13th China Conference Keynote Address: China’s Overseas Lending and Developing-Country Debt After COVID with Carmen Reinhart

The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to invite you to the 13th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year the conference will take place as a virtual series, beginning on October 30th, with a keynote address from Carmen Reinhart on “Debt After COVID”. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly lengthened the list of developing and emerging market economies in debt distress. For some, a crisis is imminent. For many more, only exceptionally low global interest rates may be delaying a reckoning. Default rates are rising, and the need for debt restructuring is growing. Yet new challenges may hamper debt workouts unless governments and multilateral lenders provide better tools to navigate a wave of restructuring.

About the Speaker:

Carmen M. Reinhart is the Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. Assuming this role on June 15, 2020, Reinhart provides thought leadership for the institution at an unprecedented time of crisis. She also manages the Bank’s Development Economics Department.

Reinhart’s areas of expertise are in international finance and macroeconomics. Her work has helped to inform the understanding of financial crises in both advanced economies and emerging markets. She has published extensively on capital flows, exchange rate policy, banking and sovereign debt crises, and contagion. She comes to this position on public service leave from Harvard Kennedy School where she is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland.

During her career, Reinhart has worked in numerous roles to address policy challenges including most recently, the coronavirus pandemic and its economic impact. She serves in the Advisory Panels of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the International Monetary Fund. Earlier, she was the Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund and held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns.

Ranked among the top Economists worldwide based on publications and scholarly citations, Reinhart has been listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, and Thomson Reuters’ The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. In 2018 she was awarded the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics and NABE’s Adam Smith Award, among others. Her book (with Kenneth S. Rogoff) entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly has been translated to over 20 languages and won the Paul A. Samuelson Award. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Recording of the event: here

Transcript of the event: here