Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy – Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP)

Capitalism, Democracy, and Governance

March 7, 2023April 4, 2023Global Economic Governance Events, Past Events

Tuesday, April 4th, 2023
11 am -12:30 EDT
via Zoom

Martin Wolf (Financial Times) and Joe Zammit-Lucia (RADIX) will be the speakers for this event. Ann Florini (New America) will provide discussant remarks. This webinar will be moderated by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma.

What will the next evolution of capitalism look like? How will globalized finance and an economic system that concentrates wealth and knows few borders be compatible with functioning polities that are geographically bound? What are the implications for public policy and for business activity?
While the post-war era was characterized by increasing prosperity and a rising middle class, today we are seeing a steady erosion of the social contract that has sustained our politics and economics and provided a reasonable degree of social stability. Previous assumptions about economic structures and the role of business in society have become contested leading to political turmoil, increasing polarization, a rise in authoritarianism, and fraying democratic norms. We have returned to a focus on the ‘political economy’ recognizing that economic issues are fundamentally political in nature. That business and financial activity has significant political implications. This event will explore these issues and the routes available for that which has always characterized capitalism in democracies – its ability to adapt and self-correct.

About the Speakers:

Martin Wolf is Associate Editor and Chief Economics correspondent at the Financial Times. Prior to that he was a senior economist at the World Bank and Director of Studies at the Trade Policy Research Centre, in London. Larry Summers described him as “the world’s preeminent financial journalist,” while economist Kenneth Rogoff has said “He really is the premier financial and economics writer in the world.” Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism in both 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize in 1994. In 2000. Wolf was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by the University of Nottingham in 2006, and was made Doctor of Science (Economics) of University of London, honoris causa, by the London School of Economics in the same year. In 2018, on the occasion of the KU Leuven Patron Saint‘s Day he received a doctorate honoris causa of the university. In 2019, Wolf received the Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

His latest book is “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism” (Penguin Books, 2023). Previous books include “The Shifts and the Shocks,” “Why Globalisation Works,” and “Fixing Global Finance.”

Joe Zammit-Lucia With extensive experience in the business and political worlds, Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia is an adviser to business leaders focused on leadership in contemporary socio-political culture, an author, public speaker and commentator in the international press on the inter-relationship between business and politics.

His latest book is “The New Political Capitalism: How businesses and societies can thrive in a deeply politicized world” (Bloomsbury Business, 2022). Previous books have included “The Death of Liberal Democracy?” and “Backlash: Saving Globalization From Itself.”

He is a founder of RADIX – a not-for-profit public policy think tank, and the RADIX Centre for Business, Politics & Society. His executive experience spanned R&D, marketing, global brand management, strategic planning, general management, industry economics and public policy. He founded his own management consulting firm with offices in Cambridge (UK), New York and Tokyo.

He is on the Advisory Board of the Singapore Forum for long-term investors and business leaders and an External Advisory Board Member at CEO World Magazine. He served as Special Advisor to the Director General at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the College of Arts, Sciences and Education, Florida International University.

He has lived and worked in the UK, USA, France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands and Malta.

About the Discussant:

Ann Florini is a Fellow in the Political Reform Program at New America, working on how innovative governance tools can help to address the intertwined challenges of climate change and democratic decay. She is also Senior Advisor to NatureFinance and the Task Force on Nature Markets; a Senior Global Futures Scientist at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Lab, Arizona State University; a Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University; a founding Board Member of the Economics of Mutuality Foundation; and a Founding Member of the Council on Economic Policies.

Her work focuses on governance of complex systems, energy policy, and cross-sector collaborations involving business, government, and civil society. Throughout her career, Dr. Florini has spearheaded major international projects focused on innovative approaches to global problem-solving for such organizations as the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Florini previously taught at the National University of Singapore, where she founded and led the Centre on Asia and Globalisation; and at Singapore Management University, where she created and ran the unique Masters of TriSector Collaboration. She has held senior appointments at research institutes such as the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Her numerous books and articles have addressed innovations in governance, China’s governance, transparency and information flows in governance, the roles of civil society and the private sector in addressing public problems, and climate and energy policy.

Dr. Florini received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master’s in Public Affairs from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton 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.

More From This Series

India at 75: Systemic Challenges and the Path Ahead

February 23, 2022April 11, 2022Development Economics, India, Past Events

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022
12:00 – 1:30 p.m. ET
via Zoom

With India — one fifth of humanity and the world’s largest democracy — completing 75 years of independence, it is not only a time for reflection but also a time to take bold actions for an inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous future. The shadow of COVID-19 looms large over the economy despite some signs of economic recovery. The pandemic has exposed major structural weaknesses in the economy as well as its governance. Beyond the pandemic, other major systemic challenges – climate change, disruptive technology, rising inequality, and rising majoritarianism — merit urgent attention.

