Inequality – Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP)

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

Collaborate To Create Change: Towards Racial and Socioeconomic Equity in our Scholarship, Research & Teaching

September 16, 2022October 27, 2022Past Events, Research Conference

Friday, September 23rd, 2022
7:30 a.m. – 6 p.m. ET
The Dee Kelly Lounge
Jack Morton Auditorium
Faculty Conference Center
The Jacob Burns Moot Court Room

Schedule

The George Washington University invites you to join us for our first racial and socioeconomic equity research showcase. GW’s Equity Institute Initiative (EII) is a university-wide collaboration to create an institute dedicated to community-engaged research on the worldwide program of racial and ethnic inequality.

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Bonnie Gordon is an Associate Professor in the University of Virginia McIntire Department of Music. She is a music historian who works across disciplines and creative practices. She is fascinated by the idea of sound as fundamental to the ways we move through the world and deeply committed to the idea that learning about sound is not for musicians only. primary research interests center on the experiences of sound in Early Modern music making and the affective potential of the human voice.

Professor Gordon is a founding faculty director of the newly launched University of Virginia Equity Center; she founded the Arts Mentors a program designed to increase access to the arts in Charlottesville; and is a collaborating faculty member of The Sound Justice Lab, a group of artists and academics who use audio-visual media and storytelling to explore what justice means to ordinary people and everyday life.

Professor Gordon’s research centers on sound and gender in the early Modern world. Her first book, Monteverdi’s Unruly Women (Cambridge University Press, 2004) frames the composer’s madrigals and music dramas written between 1600 and 1640 as windows into contemporary notions of sound, body, voice, and sense. She has explored similar issues in a variety of contexts, including articles about contemporary singer-songwriters Kate Bush and Tori Amos and an interdisciplinary and cross cultural volume of essays co-edited with Martha Freldman about courtesans entitled The Courtesans Arts, (Oxford University Press, 2006). Dr. Gordon is the recipient of two grants from the Folger Shakespeare Library, a dissertation grant from the American Association of University Women, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brandeis University, a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. She has also been the Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. In addition to her scholarly work, she has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate and the Cville Weekly. She plays jazz, rock, and classical viola.

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, and his most recent, the New York Times bestseller, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own, takes a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy. In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s complexities, vulnerabilities and hope into full view. Hope that is, in one of his favorite quotes from W.E.B. Du Bois, “not hopeless, but a bit unhopeful.”

Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton. He is also on the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. He frequently appears in the media, as a columnist for TIME Magazine and as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline Whitehouse with Nicolle Wallace. He regularly appears on Meet the Press on Sundays. Glaude also hosts Princeton’s AAS podcast, a conversation around the field of African American Studies and the Black experience in the 21st century.

A highly accomplished and respected scholar of religion, Glaude is a former president of the American Academy of Religion. His books on religion and philosophy include An Uncommon Faith: A Pragmatic Approach to the Study of African American Religion, African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction, and Exodus! Religion, Race and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America, which was awarded the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Book Prize.

Some like to describe Glaude as the quintessential Morehouse man, having left his home in Moss Point, Mississippi at age 16 to begin studies at the HBCU and alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He holds a master’s degree in African American Studies from Temple University and a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University.

Glaude is known both for his inspiring oratory and ability to convene conversations that engage fellow citizens from all backgrounds — from young activists to corporate audiences looking for a fresh perspective on DEI. In 2011, he delivered Harvard’s DuBois lectures. His 2015 commencement remarks at Colgate University titled, “Turning Our Backs,” was recognized by the New York Times as one of the best commencement speeches of the year.

Combining a scholar’s knowledge of history, a political commentator’s take on the latest events, and an activist’s passion for social justice, Glaude challenges all of us to examine our collective American conscience, “not to posit the greatness of America, but to establish the ground upon which to imagine the country anew.”

Kristen Clarke is the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. In this role, she leads the Justice Department’s broad federal civil rights enforcement efforts and works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all who live in America. Assistant Attorney General Clarke is a lifelong civil rights lawyer who has spent her entire career in public service.

Assistant Attorney General Clarke began her career as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division through the Department of Justice’s Honors Program. In 2006, she joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where she helped lead the organization’s work in the areas of voting rights and election law across the country. Ms. Clarke worked on cases defending the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, presented oral argument to the DC District Court in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, and has provided testimony on federal and state voting rights legislation. In 2011, she was named the head of the Civil Rights Bureau for the New York State Attorney General’s Office, where she led broad civil rights enforcement actions. Under her leadership, the Bureau secured landmark agreements with banks to address unlawful redlining, employers to address barriers to reentry for people with criminal backgrounds, police departments on reforms to policies and practices, major retailers on racial profiling of consumers, landlords on discriminatory housing policies, school districts concerning issues relating to the school-to-prison pipeline and more. In 2015, Ms. Clarke was named the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations founded at the request of John F. Kennedy. There, she led the organization’s legal work in courts across the country addressing some of the nation’s most complex racial justice and civil rights challenges.

Assistant Attorney General Clarke was born in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Choate Rosemary Hall, she received her AB from Harvard University and her JD from Columbia Law School.

Caroline Laguerre-Brown serves as the Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement. Caroline directs GW’s efforts to advance diversity and inclusion throughout the university and oversees the Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, the Office of Disability Support Services, the Multicultural Student Services Center and the Title IX Office.

Prior to joining the George Washington University in August 2016, Caroline previously served as the Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer at Johns Hopkins University where she developed their first university-wide sexual harassment prevention training initiative, spearheaded unconscious bias training for faculty search committees, launched a Race in America speaker series and co-developed a comprehensive faculty diversity initiative. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, she held positions as labor and employment defense counsel for the New York City Transit Authority and as assistant director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Office for the Fire Department of New York. She also served as staff counsel to the Equal Employment Advisory Council in Washington, DC.

