4th GW India Conference on India’s Economic Development and U.S.-India Economic Relations

Tuesday, April 16th, 2024

Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Family Commons (6th Floor)
1957 E St. NW, Washington DC 20052

The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to announce the 4th GW India Conference on India’s Economic Development and U.S.-India Economic Relations will take place on Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 at the Elliott School of International Affairs. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER). Breakfast, lunch, and light refreshments will be provided. Full agenda forthcoming.

The Economic Prospects of Middle-Income Countries

Monday, December 4th, 2023
5:30 – 7:30 pm ET
City View Room, Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, 7th Floor

We are disappointed to inform you that, due to unforeseen circumstances, the upcoming event with Dr. Yunus has been postponed. The Wenger Lecture will continue as planned, and all those previously registered are invited to attend.

We are pleased to announce that Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, will be joining us along with Christopher Fussner, BA ’79, as part of the Wenger Family Lecture series on International Business and Finance on December 4th, 2023. This lecture will discuss “The Economic Prospects of Middle-Income Countries.” Professor James Foster will serve as the moderator.

The event will begin with a discussion from 5:30 – 6:30 pm, followed by a reception from 6:30-7:30 pm. The event will be hybrid.

About the Speaker:

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.
Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, Gill served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he helped shape the Bank’s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program.

Gill led the World Bank’s influential 2009 World Development Report on economic geography. His work includes introducing the concept of the “middle-income trap” to describe how countries stagnate after reaching a certain level of income. He has published extensively on key policy issues facing developing countries—among other things, sovereign debt vulnerabilities, green growth and natural-resource wealth, labor markets, and poverty and inequality.

Gill has also taught at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

 

Photo of Christopher FussnerChristopher Fussner founded and owns TransTechnology Pte. Ltd. in Singapore in 1988, a major distributor of surface mount technology and semiconductor capital equipment. Headquartered in Singapore, Trans-Tec has 235 employees worldwide with offices in China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam. He has had extensive experience in negotiating and establishing joint ventures, strategic alliances, licenses, distribution networks and sales worldwide. In addition, Mr. Fussner is also founder and owner of Certain Cellars Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, an importer and distributor of fine wines. Prior to forming these companies, Mr. Fussner headed Asia sales for Amistar Corporation based in Seoul, Korea and Singapore. As such, he was responsible for sales and service for electronics manufacturing industry machines in Australia, Asia, and India.

Mr. Fussner began his international career during the late 1978 in Ouagadougou (Upper Volta) Burkino Faso, where he was involved in aid work for Catholic Relief Services. He subsequently joined Church World Services during 1979 – 1980, devoting his time as a refugee resettlement officer in Malaysia, being responsible for the resettlement process of Vietnamese refugees. Mr. Fussner also taught English at the Hyundai Corporation in Seoul, Korea. As a young man, Mr. Fussner also worked in New York as a steamfitter, waiter, busboy, paperboy, and gardener.

Mr. Fussner received his B.A. in History and East Asian Studies from George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs (1979), and his M.I.M. (Master of International Management) at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, Arizona (1982). He is proficient in Chinese and French with some knowledge of Korean and Spanish.

About the Moderator:

Picture of James FosterProfessor James Foster is the Vice Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, and Professor of Economics 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).

1st World Bank-GWU-UVA Research Conference on “The Economics of Sustainable Development”

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023
8:00 AM – 7:30 PM

Hybrid

The World Bank, in collaboration with George Washington University (GWU) and the University of Virginia (UVA), will host the 1st World Bank-GWU-UVA Conference on “The Economics of Sustainable Development”.

This hybrid conference will be held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC on November 29, 2023, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET and available via livestream. Coffee and lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. The conference will be followed by a reception at GWU from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET.

The conference will bring together academics and development economics practitioners to present and discuss pressing questions relating to sustainable development, a theme that is central to the World Bank’s mission of tackling poverty on a liveable planet.

This theme is of increasing importance due to the growing recognition that a commitment to development and tackling poverty is unviable without an equal commitment to the urgency of addressing climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation.

The conference will cover various topics, including biodiversity and forests, the economics of natural resources, and pollution. Furthermore, given Africa’s heavy reliance on renewable natural resources and its vulnerability to climate change impacts, there will be a particular focus on frontier work related to Africa.

Supported by the GW University Seminar Series on Domestic and International Perspectives on Climate Change and Water Management.

Conference Agenda

Welcoming remarks 8.00-8.15

Richard Damania (Chief Economist for Sustainable Development, World Bank) – 5 min

Andrew Dabalen (Chief Economist for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), World Bank) – 5 min

Sheetal Sekhri (UVA) or Molly Lipscomb (UVA) – 1 min

Remi Jedwab (GWU) – 1 min

Session 1 – 8.15-10.00 – Biodiversity and Forests

Each paper has 20 min without interruptions + 10 min Q&A

8.15-8.45 Paper 1: Raahil Madhok (Minnesota), Infrastructure, Institutions, and the Conservation of Biodiversity in India [South Asia]

8.45-9.15 Paper 2: Teevrat Garg (UCSD), Agricultural Productivity and Deforestation [SSA]

9.15-9.45 Paper 3: Anna Papp (Columbia), Rain Follows the Forest: Land Use Policy, Climate Change, and Adaptation [North America]

9.45-10.00 Policy discussion: Nancy Lozano Gracia (Lead Economist, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sustainable Development Practice Group, World Bank)