For India, doing more of the same will yield results we have become familiar with – higher inequality, poor education and health outcomes, high youth unemployment, weak investment growth, diminishing prospects in agriculture and industry, and a problematic banking sector. To tackle the challenges, India needs fundamental change across a range of areas – human capital, technology, agriculture, finance, trade, public-service delivery, and more. New ideas and strategies are needed.

The seminar discussed how India can use the next twenty-five years to restructure its economy, rejuvenate its democratic energy, and unshackle its potential.

The speakers in this webinar were Ravinder Kaur (University of Copenhagen) and Ajay Chhibber (GWU and Atlantic Council), and was moderated by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma, with welcoming remarks by IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh.

This event was cosponsored by the Sigur Center.

About the Speakers:

Ravinder Kaur is a historian of contemporary India. She is Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies and the Director of the Centre of Global South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her core research focuses on the processes of capitalist transformations in twenty-first-century India. This is the subject of her most recent book Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India (Stanford University Press, 2020). This work was selected as the “Financial Times Best Book of the Year” in 2020 and longlisted for the “Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize” in 2021. She is also the author of Since 1947: Partition Narratives among the Punjabi Migrants of Delhi (Oxford University Press, 2007; 2^nd edition, 2018).

Ajay Chhibber is a 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 was the 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.

Ajay is the co-author, along with Salman Anees Soz, of the recently published book Unshackling India: Hard Truths and Clear Choices for Economic Revival (HarperCollins, 2022). 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, unshackle its potential, and become a genuinely developed economy by 2047? The 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

This event will be co-sponsored by the Sigur Center.

Videos of previous events in the Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy 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:

IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series

FInd More of This Series Here

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:

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

Inequality and the Centrifugal Nature of the Labor Market

September 14, 2021March 16, 2022Development Economics, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Past Events

Wednesday, September 29, 2021
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
via Zoom

This was a joint Facing Inequality Series and Rethinking Capitalism & Democracy Series event featuring Peter Dietsch (University of Victoria).

Globalization and technological change are the two staple explanations of the income inequality between the relatively skilled and unskilled segments of the labor market. While recognizing their importance, this webinar turns the spotlight on another, neglected driver of income inequality. The mechanics of the labor market have a tendency to allow skilled workers to extract a significant wage premium. Arguably, the magnitude of this premium is neither just nor necessary for a functioning labor market. Interestingly, the policy response required to contain this centrifugal nature of the labor market differs markedly from the standard remedies to reduce income inequality.

Kathryn Holston (Harvard and World Bank) provided discussant remarks. This webinar was moderated by IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh with introductory remarks by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma. The event was co-sponsored by GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Seminar, organized by Professor Trevor Jackson.

About the Speaker:

Peter Dietsch is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His research focuses on issues of economic ethics, notably on tax justice, normative dimensions of monetary policy, and on income inequalities. Dietsch is the author of Catching Capital – The Ethics of Tax Competition (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-author of Do Central Banks Serve the People? (Polity Press, 2018), and co-editor of Global Tax Governance – What is Wrong with It and How to Fix It (ECPR Press, 2016). He has published numerous articles and book chapters, and is a regular contributor in the media on debates in his field. Dietsch received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in 2021 and was nominated to the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada in 2017. Prior to the University of Victoria, Dietsch taught at the Université de Montréal for 16 years. He has been a visiting fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, at the European University Institute in Florence, and at the University of Victoria.

About the Discussant:

Kathryn Holston is an economist in the Office of the World Bank Chief Economist and a PhD candidate in economics at Harvard (on leave for the 2021-22 academic year). Since 2019, she has been a Stone PhD Scholar in Inequality and Wealth Concentration at Harvard. Her current work focuses on financial fragility during the COVID-19 crisis and banking crises throughout history. She is also interested in monetary policy, central bank independence and governance, and policymaking under low interest rates. Kathryn’s past work includes estimating the natural rate of interest for advanced economies with Thomas Laubach and John C. Williams, for which they received the Bhagwati Award for best paper in the Journal of International Economics. Previously, Kathryn has worked in the Monetary Studies Section of the Federal Reserve Board and as a Guaranteed Income Fellow at the Jain Family Institute. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied economics and math.