Caroline is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Featured Speakers

President Mark S. Wrighton, PhD, was elected President of the George Washington University January 1, 2022. For almost 24 years (July 1995-May 2019), Wrighton served as the 14th Chancellor and chief executive officer of Washington University in St. Louis. In the years following his appointment, Washington University made significant progress in student quality, campus improvements, resource development, curriculum, and international reputation.

Dr. Aristide J. Collins Jr. is Vice President, Chief of Staff, and Secretary of the University, at the George Washington University. His expertise includes executive leadership in university governance, institutional advancement, facilitating and managing the implementation of Board of Trustees, presidential and university-wide initiatives to advance organizational priorities. He has also served as Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations, providing strategic oversight and leadership during the public phase of the University’s $1 billion “Making History” campaign, recorded as the largest fundraising year in its history.

Christopher A. Bracey (Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs) is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of U.S. race relations, individual rights, and criminal procedure. Professor Bracey teaches and researches in the areas of the legal history of U.S. race relations, constitutional law, criminal procedure, civil procedure, and civil rights. He was appointed to his role as Provost in June 2021.

Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, PhD, is the Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. A leader in public health and civil rights law who focuses on disparities in health, health care, and the social determinants of health, Dean Matthew joined GW Law in 2020. She is the author of the bestselling book Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care and the newly released Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America.

All attendees are welcome to attend the event in person. We require that guests follow the George Washington University Visitor guidelines.

Two Generations of Trailblazing Chinese American Women At The Asian Development Bank

April 25, 2022April 27, 2022Climate Adaptation, Development Economics, Past Events

Monday, April 25, 2022
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. EDT
Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
Elliott School of International Affair
and Zoom

How will the Asian Development Bank address the long-term challenges of poverty and climate change amidst evolving regional geopolitics and post-pandemic economic recovery? Please join us for a special conversation with Ambassador Chantale Wong as she begins her tenure as US Director of the Asian Development Bank, with a special appearance by her mentor and predecessor Ambassador Linda Tsao Yang. Both women have blazed new trails: Linda Tsao Yang, US Executive Director to the ADB from 1993-99, was the first woman and minority representative of the US on the board of a multilateral financial institute, while Chantale Wong is the first out LGBTQ+ person of color to be appointed to an ambassador-level position in the United States. Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch, USCET’s Executive Chair and a trailblazer in her own right as the first US Ambassador of Asian descent, will lead the conversation, touching on themes of mentorship, overcoming barriers, the role of the US at the ADB, and sustainable recovery amidst the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Audience members in-person and online were invited to take part in a lively Q&A session at the event.

This was a co-sponsored event with US-China Education Trust (USCET).

Speakers:

Linda Tsao Yang is an ambassador (retired). Linda Tsao Yang served as U.S. Executive Director to the board of the Asian Development Bank in Manila from 1993 to1999. She was appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1993, the first woman and the first minority to represent the United States on the board of a multilateral financial institution. Yang Is Chair Emerita of the Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA) based in Hong Kong which she chaired from 2001 to 2014. From 2003 to 2010, she served on the board of the Bank of China (Hong Kong) – one of three banknote issuing banks in Hong Kong – as an independent non-executive director. Earlier in her career, she was the first minority appointed to serve as California’s Savings and Loan Commissioner; she was also the first minority appointed to the board of the California Public Employees Retirement System ( CalPERS), the largest public pension fund in the United States. She was Vice-Chairman of the Investment Committee of the board and was unanimously elected by her fellow board members to the position of Vice President of the Board.Yang was an invited panelist on International Economy at the economic summit led by then President-elect Clinton in Little Rock, Arkansas in December 1992.

Chantale Wong has had a long and distinguished career in public service, currently serving as the US Executive Director to the Asian Development Bank in Manila. Wong is the first out lesbian and first LGBTQ+ person of color appointed to an ambassador-level position in US history, confirmed by the senate in February 2022. Previously, Wong was appointed by President Obama to serve as Vice President for Administration and Finance, and Chief Financial Officer at the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Earlier in her career, Wong has held leadership positions at the Office of Management and Budget, Departments of Treasury and Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency, in addition to NASA. Chantale joined the staff of the Asian Development Bank in 1999 as an environmental specialist to ensure the Bank’s assessments complied with their environmental and social policies. She led development and publication of ADB’s first Asian Environment Outlook (2001), and was subsequently appointed by President Bill Clinton to its Board of Directors, representing the US as the Alternate Executive Director to oversee operations. Wong was the founding chair of the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership (CAPAL), an organization dedicated to encouraging careers in public service by providing training, workshops, mentors, and work opportunities for young AAPIs.

Moderator:

Julia Chang Bloch is founding president of the US-China Education Trust. She was the first US ambassador of Asian descent in US history. She has had an extensive career in international affairs and government service, beginning in 1964 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia and culminating as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal in 1989. From 1981 to 1988, Ambassador Bloch served at the U.S. Agency for International Development as Assistant Administrator of Food for Peace and Voluntary Assistance and as Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East, positions appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. She also was the Chief Minority Counsel to a Senate Select Committee; a Senate professional staff member; the Deputy Director of the Office of African Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency; a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and an Associate of the U.S.- Japan Relations Program of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

Profiling Gendered Multidimensional Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa

February 21, 2022March 16, 2022Development Economics, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Ultra Poverty

Monday, February 21st, 2022
11:00 – 12:15 p.m. ET
via Zoom

We were pleased to invite you to a joint virtual event with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report Office (HDRO) on Monday, February 21st, 2022. This event featured Kehinde Omotoso presenting “Profiling Gendered Multidimensional Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa” and Jacob Assa as a discussant.

