Events 2015-2016

The Hidden Wealth of Nations, by Gabriel Zucman

Thursday 30 June 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

This lecture will discuss how big the wealth hidden in offshore tax havens is, what are the consequences for inequality, how tax havens work and are organized, and how we can begin to approach a solution.      

Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics at LSE and at UC Berkeley. He's the author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens.        

Camille Landais (chair) is Associate Professor in Economics, London School of Economics, and Co-Editor, Journal of Public Economics.  

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEwealth           

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings and slides on LSE Media page

Taxes, Targets, and the Social Cost of Carbon, by Robert Pindyck

Thursday 12 May 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Economica-Coase Lecture 2016

Professor Pindyck, one of the world’s leading microeconomists, will discuss his recent work, which focuses on economic policies relating to rare disasters.

Robert Pindyck is an American economist, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance at Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from MIT. in 1966, a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1967, and a PhD in Economics from MIT in 1971.

Ian Martin is a Professor of Finance at the LSE. He received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Before moving to LSE, he was an Associate Professor of Finance at Stanford GSB. His research interests include cross-country contagion in financial markets; the valuation of long-dated assets; catastrophes; derivative pricing; and forecasting in financial markets. Professor Martin is the Programme Director of the LSE's MSc in Finance and Economics, and is an editor of Economica. 

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSECoase

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings on LSE Media page

Slides

The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert J Gordon

Wednesday 11 May 2017, 6:30-8:00 pm
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Professor Gordon will examine the history of economic growth in the USA, and explore solutions needed to overcome the economic challenges of the future.        

Robert J Gordon is the Stanley G Harris Professor in the Social Sciences at Northwestern University and author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2014 he was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in recognition of a long career of outstanding contributions to scholarship, teaching, public service, and the economics profession. For more than three decades, he has been a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee, which determines the start and end dates for recessions in the United States.            

Wouter Den Haan (chair) is Professor of Economics at LSE and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics.            

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEAmerica  

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings on LSE Media page

Understanding the Stagnation of Modern Economies, by Robert Hall

Thursday 28 April 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Economica-Phillips Lecture 2017

The annual Phillips Lecture, jointly sponsored by the journal Economica and the Department of Economics, in which Professor Hall, one of the world's leading macroeconomists will speak on the macroeconomics of persistent slumps.    

Robert Hall is an American economist and a Robert and Carole McNeil Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution and Professor of Economics at Standford University. He is generally considered a macroeconomist, but he describes himself as an "applied economist".

Bob Hall received a BA in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD in Economics from MIT for thesis titled Essays on the Theory of Wealth under the supervision of Robert Solow. He is a member of the Hoover Institution, the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow at both American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and a member of the NBER, where he is the program director of the business cycle dating committee. Hall served as President of the American Economic Association in 2010.

Francesco Caselli (chair) is the Norman Sosnow Chair in Economics at the Department of Economics at LSE.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEPhillips

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings and slides on LSE Media page

Clear and Present Challenges to the Chinese Economy, by Keyu Jin

Wednesday 9 March 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Dr Keyu Jin will discuss the impact of China’s financial reforms.          

Keyu Jin (@KeyuJin) is a Lecturer in the Department of Economics and a member of the Centre for Macroeconomics and Centre for Economic Performance.            

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEChina

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings and slides on LSE Media page

The End of Alchemy, by Mervyn King

Tuesday 1 March 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
LSE campus, venue TBC to ticketholders

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Professor Lord King will discuss with Professor Lord Stern his new book, The End of Alchemy: Banking, the Global Economy and the Future of Money, which suggests original ways to end the alchemy of our current monetary and banking system and to correct the disequilibrium in the world economy today.            

Mervyn King was Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013, and is currently Professor of Economics and Law at New York University and School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Lord King was made a life peer in 2013, and appointed by the Queen a Knight of the Garter in 2014.            

Nicholas Stern (chair) is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEKing

Info: Event free and open to all however a ticket is required - further information from LSE Events.