About the Moderators:

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

Jay Shambaugh is the Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and recently served as a member of the Biden transition team. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross-country impact of fiscal policy, the crisis in the euro area, and regional growth disparities. He has also served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Shambaugh 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.

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.

IIEP Facing Inequality Series

The Facing Inequality 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. It is a platform for dialogue and debate. This series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Co-Director James Foster; Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics; and IIEP Faculty Affiliate Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor of History. It is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series and co-organized by Professor Trevor Jackson from the Department of History and Professor Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

Food Systems at a Crossroads: How to fix them and help people, economies, and the planet

June 17, 2021April 11, 2022Climate Adaptation, Development Economics, International Economic Policy, International Trade, Past Events

Thursday, June 24, 2021
12 p.m. EDT
via Zoom

The empty grocery shelves and miles-long food bank queues we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the fragility of the highly centralized, “just-in-time” global food supply chain on which we all depend. But the food system’s weaknesses extend far beyond vulnerability to shocks. Food produced through the overuse of chemicals, in monoculture cropping systems, and intensive animal farming on land and at sea degrades natural resources faster than they can regenerate and causes over a third of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Crucially, this flawed system fails to feed the world, with billions of people chronically under- or over-nourished.

Nicoletta Batini and Bruce Friedrich in conversation with moderator Ann Florini explored the economic and financial policies needed to make food systems healthy for people and planet, alongside measures to boost ecosystem conservation to preserve the future of food security, providing several examples of successful country cases. The role of disruptive technologies and markets, like the booming sector of alternative proteins, will receive special attention.

Opening Remarks:

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

About the Speaker:

Nicoletta Batini is the Lead Evaluator of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Independent Evaluation Office. Prior to the IMF, she was Advisor of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey, and Director of the International Economics and Policy Office of the Treasury in Italy. She holds a Ph.D. in international finance (S.S.S.U.P. S. Anna) and a Ph.D. in monetary economics (University of Oxford). Today her research focuses on the economics of energy and land and sea use transitions for climate mitigation. Her new book “The Economics of Sustainable Food: Smart Policies for People and the Planet” was just published by Island Press and the International Monetary Fund.

About the Discussant:

Bruce Friedrich is co-founder and executive director of the Good Food Institute. With branches in the United States, India, Israel, Brazil, Europe, and Asia Pacific, GFI is accelerating the production of plant-based and cultivated meat in order to bolster the global protein supply while protecting our environment, promoting global health, and preventing food insecurity. Bruce oversees GFI’s global strategy, working with directors and international managing directors to ensure that GFI is maximally effective at delivering mission-focused results. Bruce graduated from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics. Bruce was named 2021 “American Food Hero” by @EatingWell Magazine.

About the Moderator:

Ann Florini is Clinical Professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, where she directs programs at the Washington, DC campus. She was previously Professor of Public Policy at Singapore Management University; founding Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalization at the National University of Singapore; and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has spearheaded numerous international initiatives on global governance, energy and climate policy, and cross-sector collaborations involving government, civil society and the private sector. Her many books and articles have addressed governance in China, transparency in governance, transnational civil society networks, and the role of the private sector in public affairs. Dr. Florini received her Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University.

IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series

The COVID-19 pandemic, like the global financial crisis a decade ago, has laid bare the cracks in the leading capitalist democracies. Fissures in the political, social, economic, and financial orders, accompanied by an increasingly stressed natural environment, pose serious and possibly existential threats to these societies, as exploding income and wealth inequality subverts the integrity and fairness of markets and elections, weak regulatory oversight increases the likelihood and severity of the next crash, and the visible effects of climate change threaten lives and livelihoods and drive migrations. The three spheres of wellbeing – political and social, economic and financial, and the natural environment, are each becoming more fragile while their complex interrelationships are producing wicked challenges. The IIEP webinar series on Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy examines these difficult questions and possible policy responses.

Thunderbird Finance and Sustainability Series

The global financial system is facing new pressures to become “sustainable” – not only financially stable, but simultaneously environmentally friendly and socially inclusive. These pressures have emerged in reaction to the increasing financialization of the global economy and the sector’s failure to steer investment to meet the full needs of society. Top public authorities are rethinking financial regulation, coming together, for example, in the new Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System. The private sector has already moved rapidly from CSR to considering broad ESG (environmental, social, governance) risks and opportunities in investments. Some investors are exploring natural and social capital returns, along with financial metrics. New financial technologies (“fintech”) impose yet more pressures on incumbent institutions, but also offer opportunities for the creation of “citizen-centric” finance. Thunderbird’s Finance and Sustainability webinar series explores these developments with leading practitioners and thinkers.