About the Speaker:

Kehinde O. Omotoso holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her research covers a wide range of development issues relating to multidimensional poverty, health, gender, climate change and food security. Her research and policy experience spans over a decade during which she has gained a deep understanding of the microeconomic factors that determine poverty and health inequality in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. She contributes regularly to the policy discourse on multidimensional poverty in the context of sustainable development goals (SDGs). She has presented several research papers in both national and international conferences, seminars and workshops. She has a number of research articles published in reputable journals. She is currently on a post-doctoral research fellowship

About the Discussant:

Jacob Assa is a Strategic Advisor with UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa. He began his U.N. career 22 years ago as a statistician and then chief of section (DESA/UNSD), focusing on macroeconomic aggregates and development indicators. In this role he was the chief editor of three flagship statistical publications. More recently Jacob worked as an economist focusing on both the least developed countries (at UN-OHRLLS) and UNDP’s Human Development Report (HDR). At UN-OHRLLS, he co-authored the annual SG’s report as well as the flagship publication – State of the LDCs. At UNDP, Jacob co-authored the two most recent HDRs – Inequality in Human Development (2019) and The next frontier: Human development and the Anthropocene (2020). He also developed UNDP’s proposal for a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, which the Administrator has referred to as an example of thought leadership. Jacob holds a Ph.D. in Economics (2015) from the New School for Social Research and his doctoral dissertation – The Financialization of GDP: Implications for economic theory and policy – has been published as a book by Routledge. He has published in peer-reviewed journals on inequality and growth, financialization, peacebuilding and development, and the political economy of national accounting, most recently in the journals Ecological Economics and New Political Economy.

About the Series:

The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to host a special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI).

Bringing together the academic and policy spheres, this series of seminars will highlight topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and caste, the statistical capacity of nations, social protection, the use of geospatial mapping in tracking poverty, poverty and refugees, and evaluating whether we’re on track to meet UN SDG Goal #1. The sessions will also include work that applies the global MPI methodology, the Alkire Foster method, to innovative measures.

Videos from this Series

William White on Negative Economic Shocks: Can Our Fragile Democracies Take the Hit?

February 6, 2022September 28, 2022Development Economics, Past Events

Wednesday, May 4, 2022
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EDT
via Zoom

The global economic and financial system has been showing increasing signs of stress for many years, raising the likelihood of harmful “tipping points”. In large part, this has been due to the unintended consequences of well-meaning macroeconomic and regulatory policies. Now we must also confront negative supply shocks that will lower real growth and exacerbate inflationary tendencies over a number of years. Unfortunately, over recent years, many democratic countries have developed political “fault lines” that could now threaten the future of democracy itself. History provides many examples of political regime change triggered by environmental crises, pandemics, and above all economic and financial crises. In principle, these systemic fragilities could still be reduced but, in practice, there are many political obstacles to doing so.

Speakers:

William White is currently a Senior Fellow at the C D Howe Institute in Toronto. From 2009 until March 2018, he served as Chair of the Economic and Development Review Committee at the OECD in Paris. Prior to that, he spent fourteen years as Economic Adviser at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. In that role, he was responsible for all BIS research, data collection, and the organization of meetings for central bankers from around the world. Before joining the BIS in 1994, he was the Deputy Governor responsible for international affairs at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa.

In addition to publishing widely, Mr. White’s other activities have included membership of the Issing Committee, advising Chancellor Merkel on G20 issues. In addition to earlier prizes awarded in Europe, in 2016 Mr. White received the Adam Smith Award, the highest award of the National Association of Business Economists in Washington.

Discussants:

Martha Finnemore is University Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. Her research focuses on global governance, international organizations, cybersecurity, ethics, and social theory. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a non-resident scholar at the Cyber Policy Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been a visiting research fellow at the Brookings Institution and Stanford University, and has received fellowships or grants from the MacArthur Foundation, DoD’s Minerva Research Initiative, the Social Science Research Council, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace.

Alan Kirman is the Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (EHESS) in Paris, Professor Emeritus at Aix-Marseille University, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and Chief Adviser to the OECD NAEC (New Approaches to Economic Challenges) initiative. He has a B.A. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

Alan was formerly a Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Warwick, and the European University Institute in Florence. He has a Ph.D. Honoris Causa from the Jaime 1 University in Castellon, Spain. He has published more than 160 articles in international journals and is the author of five books including Complex Economics: from Individual to Collective Rationality and editor of 18 others.

Professor Kirman is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, of the European Economics Association, and member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He was awarded the Humboldt Prize and is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. He is panel chair for the 2022 Advanced Grant programme of the ERC in SHS, Honorary Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Associate Editor of several other journals..

Moderator:

Sunil Sharma is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, and a Senior Associate at the Council on Economic Policies, Zurich, Switzerland. He was Assistant Director in the IMF’s Research Department from 2015-2018, and the Director of the IMF-Singapore Regional Training Institute (STI) in Singapore from 2006-2015. Before moving to Singapore in 2006, Sunil was Chief of the IMF Institute’s Asian Division in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the IMF in 1992, he was on the Economics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Sunil has a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Economics from Cornell University, a M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and a B.A. (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. He has published widely on economic and financial topics, and his current interests include governance, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.

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.

FInd More of This Series Here

Unshackling India: Hard Truths and Clear Choices for Economic Revival

February 1, 2022April 11, 2022Development Economics, India, Past Events

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022

We were pleased to invite you to a joint Elliott School Book Launch Series and IIEP Envisioning India event on Wednesday, February 2nd to discuss Unshackling India. This event featured authors Ajay Chhibber and Salman Soz with discussant remarks by Kaushik Basu (Cornell University), and Martin Wolf (Financial Times). This webinar was moderated by Elliott School Dean Alyssa Ayres, and Elliott School Vice Dean James Foster provided welcoming remarks.