Political Economy and Development: a progress report, by Tim Besley

Wednesday 10 February 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Department of Economics Inaugural Lecture

A major change in mainstream thinking in economics over the past 25 years has been towards improving our understanding of how the policy process (political and bureaucrat) affects policy outcomes.  Such changes in economic thinking are partly in response to the need to have a persuasive account of the diverse historical development experiences of various countries and regions.  One key debate following this research has been about whether a particular configuration of institutions is needed to promote inclusive economic development.  This lecture will take stock of what has been learned and critically appraise the state of knowledge, drawing some implications for how International Financial Institutions and Aid Practitioners approach their business.

Professor Tim Besley gives his inaugural lecture as Sir William Arthur Lewis Chair in Development Economics.                   

The William Arthur Lewis Chair, created by LSE to mark the centenary of the Nobel Prize winner’s birth, was formally announced at LSE’s Sir Arthur Lewis Centenary Event on Understanding Economic Development on Monday 22 June.

Tim Besley is Deputy Head for Research of the Department of Economics and an associate member of CEP, IGC and STICERD at LSE.

Oriana Bandiera (chair) is Professor of Economics and Director of STICERD at LSE.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSELewis           

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings and slides on LSE Media page

Debt, Demographics and the Distribution of Income: new challenges for monetary policy, by Gertjan Vieghe

Monday 18 January 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Dr Gertjan Vlieghe (picture copyright: Bank of England CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0) joined the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England on 1 September 2015.             

Prior to his appointment he had been a partner and senior economist at Brevan Howard Asset Management, researching global macroeconomic trends and their interaction with asset prices. From 2005 to 2007 he was a bond strategist at Deutsche Bank. From 1998 to 2005 he held a number of posts at the Bank of England, including the post of Economic Assistant to Governor Mervyn King. Dr Vlieghe's published research has largely focused on the importance of money, balance sheets and asset prices in the economy. He holds a doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEVlieghe            

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Audio recording on LSE Media page

Transcript: Bank of England' s website

Economics of Migration, by Alan Manning

Tuesday 12 January 2016, 6:30-8:00 pm
Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Immigration is currently the most common response when asked about the most important issues facing Britain. This lecture will explain why there is a demand for immigration into the UK, and what the effects of it has been.            

Alan Manning is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is Director of the Centre for Economic Performance’s research programme on Community.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEecon  

Info: Event free and open to all however a ticket is required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings and slides on LSE Media page

Debt and Austerity: post-crisis lessons from Ireland, by Patrick Honohan

Tuesday 17 November 2015, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

After a long run of seeming prosperity, the financial crisis left Ireland’s banks more under water and its public and private balance sheets in greater disarray than in most other Western European countries. Since then, the painful processes of bank restructuring and fiscal adjustment, partly under the protection of an IMF-EU financial support arrangement, have revealed much about the domestic and international political economy of debt and austerity.  

Patrick Honohan (picture copyright: ECB Forum on Central Banking CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) was appointed Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland in 2009. Prior to this, he worked at the World Bank and the IMF, and was economics advisor to the Irish government. He is an alumnus of LSE and the Department of Economics - he completed an MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics and a PhD in Economics here. His PhD thesis was 'Uncertainty, Portfolio Choice and Economic Fluctuations', supervised by Michio Morishima.

Sir Charles Bean (chair) is Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics at LSE, and member of the Centre for Macroeconomics. He was Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy at the Bank of England from 2008-14, and Chief Economist at the Bank of England from 2000 to 2008. 

Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #LSEecon

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings, transcript and slides on LSE Media page

GDP: a brief but affectionate history, by Diane Coyle

Monday 16 November 2015, 6:30-8:00 pm
Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Why did the size of the U.S. economy increase by 3 percent on one day in mid-2013 - or Ghana’s balloon by 60 percent overnight in 2010? Why did the U.K. financial industry show its fastest expansion ever at the end of 2008 - just as the world’s financial system went into meltdown? And why was Greece’s chief statistician charged with treason in 2013 for apparently doing nothing more than trying to accurately report the size of his country’s economy? The answers to all these questions lie in the way we define and measure national economies around the world: gross domestic product.

Diane Coyle (picture copyright: Jason Wen CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) (@diane1859) is professor of economics at the University of Manchester. She runs the consultancy Enlightenment Economics, and as well as a regular blog, she is the author of numerous books, including The Economics of Enough and The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters. Her latest book is GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History.