Policy Choices and Contagion: The Covid Pandemic and the Climate Crisis

April 20, 2021March 18, 2022Climate Adaptation, COVID-19, Past Events

Wednesday, May 26, 2021
12 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EDT
via Zoom

Behavioral contagion refers to how ideas and behaviors often spread in ways that resemble the spread of infectious disease. Exposure to others infected by a virus, for example, makes people more likely to become infected, just as people are more likely to drink excessively when they spend more time with heavy drinkers. But there are also important differences between the two types of contagion. One is the effect of visibility. Solar panels that are visible from the street, for instance, are more likely to stimulate neighboring installations. In contrast, we try to avoid others who are visibly ill. Another difference is that viral contagion is almost always a bad thing, but behavioral contagion can be either negative—as with smoking—or positive, as with solar installations. The seminar will discuss the policy choices we face when individually rational behavior is collectively irrational, as often happens under both types of contagion.

This webinar was moderated by IIEP Co-Director James Foster, with introductory remarks by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma and welcome remarks by Ann Florini of ASU-Thunderbird. This event was co-sponsored by the Thunderbird School of Management, Arizona State University, and the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU.

Meet the Presenter:

Robert H. Frank (@econnaturalist) is the HJ Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Cornell’s Johnson School of Management. His “Economic View” column has appeared in The New York Times since 2005. He received his B.S. in mathematics from Georgia Tech, then taught math and science for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal. He holds an M.A. in statistics and a Ph.D. in economics, both from the University of California at Berkeley.

His books, which include Choosing the Right Pond, Passions Within Reason, Microeconomics and Behavior, Principles of Economics (with Ben Bernanke), Luxury Fever, What Price the Moral High Ground?, Falling Behind, The Economic Naturalist, The Darwin Economy, Success and Luck, and Under the Influence have been translated into 24 languages. The Winner-Take-All Society, co-authored with Philip Cook, received a Critic’s Choice Award, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and was included in Business Week‘s list of the ten best books of 1995. He received the 2004 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, the Johnson School’s Stephen Russell Distinguished teaching award in 2004, 2010, 2012, and 2017, and its Apple Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005.

Meet the Discussant:

Dr. Roland Kupers is an advisor on Complexity, Resilience and Energy Transition, a Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

A theoretical physicist by training, Roland spent a decade at AT&T and then a decade at Royal Dutch Shell in various senior executive functions, including Vice President for Sustainable Development and Vice President Global LNG, where he was integrally involved with strategy and scenario planning.

His numerous publications include most recently his pathbreaking book on A Climate Policy Revolution: What the Science of Complexity Reveals about Saving Our Planet (Harvard University Press, 2020). His previous works include such co-authored books as The Essence of Scenarios (Amsterdam University Press, 2014) and Complexity and the Art of Public Policy (Princeton University Press 2014), along with an edited volume: Turbulence: A Corporate Perspective on Collaborating for Resilience (Amsterdam University Press, 2014) and articles in Harvard Business Review and in Project Syndicate.

Meet 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, Dr. Sharma was on the Economics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Cornell University, a M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and a B.A. (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. His current interests include rethinking capitalism and democracy, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.

Welcome Remarks by:

Ann Florini is Clinical Professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, where she directs programs at the Washington, D.C. campus. She was previously Professor of Public Policy at Singapore Management University founding director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore; and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has spearheaded numerous international initiatives on global governance, energy and climate policy, and cross-sector collaborations including government, civil society, and the private sector. Her many books and articles have addressed governance in China, transparency in governance, transnational civil society networks, and the role of the private sector in public affairs. Dr. Florini received her Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University.

James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).

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 well-being – political and social, economic and financial, and the natural environment, are each becoming more fragile while their complex interrelationships are producing wicked challenges. The IIEP webinar series on Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy examines these difficult questions and possible policy responses.

Thunderbird Finance and Sustainability Series

The global financial system is facing new pressures to become “sustainable” – not only financially stable, but simultaneously environmentally friendly and socially inclusive. These pressures are partly political, in reaction to the increasing financialization of the global economy and the sector’s failure to steer investment to meet the needs of society. New financial technologies (“fintech”) pose yet more pressures on incumbent financial institutions but also offer great opportunities for the creation of what some are calling “citizen-centric” finance. Top public authorities are convening in the new Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System. The private sector has already moved rapidly from CSR to considering broader forms of ESG (environmental, social, governance) risks and opportunities in investments. Thunderbird’s Finance and Sustainability webinar series explores these urgent questions with leading practitioners and thinkers.

