A New Policy Paradigm for the Post-COVID World

Rarely, perhaps never, has the world faced such an array of challenges, as distinct as they are interdependent. At the forefront are a health catastrophe and an economic crisis that together are blighting lives and jeopardizing the fight against hunger, poverty, inequality and climate change.

With the vaccine now within reach, policy attention can focus on what should be a transformational recovery. The crisis provides a unique opportunity for nations and the global community to re-evaluate many aspects of modern economy, society, and government. If we return to the “old normal,” this window of opportunity will have been lost.

Against this backdrop, we will ask our panelists the following questions. What are the key policy priorities for economic recovery? How should we deal with the legacy of the crisis response: historically high public and corporate debt, worsening inequality, and a cohort of children who have missed a year of education? How do we make faster progress against climate change in this new context? How do we factor into policy the implications – both good and bad – of the step change in digitalisation in all aspects of our lives over just 10 months? How do we reform global processes and institutions? Are we ready for a new social contract, and if so, what should it look like? 

Jonathan Black (@JonathanBlackUK) is the Prime Minister’s G7/G20 Sherpa. His portfolio covers international economic issues, including the global economy, international trade, climate change, development, economic security, global health, technology, and related policy issues. Jonathan acts as the senior Cabinet Office interlocutor with Whitehall departments on international economic policy issues. Prior to this, he was Director General and Deputy Head of the Europe Unit at the Cabinet Office and one of the UK’s principal EU exit negotiators. He has also held a number of roles at HM Treasury, including Press Secretary and Private Secretary to Chancellors of the Exchequer. He also served as the UK Director of the European Investment Bank and Alternate Director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Gordon Brown (@OfficeGSBrown) served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007 and as a Member of Parliament in his home county of Fife, Scotland, from 1983 to 2015. He is the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and is a passionate advocate for the rights of children. Gordon is Chair of the High Level Steering Group for the Education Cannot Wait fund for education in emergencies, Chair of the Inquiry on Protecting Children in Conflict and also serves as Chair of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity. Gordon is the author of several books including Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation and My Life, Our Times.

Beata Javorcik (@BJavorcik) is Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London. She is on leave from the University of Oxford, where she is the first woman to hold a Statutory Professorship in Economics. She is also a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a member of the Royal Economic Society’s Executive Committee and a Director of the International Trade Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. Before taking up her position at Oxford, she worked at the World Bank in Washington DC, where she focused on research, lending operations and policy advice. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale and a B.A. in Economics (Summa cum Laude) from the University of Rochester.

Jin Liqun is the inaugural President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). On July 28, 2020, he was elected to serve a second term of five years, beginning on Jan. 16, 2021. Before being elected as the Bank’s first president, Mr Jin served as Secretary-General of the Multilateral Interim Secretariat tasked with establishing the Bank. Mr. Jin has rich experience across the private and public sectors, as well as with MDBs. He served as Chairman of China International Capital Corporation Limited, China’s first joint-venture investment bank, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of China Investment Corporation, and as Chairman of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds. Mr Jin previously served as Vice President, and then Ranking Vice President, of the Asian Development Bank, and as Alternate Executive Director for China at the World Bank and at the Global Environment Facility. He spent nearly two decades at the Chinese Ministry of Finance, reaching the rank of Vice Minister. 

Nemat (Minouche) Shafik is a leading economist, whose career has straddled public policy and academia. She was appointed Director of LSE in September 2017. She did her BA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, her MSc at LSE and her DPhil at the University of Oxford and, by the age of 36, had become the youngest ever Vice President of the World Bank. She taught at Georgetown University and the Wharton Business School. She later served as the Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund from 2011-2014 and as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England from 2014-2017, where she sat on all the monetary, financial and prudential policy committees and was responsible for a balance sheet of over £500 billion.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam (@Tharman_S) is Senior Minister in Singapore. He served earlier as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister for several years. He chairs the National Jobs Council, aimed at rebuilding jobs and skills in the wake of COVID-19. Tharman is also Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Internationally, Tharman chairs the Group of Thirty, an independent council of economic and financial leaders. He led a G20 Eminent Persons Group in 2017-2018. He currently also co-chairs the Global Education Forum, and the Advisory Board for the UN’s Human Development Report. Studied at LSE, the University of Cambridge and Harvard University.

Andrés Velasco (@AndresVelasco) is the Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy. He was the Minister of Finance in Chile between 2006 and 2010 and has held professorial roles at the Harvard Kennedy School and Columbia University´s School of International and Public Affairs. He was president of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) from 2005 to 2007. In February 2006 he received the Award for Excellence in Research from the Inter-American Development Bank. In 2013- 16 he was a member of the Global Oceans Commission and during 2015-16 he co-chaired the Global Panel on the Future of the Multilateral Lending Institutions. In 2017-18 he was a member of the G20 Eminent Persons Group. He is the author of nearly one hundred academic articles, several academic books and two novels. He has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter- American Development Bank, and to governments, central banks and private businesses around the world.

Anthony Williams (@ARWilliams55) is a journalist and communications veteran. He spent nearly three decades with Reuters News Agency, including as: foreign correspondent in France, Switzerland and Germany; German financial editor at the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall; running Reuters editorial operations in the UK and Ireland; News Editor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Global News Editor, responsible for the agency’s text, TV and pictures operations worldwide. He left Reuters in 2006 and joined the Communications Department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where he was appointed Director, External Communications.

Mahima Andrew is the LSE Student Leader of the Maryam Forum Secretariat. Mahima is a MPA second year student at LSE, originally from India. She has worked for over 9 years across policy design and implementation strategy focussed at healthcare and micro finance in the developing world. She has partnered with large corporates and international organizations with specific focus on public-private partnerships aimed at increasing financial inclusion in the emerging markets of India and South Africa. She has been instrumental in increasing penetration for financial products through collaborations with international bodies such as USAID. She has also worked on international policy, where she consulted on regulatory changes brought about by the Obamacare act and led policy implementation built around the revised policy framework.

This session is part of the LSE Conference on “One Year On: Lessons Learnt and ‘New Normals’ in a Post-COVID World “hosted  under the LSE Maryam Forum. Click here to view all conference sessions.

The LSE Maryam Forum is a multi-year programme aimed at accelerating the kind of leadership the world needs urgently. A product of the LSE Institute of Global Affairs (IGA) and the School of Public Policy (SPP), it has been conceived as a collaboration between policy makers, students, academic researchers, business leaders and media. Driven by deep engagement with faculty and students, the Maryam Forum builds on LSE and IGA’s strong track record in research, policy engagement and capacity building.

The Institute of Global Affairs (@LSEIGA) aims to maximise the impact of LSE's leading expertise across the social sciences by shaping inclusive and locally-rooted responses to the most important and pressing global challenges.

The School of Public Policy (@LSEPublicPolicy) is an international community where ideas and practice meet. Our approach creates professionals with the ability to analyse, understand and resolve the challenges of contemporary governance.

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