This was the launch of Ajay Chhibber and Salman Anees Soz’s book Unshackling India: Hard Truths and Clear Choices for Economic Revival.

As India enters its seventy-fifth year of independence, conventional policy is unlikely to combat the breadth of its economic challenges. Across a range of areas—human capital, technology, agriculture, finance, trade, public-service delivery and more—new ideas must now be on the table. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only cost India many lives and livelihoods, it has also exposed major structural weaknesses in the economy.

A huge farm and jobs crisis, rising and massive inequalities, tepid investment growth and chronic banking-sector challenges have plagued the economy for many years. The pandemic has exacerbated these challenges. It has also exposed the limitations of the Indian state, which tries to control too much—and ends up stifling the economy and the inherent energies of its young population. Climate change is no longer a distant threat, while disruptive technology has huge implications for India’s demographic dividend. In addition, the dangerous lurch towards majoritarianism will cast its shadow on India’s pursuit of prosperity for all.

Unshackling India examines the question: Can India use the next twenty-five years, when it will reach the hundredth year of independence, to not only restructure its economy but rejuvenate its democratic energy and unshackle its potential and become a genuinely developed economy by 2047? This book argues that India can foster a prosperous and inclusive economy if it sets its mind to it, acknowledges the hard truths and lays out the clear choices and new ideas India must adopt towards that end.

Welcoming Remarks:

James 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).

About the Moderator:

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 Speakers:

Ajay Chhibber is Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Institute for International Economic Policy, George Washington University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He was the first Director General, Independent Evaluation Office, India, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the NIPFP. He served as Assistant Secretary General, UN, and Assistant Administrator, UNDP. At the World Bank he served as Country Director in Turkey and Vietnam, and Director of the 1997 World Development Report. He has a PhD from Stanford University, an MA from the Delhi School of Economics and was awarded the David Rajaram Prize for best all-rounder at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Salman Soz is an economic development consultant, author and commentator. He has extensive international experience across a range of economic development issues. Formerly with the World Bank, he now serves as a consultant to international institutions. He is a recipient of the World Bank President’s Award for Excellence. His commentary appears in a variety of media outlets and he speaks regularly on politics, economics, and international affairs. He has an MBA from Yale University, an MA in Economics from Northeastern University, and a BA (Hons) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, where he was the President of the Students’ Union Society.

About the Discussants:

Kaushik Basu is Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. He is currently the President of the International Economic Association and a nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. He recently served as Chief Economist at the World Bank and before that was Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. During his tenure at the Bank, he regularly co-taught an Elliott School course Game Theory and Strategic Thinking with James Foster, which included a class session in the Preston Auditorium of the World Bank for its 150 GW students. As one student commented “Being taught by Prof. Basu was definitely an Only at GW moment!” He has now returned to Cornell but fondly remembers his time in DC – especially his weekly chats with GW students and his daily strolls across the GW campus from home to work in the Bank, and back again.

Martin Wolf CBE is Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000. He was a member of the UK government’s Independent Commission on Banking between June 2010 and September 2011. He is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and King’s College, London. He has received honorary doctorates from six universities, including the London School of Economics. He is a University Global Fellow of Columbia University, New York. Mr Wolf won the Ludwig Erhard Prize for economic commentary for 2009, the 33rd Ischia International Journalism Prize in 2012, the Overseas Press Club of America’s prize for “best commentary on international news in any medium” for 2013 and the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gerald Loeb Awards. His most recent book is The Shifts and The Shocks: What we’ve learned – and have still to learn – from the financial crisis.

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 U.S. Federal Reserve and Economic Inequality

January 26, 2022April 26, 2022Development Economics, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Past Events

Download Karen Petrou's Remarks Here

Wednesday, January 26th, 2022
12:00 – 1:30 p.m. EDT

We were pleased to invite you to a Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy event on Wednesday, January 26th, entitled “The U.S. Federal Reserve and Economic Inequality.” This event featured Karen Petrou (Federal Finance Analytics), with discussant remarks by Mark Levonian (formerly of Promontory Financial Group), Bill Nelson (Bank Policy Institute), and Peter Conti-Brown (University of Pennsylvania).

In her ground-breaking 2021 book, Karen Petrou shows how the U.S. Federal Reserve inadvertently – but dramatically – exacerbated U.S. income and wealth inequality after 2010. Approaching the problem from a pragmatic, market-focused perspective, she demonstrates how the combined force of post-2008 monetary and regulatory policy made Americans more unequal, the financial system even more fragile, and voters angrier.

In the seminar, Petrou provided a perspective on what the Federal Reserve did to counter the pandemic-induced 2020 financial crisis and its inequality impact. She laid out the inequality-transmission channels of current Fed policy and discussed specific policy solutions, to address worsening economic inequality in a higher-risk financial system.

This webinar was moderated by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma, and had welcoming remarks by IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh.

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.

About the Moderator:

From 2012-2020, he was on the Governing Board of the Mysore Royal Academy (MYRA) School of Business, Mysore, India. During 2012-2018, he was a member of the Advisory Board, Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics (SKBI), Singapore Management University, Singapore, and over 2011-2015, he served on the International Advisory Board, Institute of Global Finance, Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Sunil has a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Economics from Cornell University, a M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and a B.A. (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. He has published widely on economic and financial topics, and his current interests include governance, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.

About the Presenter:

Karen Petrou is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Federal Financial Analytics, Inc., a privately-held company that since 1985 has provided analytical and advisory services on legislative, regulatory, and public-policy issues affecting financial services companies doing business in the U.S. and abroad. Petrou is a frequent speaker on topics affecting the financial services industry. In addition to testifying before the U.S. Congress, she has spoken before the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Chicago, the European Central Bank, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the International Monetary Fund, the Clearing House, the Bank Policy Institute, the Institute of International Bankers, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the Japanese Diet, and many other governmental, industry and academic groups. She has also authored numerous articles in publications such as the American Banker and the Financial Times, and is frequently quoted as a bank policy expert in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Politico, the Hill, and other media outlets.