More From This Series

Peace in the Age of Chaos

March 27, 2021April 11, 2022Climate Adaptation, Development Economics, Past Events

Thursday, April 22, 2021
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT
via Zoom

The major challenges facing humanity are global in nature – climate change, pandemics, ever decreasing biodiversity, lack of usable fresh water and food security to name a few. Without a world that is basically peaceful, we will never get the levels of trust, cooperation and inclusiveness needed to solve these issues – yet, what creates peace is poorly understood.

In his ground-breaking new book, Peace in the Age of Chaos: The Best Solution for a Sustainable Future, Steve Killelea, founder of both the Global Peace Index and the world-renowned think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), shares his personal journey to study, understand and measure peace – a peace that is a positive, tangible and achievable measure of human wellbeing and progress.

This was a discussion with Steve about his new book; why he believes peace is a prerequisite for the survival of society as we know it in the 21 st century; and how Positive Peace, when combined with systems thinking, provides an exciting new way to conceptualise how societies function and a new approach to solving some of the most intractable problems of our time.

Meet the presenter:

As a global philanthropist, Steve Killelea has laid the foundations to develop an entirely new understanding of peace. As a thought leader, he has reshaped the entire concept to recognise its integrity to the revival of our economic and political systems. Few have provoked global thought amongst both policymakers and members of the public quite to the extent of Steve. An international entrepreneur behind the global think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace, he combines a highly successful career in technology with a philanthropic focus on peace and sustainable development to shed new light on issues, from terrorism and conflict to economics and prosperity.

Steve harbours over a decade’s worth of award-winning experience, delving into the crucial yet misunderstood concept of global peace. He founded the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in 2007, as an independent not for profit global research institute analysing the intertwined relationships between business, peace, and economic development. Steve’s funding and thought leadership behind the Institute would see him recognised as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People on reducing the onset of armed violence. IEP global leadership extends to calculating the economic cost of violence, measuring peace, risk analysis of a nation’s threat levels, and a new understanding of “Positive Peace” – an eight- pillar model embracing the attitudes, institutions, and structures required to create and sustain peaceful societies. As one of the world’s most impactful think tanks, its research is extensively used by multi-laterals, including the United Nations, World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as thousands of university courses around the world. He is also the founder of the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading quantitative measurement of global peacefulness, ranking 163 countries, and independent territories.

Meet the discussant:

Since January 2019, Pedro Conceição is Director of the Human Development Report Office, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Prior to that, from October 2014, he was Director, Strategic Policy, at the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support of UNDP, where he co-led the UN’s participation in the G20 Finance and Central Bank Governors Meetings, managed UNDP’s engagement in the Financing for Development processes, and contributed to articulate UNDP’s support to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. Before that, he was Chief-Economist and Head of the Strategic Advisory Unit at the Regional Bureau for Africa (from 1 December 2009).

Prior to this, he was Director of the Office of Development Studies (ODS) from March 2007 to November 2009, and Deputy Director of ODS, from October 2001 to February 2007. His work on financing for development and on global public goods was published by Oxford University Press in books he co-edited (The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, 2006; Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization, 2003).

He has published on inequality, the economics of innovation and technological change, and development in, amongst others journals, the African Development Review, Review of Development Economics, Eastern Economic Journal, Ecological Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. He co-edited several books including: Innovation, Competence Building, and Social Cohesion in Europe- Towards a Learning Society (Edward Elgar, 2002) and Knowledge for Inclusive Development (Quorum Books, 2001).

Prior to coming to UNDP, he was an Assistant Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, teaching and researching on science, technology and innovation policy. He has degrees in Physics from Instituto Superior Técnico and in Economics from the Technical University of Lisbon and a PhD. in Public Policy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with a Fulbright scholarship.

Matthew Levinger is Research Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University. He directs the National Security Studies Program, an executive education program for senior officials from the U.S. government and its international partners, as well as the Master of International Policy and Practice Program at GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Before joining GW, he was Senior Program Officer at the United States Institute of Peace, where he developed and taught executive education programs on international conflict analysis and prevention for foreign policy professionals from the United States and overseas. From 2005 to 2007, Levinger was Founding Director of the Academy for Genocide Prevention at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. At the Holocaust Museum, he played a key role in launching “Crisis in Darfur,” a joint initiative of the Museum and Google Earth, as well as the Genocide Prevention Task Force, co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Before moving to Washington, he was associate professor of History at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon; he has also taught at Stanford University. In 2003-2004, he was a William C. Foster Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. He has consulted for organizations including the World Bank, IREX, the National Democratic Institute, and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Levinger’s research and teaching have focused on conflict analysis and prevention, as well as the history of nationalism, revolutionary politics, and genocide. His handbook Conflict Analysis: Understanding Causes, Unlocking Solutions was published by the U.S. Institute of Peace Press in 2013. He is also the author of Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political Culture, 1806-1848 (Oxford, 2000) and coauthor of The Revolutionary Era, 1789-1850 (Norton, 2002). He received his B.A. from Haverford College and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.

