carl is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Trustee of the Richardson Brothers’ Foundation. He previously served as an International Officer at HSBC in London, UAE, and Hong Kong, and has also served as an Honorary Captain in the Royal Navy Reserve. He is a member of the Executive Circle of the Elliott School’s Institute for International Economic Policy and previously was a member of the school’s International Council advisory group.

Sarah Hirsch, ESIA BA ’10, is an economic and financial policy expert and former diplomat. She is currently Vice President of Global Corporate and Investment Banking at Bank of America. Since 2010, Sarah has advised senior public and private sector officials, including heads of state. Her areas of expertise include international economic policy, economic development, capital markets, and monetary policy.

From 2012-19, Sarah served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, most recently as senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance. As Acting U.S. Executive Director at the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, she facilitated the approval of $12 billion in development finance to countries throughout Africa and established partnerships between the Bank and U.S. government, including the Obama Administration’s Power Africa Initiative, Global Connect Initiative, and the Partnership on Illicit Finance. For her service, Sarah was awarded the Treasury Secretary’s Exceptional Service Award. She is a member of the Executive Circle of the Elliott School’s Institute for International Economic Policy.

About the Moderator

Remi Jedwab is an associate professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University, the Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and the Director of the ESIA Initiative on Climate Change and Sustainable Cities at 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 urban and real estate economics, development and growth, environmental economics, and labor economics. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, urban construction and climate change, the economic determinants and effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of institutions, human capital, and technology in development and growth. 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.

Tuesday, May 26, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

We are pleased to invite you to the second webinar of the “Facing Inequality” series, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual series focuses on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe – especially those revealed by the current COVID-19 pandemic. It brings together historians, economists, sociologists, political scientists, and epidemiologists, within the academy and without, to present work and discuss ideas that can facilitate new interdisciplinary approaches to the problem of inequality. This is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invite you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.

The second event, “Will Covid-19 Raise Inequality? Evidence from Past Epidemics and Crises”, features Prakash Loungani and Jonathan D. Ostry. Major epidemics in this century, such as SARS and H1N1, have raised income inequality and disproportionately hurt employment prospects of people with low skills and education levels. What impacts will the COVID-19 pandemic have on inequality in the near term? And how will inequality evolve over the longer-term as governments act to mend the disruptions to globalization and unwind the build-up in their public debts? The talk will draw on the authors’ recent work (with Davide Furceri) on the distributional impacts of epidemics and their book on other drivers of inequality such as austerity and financial globalization. Discussants Lucia Rafanelli and Remi Jedwab will provide commentary from the perspectives of political science and economic history, respectively.

The “Facing Inequality” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Faculty Affiliate Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor of History. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

About the Speakers:

Prakash Loungani is Assistant Director and Senior Personnel Manager in the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office. He is a co-author of Confronting Inequality: How Societies Can Choose Inclusive Growth (Columbia University Press, 2019). Previously, he headed the Development Macroeconomics Division in the IMF’s Research Department and was co-chair of the IMF’s Jobs and Growth working group from 2011-15. He is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey School of Business, a member of the Research Program in Forecasting at George Washington Univeristy, and Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a think-tank based in Rabat, Morocco.

Jonathan D. Ostry is Deputy Director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). His recent responsibilities include leading staff teams on capital account management and financial globalization issues; fiscal sustainability issues; and the nexus between income inequality and economic growth. Past positions include leading the division that produces the IMF’s flagship multilateral surveillance publication, the World Economic Outlook. He is the author of a number of books on international macro policy issues and numerous articles in scholarly journals. His most recent books include Taming the Tide of Capital Flows (MIT Press, 2017) and Confronting Inequality (Columbia University Press, 2018).

With James Foster, Lucia Rafanelli, Remi Jedwab, and Trevor Jackson

Co-sponsored by the GW Inequality Series

Tag: Financial Globalization

Wenger Family Lecture on International Business and Finance: The Global Economy Post-Brexit: UK and US Perspectives

Will Covid-19 Raise Inequality? Evidence from Past Epidemics and Crises