Prior to founding her own firm in 1985, Petrou worked in Washington as an officer at Bank of America, where she began her career in 1977. She is an honors graduate in Political Science from Wellesley College and also was a special student in an honors program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned an M.A. in that subject from the University of California at Berkeley, and was a doctoral candidate there. She has served on the boards of banking organizations and now sits as a director on the board of the Foundation Fighting Blindness and the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation. In 2019, she and her husband Basil were named “visionaries” by the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

About the Discussants:

Mark Levonian was most recently Managing Director and Global Head for Enterprise Economics and Risk Analysis at Promontory Financial Group. He was formerly Senior Deputy Comptroller for Economics at the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), where he served as a key advisor to the Comptroller before, during, and after the global financial crisis. Mark oversaw quantitative examination support and policy research for the OCC and was closely involved in policy responses to the financial crisis, including the development of bank stress testing. As a senior regulatory official and economist, he led or participated in various Basel Committee initiatives related to economic modeling and played a leading role in the development of rules and guidance for multiple generations of the Basel capital framework. Prior to joining the OCC, Mark was Vice President for Banking Supervision and Regulation and Economic Research Officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Manager of the Banking Studies Department at the New York Fed, Lecturer in Finance at the University of California’s Haas School of Business, and Senior Economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia. He has been an adviser/consultant to the World Bank, the IMF, and the central banks of Russia and Belarus.

Bill Nelson is an Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at the Bank Policy Institute and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Previously he served as Executive Managing Director, Chief Economist, and Head of Research at the Clearing House Association and Chief Economist of the Clearing House Payments Company. Mr. Nelson contributed to and oversaw research and analysis to support the advocacy of the Association on behalf of TCH’s owner banks.
Prior to joining The Clearing House in 2016, Mr. Nelson was a deputy director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board where his responsibilities included monetary policy analysis, discount window policy analysis, and financial institution supervision. Mr. Nelson attended Federal Open Market Committee meetings and regularly briefed the Board and FOMC. He was a member of the Large Institution Supervision Coordinating Committee (LISCC) and the steering committee of the Comprehensive Liquidity Analysis and Review (CLAR). He has chaired and participated in several BIS working groups on the design of liquidity regulations and most recently chaired the CGFS-Markets Committee working group on regulatory change and monetary policy. Mr. Nelson joined the Board in 1993 as an economist in the Banking section of Monetary Affairs. In 2004, he was the founding chief of the new Monetary and Financial Stability section of Monetary Affairs. In 2007 and 2008, he visited the Bank for International Settlements, in Basel, Switzerland, where his responsibilities included analyzing central banks’ responses to the financial crisis and researching the use of forward guidance by central banks. He returned to the Board in the fall of 2008 where he helped design and manage several of the Federal Reserve’s emergency liquidity facilities.

Mr. Nelson earned a Ph.D., an M.S., and an M.A. in economics from Yale University and a B.A. from the University of Virginia. He has published research on a wide range of topics including monetary policy rules; monetary policy communications; and the intersection of monetary policy, lender of last resort policy, financial stability, and bank supervision and regulation.

Peter Conti-Brown is the Class of 1965 Associate Professor of Financial Regulation at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Co-Director of the Wharton Initiative of Financial Policy and Regulation, and Nonresident Fellow in Economics Studies at The Brookings Institution. A financial historian and a legal scholar, Conti-Brown studies central banking, financial regulation, and public finance, with a particular focus on the history and policies of the US Federal Reserve System. He is author of the book The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve (Princeton University Press 2016), co-author of a leading textbook on financial regulation (The Law of Financial Institutions), and author and editor of several other books and articles on central banking, financial regulation, and bank corporate governance. He received a law degree from Stanford Law School and a PhD in history from Princeton. He and his wife Nikki are the parents of four children.

IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series

More From This Series

Accelerating Systemic Transformation: A Case Study from Wales (UK)

November 8, 2021April 11, 2022Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Past Events

Wednesday, November 10th, 2021
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EDT
via Zoom

This was an IIEP/ASU-Thunderbird event on Wednesday, November 10th, entitled “Accelerating Systemic Transformation: A Case Study from Wales (UK).” It featured Jyoti Banerjee (North Star Transition), Jenny Scott (Apella), and Victoria Topham (Wales Transition Lab).

The Wales Transition Lab (WTL) is a systemic nation-scale program across Wales that reconnects food, health, and nature to deliver solutions that address the root causes of a widespread decline in wellbeing. Launched in October 2020 by North Star Transition, WTL brings together over thirty leaders across food, farming, environment, water, business, education, and health sectors across Wales around bold, shared ambitions. The seminar will provide an inside view of the ways in which WTL is helping to bring about systemic transformation and the challenges this effort faces. It will assess how this stakeholder-driven approach fits into governance and policy structures, providing a real-world case study of a comprehensive place-based attempt to create a better future.