Meet the Moderator:

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.

This event was co-sponsored by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI), the UNDP Human Development Report Office (UNDP-HDRO), and the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP).

More From This Series

Rethinking Financial Regulation for the 21st Century

March 11, 2021March 19, 2022International Economic Policy, International Finance, Jay Shambaugh, Past Events

Wednesday, March 24, 2021
12:30pm – 2:00pm
via WebEx

Download Sunil Sharma's Opening Remarks

Download Arthur Wilmarth's Slides

This event was joint with GW Law Business and Finance Law program and featured Professor Emeritus Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. and discussant Professor Erik Gerding.

The financial crisis of 2007-09 and the pandemic crisis of 2020 showed that global financial markets are dangerously unstable. Those markets are dominated by “too-big-to-fail” universal banks – commercial banks that engage in capital markets activities – and large shadow banks, such as private equity firms, securities broker-dealers, and hedge funds. Governments and central banks rescued financial markets in 2008 and 2020 with enormous bailouts and unconventional monetary policies. Those policy measures produced soaring global debt levels, aggressive risk-taking by investors, heavily indebted sovereigns, and bloated central bank balance sheets. In addition, large technology companies are seeking to enter the banking business, a development that could transform the banking industry and extend government bailouts for banks across our commercial economy. The seminar discussed regulatory policies that would return our financial system to a structure that is much more stable and far less dependent on government bailouts.

This webinar was moderated by Dr. Sunil Sharma, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, with introductory remarks made by IIEP Co-Director Jay Shambaugh and Director of the Business and Finance Law Program at the George Washington University Law School Jeremiah Pam. This event was co-sponsored by the GW Law School’s Business and Finance Law Program and the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU.

About the speaker:
Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. joined the GWU faculty in 1986, after 11 years in private law practice. Prior to joining GW Law’s faculty, he was a partner in the Washington, DC, office of Jones Day. During his 34 years as a member of the faculty, Professor Wilmarth taught courses in banking law, contracts, corporations, professional responsibility, and American constitutional history. He served as Executive Director of the Center for Law, Economics & Finance from 2011 to 2014.
Professor Wilmarth is the author of Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act (Oxford University Press, 2020), and co-editor of The Panic of 2008: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Reform (Edward Elgar, 2010). He has published more than 40 law review articles and book chapters in the fields of financial regulation and American constitutional history. In 2005, the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers awarded him its prize for the best law review article published in the field of consumer financial services law during the previous year.
Professor Wilmarth has testified before committees of the US Congress, the California legislature, and the DC Council on financial regulatory issues. In 2010, he was a consultant to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the body established by Congress to report on the causes of the financial crisis of 2007-09. During 2008-2009, he served as Chair of the Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services of the Association of American Law Schools, after serving as the Section’s Chair-Elect and Annual Program Chair during 2007-2008. Professor Wilmarth is a member of the international advisory board of the Journal of Banking Regulation, published by Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. He is also a member of the advisory board of the American Antitrust Institute.

About the discussant:
Erik Gerding is a Professor at the University of Colorado Law School. His research interests include securities, banking law, the regulation of financial markets, products, and institutions, payment systems, and corporate governance. His research also focuses on the application of technology to financial regulation, including analyzing the use of technologies in governing financial markets. Professor Girding’s book Law, Bubbles, and Financial Regulation (2014) examines the interaction of asset price bubbles and financial regulation. Prior to joining academia, Professor Gerding practiced law in the New York and Washington D.C. offices of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. His practice at the firm included representing clients in the financial services and technology industries in an array of financial transactions and regulatory matters.

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

Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Co- 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.

Jeremiah Pam is the Director of the Business and Finance Law Program at George Washington University Law School. He has extensive work experience in international affairs and international crises, including six years practicing in international finance and sovereign debt restructuring at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York, followed by government service as a financial diplomat and strategist with the Treasury Department in Baghdad and Washington, and with the State Department in Kabul. Mr. Pam teaches courses on financial stability, international crises, and economic and technological innovation. He also served for four years as a U.S. Air Force officer prior to law school. Mr. Pam received a JD from Columbia, an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MA in Political Science from Columbia, and an AB from Harvard.