Professor Francesco Caselli (chair) is Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and Programme Leader at the Centre for Macroeconomics.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEGDP

Info: Event free and open to all however a ticket is required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings on LSE Media page

Phising for Phools: the economics of manipulation and deception, by Robert J Shiller

Wednesday 11 November 2015, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand.  Robert Shiller delivers a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception. Rather than being essentially benign and always creating the greater good, markets are inherently filled with tricks and traps and will “phish” us as “phools.” 

This represents a radically new direction in economics, based on the intuitive idea that markets both give and take away. We spend our money up to the limit, and then worry about how to pay the next month’s bills. The financial system soars, then crashes. We are attracted, more than we know, by advertising. Our political system is distorted by money. We pay too much for gym memberships, cars, houses, and credit cards. Drug companies ingeniously market pharmaceuticals that do us little good, and sometimes are downright dangerous. Phishing for Phools explores the central role of manipulation and deception in each of these areas and many more. It thereby explains a paradox: why, at a time when we are better off than ever before in history, all too many of us are leading lives of quiet desperation.

Robert J Shiller (@RobertJShiller), the recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics, is a best-selling author, a regular contributor to the Economic View column of the New York Times, and a professor of economics at Yale University. His books include Finance and the Good Society, Animal Spirits (co-written with George A. Akerlof), The Subprime Solution, The New Financial Order and Irrational Exuberance. 

Wouter Den Haan (chair) is Professor of Economics at LSE and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEecon

Info: Event free and open to all however a ticket is required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings on LSE Media page

A Conversation with Ben Bernanke

Wednesday 28 October2015, 6:30-8:00 pm
LSE campus, venue tbc to ticketholders

Hosted by the Department and the LSE US Centre

Ben Bernanke will discuss his new book, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and its Aftermath, and his time as chair of the US Federal Reserve.

Ben S Bernanke (@benbernanke) is a Distinguished Fellow in Residence with the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. From February 2006 through January 2014, he was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Bernanke also served as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policymaking body.

Erik Berglof (@ErikBerglof) is Director of the Institute of Global Affairs (IGA) at LSE.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEBernanke

Info: Event free and open to all however a ticket is required - further information from LSE Events.

For an overview of the conversation, please visit the LSE US Centre's Storify page.

Other People's Money, by John Kay

Tuesday 20 October 2015, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Modern economies need finance, to enable us to make payments, transfer wealth across our lifetimes and between generations, allocate capital and maintain the corporate and physical infrastructure, and to help us manage the risks of everyday life.  Instead, we have created a financial world that talks to itself, trades with itself, and is increasingly divorced from the activities of the real economy. John Kay explains how this came about – and what can be done to recreate a financial sector responsive to economic and social needs.

Professor John Kay (@JohnKayFT) is an economist whose career has spanned the academic world, business and public affairs. Currently, he is a visiting Professor of Economics at LSE and a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is a director of several public companies and contributes a weekly column to the Financial Times. He recently chaired the Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision-Making which reported to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in July 2012. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003), The Long and the Short of It: finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry (2009) and Obliquity (2010). His latest book is Other People’s Money.

Wouter Den Haan (chair) is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEecon

Info: Event free and open to all however a ticket is required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings on LSE Media page

Economics Rules: the rights and wrongs of the dismal science, by Dani Rodrik

Wednesday 7 October 2015, 6:30-8:00 pm
Old Theatre, Old Building

Hosted by the Department and the Centre for Macroeconomics

Based on his new book, Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science, Professor Rodrik will give an accessible introduction to the strengths of the discipline of economics and why it is so often misunderstood, not least by its practitioners.

Dani Rodrik (@rodrikdani) is Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Centennial Professor at the LSE European Institute and Department of Economics. He has published widely in international economics and globalization, economic growth and development, and political economy. He is the author of The Globalization Paradox (Norton, 2011) and One Economics, Many Recipes (Princeton, 2007). 

Wouter Den Haan (chair) is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics.  

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEecon

Info: Event free and open to all with no ticket or registration required - further information from LSE Events.

Recordings: Video recording on YouTube, Recordings on LSE Media page