This webinar was moderated by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma. IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh and Ann Florini of ASU-Thunderbird 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:

Jyoti Banerjee is co-founder of North Star Transition, and project director of the team that created the Integrated Reporting (six capitals) movement globally. He also chaired the Integrated Thinking and Strategy group, a collaboration of over fifty global organizations, including the World Bank, BASF and Novo Nordisk. He has been involved in impact investing for two decades and used to be an entrepreneur in the tech sector. At North Star Transition, he leads the Finance Transition Lab. Jyoti has a master’s degree in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and an MBA from the Open Business School. He taught entrepreneurship as an MBA elective at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Jenny Scott is a Founder Partner at Apella, an advisory firm that helps organizations build their purpose, strategy and reputation. Prior to establishing Apella, Jenny was an Executive Director at the Bank of England, responsible for leading communications throughout the 2008 financial crisis and the Brexit referendum in 2016. She was also co-head of strategy. Before that, Jenny was Economics Correspondent at the BBC. She is a trustee of Pro Bono Economics. Jenny is a senior advisor at North Star Transition.

Victoria Topham is a chartered accountant who worked for over 20 years as a finance professional, training with PwC and holding commercial and corporate finance roles with leading media industry businesses. With the urgency for sustainable and systemic change to tackle planetary degeneration, she works with businesses and organizations to develop purpose-led business models. Victoria leads the Wales Transition Lab and is also vice chair of the Buckinghamshire Food Partnership. Victoria has a geology degree from the University of Durham, a Business Sustainability Management qualification from the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Sustainability Leadership and a Professional Coaching Certificate from the Henley Business School. She is a qualified member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

About the Moderator:

Sunil Sharma is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, 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, Sunil 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.

Welcome Remarks:

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.

More From This Series

Gender Inclusiveness in Trade: Barriers, Challenges, and Opportunities

October 25, 2021March 16, 2022Global Governance, International Trade, Past Events

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.

Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021 Unmasking Disparities: Ethnicity, Race, and Gender

October 10, 2021March 16, 2022Development Economics, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Past Events

Monday, October 11th, 2021
11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. EDT
via Zoom

In this first event in the continuation of our seminar series on Multidimensional Poverty Measurement, jointly hosted by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford, the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University, speakers presented the extensive findings of the 2021 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI) Report Unmasking Disparities: Ethnicity, Race, and Gender. The global MPI Report is jointly produced by OPHI and HDRO, with results and report being updated each year. The 2021 global MPI presents findings on multidimensional poverty around the world, using the most recent data from 109 countries, covering 5.9 billion people, and including changes over time in 80 countries. For the first time, the 2021 global MPI includes findings for trends with up to three points in time, detailed disaggregations of global MPI results by racial and ethnic groups, gender of household head, and analyses on multidimensional poverty and the socio-economic implications of COVID-19.

About the Speakers:

Sabina Alkire (Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford) directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Dr Alkire works on a new approach to measuring poverty and well-being that goes beyond the traditional focus on income and growth. This multidimensional approach to measurement includes social goals, such as health, education, nutrition, standard of living and other valuable aspects of life. She devised a new method for measuring multidimensional poverty with her colleague James Foster (OPHI Research Associate and Professor of Economics at George Washington University) that has advantages over other poverty measures and has been adopted by the Mexican Government, the Bhutanese Government in their ‘Gross National Happiness Index’ and the United Nations Development Programme. Dr Alkire has been called upon to provide input and advice to several initiatives seeking to take a broader approach to well-being rather than just economic growth, for example, the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (instigated by President Sarkozy); the United Nations Human Development Programme Human Development Report Office; the European Commission; and the UK’s Department for International Development.

Yanchun Zhang (Chief of Statistics, Human Development Report Office, United Nations Development Programme) has more than twenty years of quantitative research experience on a wide range of economic and sustainable development topics. She has published articles on international macroeconomics, climate change and development, economic vulnerabilities and social protection in refereed academic and policy journals.Prior to HDRO, she served as Chief of the Commodities Branch at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva from 2019 to 2020, leading analytical research, which includes a biennial statistics report State of Commodities Dependence, and capacity-building projects in a dozen of commodity dependent developing countries in Africa and Asia. Prior to that, she was Chief of the Commodity Policy Implementation and Outreach Section from 2014 to 2019, in charge of formulating demand-driven technical cooperation initiatives, mobilizing multilateral and bilateral funding sources and coordinating the preparation of publicity materials and press releases for outreach efforts.Before UNCTAD, she had worked at UNDP in New York from 2007 to 2013 as a Policy Specialist, conducting original research on emerging development topics that are strategically important for the organization. From 2003 to 2006, she was an assistant professor at San Francisco State University, teaching and researching on econometrics, statistics and macroeconomics. Prior to her academic career, she also worked for the World Bank’s Development Research Group.She holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Economics with specializations on econometrics, development economics and international economics from University of Virginia, U.S.A, and a B.A. degree in Economics with honors from Shanghai Fudan University, China.

Heriberto Tapia (Policy Specialist, Human Development Report Office, United Nations Development Programme) is a senior member of the writing-research team at HDRO. He has worked on Human Development Reports 2015, 2016 and 2017. Previously, he served in the Executive Office of UNDP (2012-2014) and in the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (1998-2005). He has worked as a consultant to the IMF, UNDP and ECLAC. Furthermore, he has been lecturer at Columbia University (New York), University of Chile (Santiago) and University Diego Portales (Santiago). Heriberto holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, and a Master’s degree in economics and a Commercial Engineering degree from the University of Chile.

Sophie Scharlin-Pettee (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford) supports the outreach team in policy programming. She has worked on the Changes over Time project, which focuses on trends in multidimensional poverty, harmonising earlier data to the specifications of the 2019 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Previously, she contributed to the data preparation, computation, analysis, and report publication for the global MPI revision in 2018 and the annual global MPI release in 2019.

Before OPHI, Sophie supported ESRC-funded research investigating dual career couples’ life course outcomes from a time-use, longitudinal, and cross-national perspective; she also interned at the Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights, where she delivered a background paper on the political economies of peace-building, among other research activities.