More From This Series

Governing Finance for Sustainable Prosperity

February 11, 2021March 21, 2022International Finance Events, James Foster, Jay Shambaugh, Past Events

Wednesday, February 24, 2021
12:00 pm ET
via Zoom

A Joint Webinar of:

IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series

Thunderbird Finance and Sustainability Series

Finance affects all aspects of our lives, from our economies to social cohesion to the ecological systems that we depend on for our survival. As a result, the implications of how we govern finance are truly fundamental. In the last few years, central banks and financial supervisors have been re assessing the economic and social landscape they face, as well as their broader role in achieving sustainable prosperity. Their responses to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic have increased the urgency for this review of their objectives, instruments, and institutional arrangements. This webinar examines the opportunities and challenges for financial governance, explores emerging new practices among central banks and financial supervisors, and outlines pathways for greater alignment of the governance of finance with the broader sustainability agenda.

Meet the Speakers:

Alexander Barkawi is founder and director of the Council on Economic Policies (CEP) – an economic policy think tank for sustainability focused on fiscal, monetary and trade policy. Prior to creating and building CEP, he was the managing director of SAM Indexes and thus responsible for developing the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices into a key reference point for sustainable investing. Alex is a graduate in economics of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he also earned his doctoral degree. He grew up in Germany and Egypt and today lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

Jay Shambaugh’s area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross- the country impact of fiscal policy, the crisis in the euro area, and regional growth disparities. 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. He 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, Shambaugh taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the I MF. Shambaugh received his Ph. D. in economics from the University of California at Berkel ey, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

Ann Florini is the 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.

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

More From This Series

Taking Stock of Climate Change: Earth, Air, Fire and Water

January 15, 2021March 23, 2022Adaption to Climate Change Events, James Foster, Past Events

Wednesday, January 27th, 2021
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EST
WebEx

View Sir David Hendry’s slides here (PDF)

The climate of planet Earth depends on the energy balance between incoming radiation from the Sun and re-radiation from the planet. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, like water vapor and carbon dioxide, help regulate whether the planet is a “snowball,” as warm as the Eocene some 55 million years ago, or something in between like our world today. Natural forces, including plate tectonics and volcanism, drove previous climatic upheavals, but today the main driver is humanity’s emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. Although life has survived previous climate upheavals, thriving in quite different global temperatures, huge numbers of species went extinct in the transitions. This webinar showed how humanity is altering the climate with impacts on the Earth’s limited available land, atmosphere, and water resources. The webinar used the ancient frames of Earth, Air, Fire and Water as ‘essential ingredients’ of life to explore what is happening, the dangers of precipitating an anthropogenic mass extinction, and actions humanity could take to avoid disaster.

About the Speaker:

Sir David F. Hendry is Co-director of Climate Econometrics and Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University. He was previously Professor of Economics at Oxford, and of Econometrics at LSE. He has held visiting appointments at the Cowles Foundation, Yale University, University of California at Berkeley and San Diego, Duke University, as well as being Leverhulme Personal Research Professor and ESRC Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, where he was Chairman of the Economics Department from 2001—2007.

He was Knighted in 2009; is an Honorary Vice-President and past President, Royal Economic Society; Fellow, British Academy, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Econometric Society, Academy of Social Sciences, Journal of Econometrics and Econometric Reviews; Founding Fellow, International Association for Applied Econometrics and Honorary Fellow, International Institute of Forecasters; and Foreign Honorary Member, American Economic Association and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received eight Honorary Doctorates, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ESRC, and the Guy Medal in Bronze from the Royal Statistical Society. He founded the Econometrics Journal and has been Econometrics Editor of the Review of Economic Studies and the Economic Journal.

His research interests span econometric methods, theory, modeling, and history; computing; macro-econometrics; climate econometrics; empirical economics; and forecasting. He has published more than 200 papers and 25 books.

Dr Jennifer L. Castle is an Official Fellow in Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, and an Associate Member of Climate Econometrics, Oxford University. She previously held a British Academy postdoctoral research fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Her research interests lie in the fields of model selection and forecasting, and with David F. Hendry she has published 2 books including Modelling our Changing World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Forecasting: An Essential Introduction (Yale University Press, 2019, also with Michael P. Clements); a monograph; Climate Econometrics: An Overview (2020), and more than 30 articles. She has 1300+ citations and an h-index of 20, including in Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Time Series, Journal of Macroeconomics, Journal of Forecasting, Econometrics, Econometric Reviews, International Journal of Forecasting, & National Institute Economic Review.

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

This event was Cosponsored by ASU/Thunderbird School

More From This Series

Sustainability and the Architecture of Global Finance

November 21, 2020March 25, 2022Adaption to Climate Change Events, International Economic Policy

Thursday December 3rd, 2020

12:00PM-1:30PM EST

A Joint Webinar of:

-IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series

-Thunderbird Finance and Sustainability Series

From central banking to fintech to the management of sovereign & private debt and investment, the architecture of global finance is evolving rapidly under growing pressures to take environmental and social issues seriously in financial decision-making. In the context of a new US administration, US economic and foreign policymakers have many options for making environmental and social sustainability a central part of global finance.

In this webinar, Simon Zadek led a discussion of the changing landscape of global finance, the recommendations of the UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the key role the US could play in remaking global finance into a pillar of a new green economic system. He was joined by discussants Ann Florini (ASU Thunderbird) and Sonja Gibbs (IIF).

This webinar was moderated by Dr. Sunil Sharma, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, alongside IIEP Co-Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics. This event was co-sponsored by the Thunderbird School of Management at Arizona State University and the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Simon Zadek is Chair of the Finance for Biodiversity, and Director of the Migrant Nation Initiative. Until recently, he headed the secretariat of the UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals. Previously, he was Senior Advisor on Finance in the Executive Office of the Secretary General and Co-Director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System. In these roles, he co-Chaired China’s Green Finance Task Force, and led the Green Finance Study Group secretariat under the Chinese, German, and Argentinian G20 Presidencies. Prior to this, he was Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum and the Global Green Growth Institute, founder and CEO of the international think tank AccountAbility, and Development Director of the New Economics Foundation. His academic affiliations have included Singapore Management University, the Copenhagen Business School, Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Southern Africa. He has worked with many corporations, governments, and multi-stakeholder initiatives on their sustainability and broader strategies, and was a member of the International Advisory Board of Generation Investment Management. His extensive publications include the award-winning The Civil Corporation and the much-used Harvard Business Review article, ‘Paths to Corporate Responsibility’.

Ann Florini is the 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.

Sonja Gibbs is the Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Finance and Global Policy Initiatives at the Institute of International Finance (IIF). Sonja’s research interests include multi-asset investment strategy, with a focus on emerging/frontier markets, capital flows and ESG investment. She authors the IIF’s Weekly Insight, which offers a concise perspective on global financial markets in the context of topical economic and political developments, and oversees the quarterly Global Debt Monitor, which looks across mature and emerging economies for debt-related vulnerabilities such as the rapid buildup in EM corporate debt levels. Sonja co-leads IIF policy work on sustainable finance and infrastructure investment, including advocacy and liaison efforts vis-à-vis the G20, the multilaterals and the international regulatory community. Ms. Gibbs is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and received her M.B.A. and Bachelor’s degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.

James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).

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

More From This Series

Valuing Nature: Whales, Elephants, and the Global Economy

November 12, 2020April 11, 2022Climate Adaptation, Development Economics, Global Governance, International Trade, James Foster, Past Events

Thursday, November 19, 2020
12:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.

via WebEx

Economic systems and human well-being depend critically on natural services provided by a huge range of ecosystems. But those ecosystems are being rapidly destroyed by failure to value those services. As the understanding grows that nature provides finite and often irreplaceable inputs into human lives and livelihoods, new methods are emerging to value natural capital and incorporate those valuations into markets and public policy.

In this webinar, IMF economist Ralph Chami builds on his pathbreaking studies on whales, elephants, and other natural service-providers to lay out an accessible valuation framework that decision makers can use to build public-private partnerships, create employment opportunities, and build a nature-friendly and inclusive global economy. ASU-Thunderbird professor Ann Florini will provide discussant remarks.

This webinar was moderated by Dr. Sunil Sharma, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, alongside IIEP Co-Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics. This event is co-sponsored by the Thunderbird School of Management at Arizona State University and the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU.

Meet the Discussants:

Ralph Chami is currently an Assistant Director at the IMF and leads the Western Hemisphere Division of the Institute for Capacity Development (ICD). Previously, he was Assistant Director and Division Chief in the Middle East and Central Asia Department responsible for the Regional Economic Outlook, and then the surveillance and program work on fragile states. His forthcoming book on Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States, co-edited with Raphael Espinoza and Peter Montiel, will be published by Oxford University Press in January 2021. Before joining the IMF in 1999, he was on the Finance faculty of the Mendoza School of Business, University of Notre Dame, USA. Dr. Chami has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University, and his areas of interest include banking regulation and supervision, financial markets, remittances, and climate change.

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

More info can be found here.

More From This Series