More From This Series

Promoting Justice Across Borders: The Ethics of Reform Intervention

September 10, 2021March 16, 2022Global Governance, Past Events

Thursday, September 23, 2021
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. EDT
In-person and virtual

The Institute for International Economic Policy and the GW Elliott School of International Affairs Book Launch Series were pleased to invite you to a book launch discussion of Assistant Professor Lucia Rafanelli‘s Promoting Justice Across Borders: The Ethics of Reform Intervention. Elliott School Dean Alyssa Ayres moderated the event.

Global political actors, from states and NGOs to activist groups and individuals, exert influence in societies beyond their own in myriad ways-including via public criticism, consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns, sanctions, and forceful intervention. Often, they do so in the name of justice-promotion. While attempts to promote justice in other societies can do good, they are also often subject to moral criticism and raise several serious moral questions. For example, are there ways to promote one’s own ideas about justice in another society while still treating its members tolerantly? Are there ways to do so without disrespecting their legitimate political institutions or undermining their collective self-determination? Promoting Justice Across Borders: The Ethics of Reform Intervention aims to tackle these questions.

The book launch began with a lecture by the author followed by a moderated Q&A with the audience. Questions were accepted from both in-person and online audiences. All in-person guests were required to stay masked per GW campus policy. We reserved the right to refuse entry to guests without masks. Detailed guidelines for virtual and in-person attendance were included in the registration confirmation.

About the Speaker:

Lucia Rafanelli is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the Elliott School. Her work focuses on contemporary political theory, global justice, and theories of human rights. Her other research interests include collective agency and collective personhood, philosophy of law, as well as ethics and artificial intelligence. She is a former affiliate of the Princeton Dialogues on AI and Ethics program and a current affiliate of the Institute for International Economic Policy and the Humanitarian Action Initiative at GW. She holds a Ph.D. in Politics, with a specialization in political theory, from Princeton University

About the Moderator:

Alyssa Ayres is Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Dean Ayres is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. 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 in the Barack Obama administration, where 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 last book is, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World (OUP, 2018). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Disaggregating the Global MPI by Ethnicity

April 19, 2021April 13, 2022Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, James Foster, Past Events

Monday, May 17, 2021
10 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

Alkire and Kovesdi discussed how the painful topic of race relations, discrimination, and disparities across ethnic groups are in the public eye. Far earlier, Amartya Sen drew attention to the disparity in life expectancies between Costa Rica, Kerala India, and African-American men. Can we study ethnic inequalities quantitatively at a larger scale? This presentation disaggregates the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by ethnicity for 24 countries and 650 million people, using the recognized ethnic groups for which data were representative. Striking disparities are visible – ranging from pockets of poverty among groups such as the Roma, to yawning gaps between the average poverty levels. This paper illustrates the methodology – and the importance – of disaggregating global poverty measures by ethnic groups.

Jiménez discussed how part of the historic and ambitious nature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is its pledge to leave no one behind, including a specific goal to reduce inequality between and within countries. This move beyond national averages to look at the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities and voice within countries includes the target to empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.

This presentation provided an overview of how the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) has operationalized the pledge to “leave no one behind,” with a specific focus on trends in inequality by race and ethnicity. It is based on the OPHI Briefing on global MPI ethnicity disaggregations.

Meet the Presenter:

Maren Jiménez is a Social Affairs Officer in the United Nation’s Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). At DESA, Ms. Jiménez forms part of the writing team of the World Social Report (previously the Report on the World Social Situation), the United Nation’s flagship publication on social development issues. Prior to joining DESA, Ms. Jiménez held several positions at United Nations’ regional commissions in Addis Ababa, Bangkok and Santiago de Chile. Ms. Jiménez holds a M.A. in Sociology from The University of Texas at Austin.

Sabina Alkire directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Dr Alkire works on a new approach to measuring poverty and well-being that goes beyond the traditional focus on income and growth. This multidimensional approach to measurement includes social goals, such as health, education, nutrition, standard of living and other valuable aspects of life. She devised a new method for measuring multidimensional poverty with her colleague James Foster (OPHI Research Associate and Professor of Economics at George Washington University) that has advantages over other poverty measures and has been adopted by the Mexican Government, the Bhutanese Government in their ‘Gross National Happiness Index’ and the United Nations Development Programme. Dr Alkire has been called upon to provide input and advice to several initiatives seeking to take a broader approach to well-being rather than just economic growth, for example, the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (instigated by President Sarkozy); the United Nations Human Development Programme Human Development Report Office; the European Commission; and the UK’s Department for International Development.

Fanni Kovesdi is a Research Analystat the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), where she is supporting research focused on the global MPI, moderate poverty and wellbeing, and technical work with national governments. Prior to joining OPHI, she has worked on research projects at the University of Oxford, the Centre for Social Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the regional office of Terre des Hommes in Central and South East Europe. Previously, she worked on the “Changes over Time” project which harmonized global MPI data across 80 countries to analyze trends in poverty. She has also supported previous releases of the global MPI through data work and report writing along with leading the ethnicity disaggregation of the measure in 2019. Kovesdi holds a bachelor’s degree in Politics and Sociology from the University of Bristol, and a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Oxford. Her primary research interests are in multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, wellbeing, and ethnicity and migration, particularly in the European context.

Meet the Discussant:

Rachel M. Gisselquist, a political scientist, is a Senior Research Fellow with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and a member of the institute’s senior management team. She works on the politics of developing countries, with particular attention to inequality, ethnic politics, statebuilding and governance and the role of aid therein, democracy and democratization, and sub-Saharan African politics. At UNU-WIDER, she currently leads the projects Addressing Group-based Inequalities and The State and Statebuilding in the Global South – International and Local Interactions, and co-leads the projects The Impact of Inequality on Growth, Human Development, and Governance @EQUAL, Clientelist Politics and Economic Development – Theories, Perspectives, and New Directions, and Effects of Swedish and International Democracy Support. She serves as Helsinki-based research focal point for the Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) programme, and is a core member of the UNU-WIDER team in the African Cities Research Consortium. Under the institute’s previous research programmes, she was a focal point for The Politics of Group-Based Inequalities: Measurement, Implications, and Possibilities for Change (2014–18), and the Governance and Fragility theme of the Research and Communication on Foreign Aid (ReCom) programme (2011–13). Her work is published in various journals and edited volumes, including World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Oxford Development Studies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Indicators Research, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Democratization, and International Peacekeeping. She is editor/co-editor of a dozen journal special issues and collections, and co-author of the first two editions of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which has become a standard reference on governance. Before moving to Helsinki, she spent three years at Harvard University as Research Director, Index of African Governance. She has also spent time at the London School of Economics and with the World Bank. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University.

Meet 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 Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).

More From This Series

Inequality among the Multidimensionally Poor in over 100 countries

February 25, 2021March 19, 2022James Foster, Past Events, Ultra Poverty

Monday, March 1, 2021
10:00am – 11:15am
via WebEx

Inequality among the poor matters because it matters that the poorest poor are not left behind. Leaving them behind is very often the case, as they are at the crossroads of marginalized groups and it is very difficult for policies -even at sub-national levels- to actually and effectively reach them. In this paper we examine inequality within over 100 countries among the multidimensionally poor, as measured by the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (G-MPI). We compare two approaches proposed so far for incorporating inequality into the measurement of multidimensional poverty. One is the ‘assimilated approach’, by which the poverty measure incorporates sensitivity to inequality among the poor, as it is the case of the MGamma class of poverty measures proposed by Alkire and Foster (2016, 2019); this uses a relative inequality measure. The other is the ‘complementary approach’, by which the poverty measure is complemented alongside the variance of deprivation scores among the poor, an absolute inequality measure.

We find that country rankings by absolute vs. relative inequality among the poor differ quite substantially, which suggests that the selection of one or the other type of inequality matters when only that aspect of poverty is evaluated. However, the country ranking by the G-MPI, which considers poverty incidence and intensity, is highly robust to the incorporation of inequality into measurement of poverty, either using the MGamma2 measure or complementing the G-MPI with the variance among the poor. In other words: bad things seem to go together. Countries with a higher proportion of their population in multidimensional poverty tend to have higher average poverty intensity, and such higher average intensity tends to be more unequally distributed among the poor. This does not mean that it does not matter to know and measure inequality among the poor. A high inequality among the poor signals the need to develop different kinds of policies according to different poverty intensities. Our understanding is that it is the distribution of the deprivation scores alongside the dimensional decomposition what can be more illuminating for designing effective policies to leave no-one behind.

About the speakers:

Maria Emma Santos is an Assistant Professor at Dept. of Economics at Universidad Nacional del Sur and a CONICET Research Fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina. She is also a Research Associate to the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Humano (CEDH) of Universidad de San Andres in Argentina, and to the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, at the University of Oxford, UK. Together with Sabina Alkire, she developed the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, published in the Human Development Report since 2010. She works on measurement and analysis of multidimensional poverty.

Heriberto Tapia has been a senior member of the writing-research team at the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) since 2014. Previously, he served in the Executive Office of UNDP (2012-2014) and in the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (1998-2005). He has worked as a consultant to the IMF, UNDP and ECLAC. Furthermore, he has been a lecturer at Columbia University (New York), University of Chile (Santiago) and University Diego Portales (Santiago). Heriberto holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, and a Master’s degree in economics and a Commercial Engineering degree from the University of Chile.

Hector Moreno is a Research Officer at OPHI. He supports OPHI’s outreach team in building, updating and statistically assessing national multidimensional poverty indices (MPIs) in Asian and Latin-American countries. Previously, he served as Research Coordinator for the Human Development Research Office at the UNDP Mexico, and as Under Director of Poverty Methodologies for the Mexican government at CONEVAL. He has also been a consultant for private, public and international institutions. He has taught multiple courses in Statistics at Sciences Po Paris in France and a variety of courses in Economics at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico. He has refereed the Journal of Economic Inequality (Elsevier), the Politicas Públicas Journal (Tec de Monterrey) and the Review of Economics and Statistics (MIT). He holds a PhD in Economics (Paris School of Economics).

Sabina Alkire directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). She is the Associate Professor of Development Studies in the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, welfare economics, the capability approach, the measurement of freedoms and human development. From 2015–16, Sabina was Oliver T Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at George Washington University. Previously, she worked at the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University, the Human Security Commission, and the World Bank’s Poverty and Culture Learning and Research Initiative. She holds a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford.

This event and seminar series was jointly organized with the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the UNDP Human Development Report Office.

More From This Series

Should Leaders Focus on Poverty or Inequality? Ethical and Policy Perspectives

February 20, 2019March 28, 2022Development Economics, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Economics of Ultra-Poverty Events, Past Events, Ultra Poverty

The Leadership, Ethics, and Practice Initiative and the Institute for International Economic Policy Presents:

Should Leaders Focus on Poverty or Inequality?

Ethical and Policy Perspectives

Monday, February 25, 2019

5:00pm to 6:00pm

Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Commons, 6th floor
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

Join us for an evening discussion on the topic:

“Should Leaders Focus on Poverty or Inequality? : Ethical and Policy Perspectives”

with Dr. Douglas Hicks Professor of Religion and Dean of Oxford College at the Emory University.

This event is on the record and open to media.

Conference Program

Monday, February 25, 2019

5:00pm to 6:00pm

Elliott School of International AffairsLindner Commons, 6th floor1957 E Street NWWashington, DC 20052

Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Commons, 6th floor
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052