Coffee Break – 10.00-10.30

Session 2 – 10.30-12.15 – The Economics of Natural Resources

Chair: Richard Damania (Chief Economist, Sustainable Development Practice Group, World Bank)

Each paper has 20 min without interruptions + 10 min Q&A

10.30-11.00 Paper 1: Wolfram Schlenker (Columbia), Cooling Externality of Large-Scale Irrigation [North America]

11.00-11.30 Paper 2: Ryan Brown (CU-Denver), Reinforcing Inequality: Consequences of Elevated Fluoride Exposure and Inequitable Mitigation [South Asia]

11.30-12.00 Paper 3: Witold Więcek (University of Chicago), Water Treatment and Child Mortality: A Meta-Analysis and Cost-effectiveness Analysis.

12.00-12.15 Policy discussion: Hanan Jacoby (Lead Economist, Sustainability and Infrastructure Team, Development Research Group, World Bank)

Lunch Break – 12.15-1.00

Keynote – 1.00-2.00

1.00-1.05 Introduction

1.05-1.35 Keynote – Andrew Foster (Brown)

1.35-1.55 Policy discussion

Session 3 – 2.00-3.15 Climate Change in Africa and Asia

Chair: Andrew Dabalen (Chief Economist, Africa Region, World Bank)

Each paper has 12 min without interruptions + 8 min Q&A

2.00-2.20 Paper 1: Lucile Laugerette (F) (ENS-Lyon) and Mathieu Couttenier (M) (ENS-Lyon) – Groundwater, Climate Change and Conflict: Evidence from Africa [SSA]

2.20-2.40 Paper 2: Bruno Conte (M) (UPF) – Future Climate Change and Sub-Saharan Africa’s Regional Lake Economies [SSA]

2.40-3.00 Paper 3: Gaurav Chiplunkar (M) (UVA) – Environmental Markets and Misallocation: Evidence from Ground Water Availability in India [South Asia]

3.00-3.15 Policy discussion: Carolyn Fischer (Research Manager, Sustainability and Infrastructure Team, Development Research Group of the World Bank)

Coffee Break – 3.15-3.40

Session 4 – 3.40-5.45 – Air Pollution

Chair: Dina Umali-Deininger (Regional Director for South Asia, Sustainable Development Practice Group, World Bank)

3.40-4.00 Introductory presentation: Christa Hasenkopf (EPIC, University of Chicago): Insights from the latest Air Quality Life Index report, with a specific focus on sub-Saharan Africa [SSA]

Each of the following three papers has 20 min without interruptions + 10 min Q&A

4.00-4.30 Koichiro Ito (Chicago). International Spillover Effects of Air Pollution: Evidence from Mortality and Health Data. [EAP]

4.30-5.00 Saad Gulzar (M) (Princeton). Administrative Incentives Impact Crop-Residue Burning and Health in South Asia. [South Asia]

5.00-5.30 Susanna Berkouwer (Wharton): Private Actions in the Presence of Externalities: The Health Impacts of Reducing Air Pollution Peaks but not Ambient Exposure

5.30-5.45 Policy discussion: Helena Naber (Senior Environmental Specialist, Environment and Natural Resources Global Practice, World Bank)

Sustainable Cities Workshop on “Urban Inclusion and Development”

Tuesday, May 9th, 2023
9:30-1:45 EDT
In-Person and Virtual

Globally, 55% of the population lives in urban areas today. By 2045, the number of people living in cities will increase by 1.5 times to 6 billion, adding 2 billion more urban residents. With more than 80% of global GDP generated in cities, urbanization can contribute to sustainable growth if managed well by increasing productivity, allowing innovation and new ideas to emerge. This workshop brings together academics and development practitioners to present and discuss questions relating to Sustainable Urbanization.

This discussion was organized by the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at GWU in partnership with the World Bank (Urban Global Practice).

Please note that those who register to attend in person are strongly encouraged to attend as lunch will be ordered for the specific number of registrants. Light breakfast, lunch, and coffee will be provided with the support of the University Seminar Series on The Global Socio-Economic Costs of Climate Change and Unsustainable Urbanization.

 

9.30-9.35 – Opening Remarks: Chairs: Remi Jedwab (GWU) and Mark Roberts (Lead Urban Economist with the Urban, Resilience and Land Global Practice, World Bank)

Academic Presentations, Chair: Nicholas Li (GWU)

9.35-9.55 – Simon Franklin (QMU),“Urban Density and labour markets: Evaluating slum redevelopment in Addis Ababa”
9.55-10.00 – Discussant: Fernanda Rojas Ampuero (Harvard)
10.00-10.10 – Q&A

10.10-10.40 – Michael Gechter (Penn State), “Spatial Spillovers from Urban Renewal: Evidence from the Mumbai Mills Redevelopment”
10.40-10.45 – Discussant: Roman Zarate (World Bank)
10.45-10.55 – Q&A

10.55-11.25 – Milena Almagro (Chicago Booth), “Urban Renewal and Inequality: Evidence from Chicago’s Public Housing Demolitions”
11.25-11.30 – Discussant: Leah Brooks (GWU)
11.30-11.40 – Q&A

11.40-11.50 – Coffee

Lightning Talks, Chair: Tanner Regan (GWU)

11.50-12.00 – Mariaflavia Harari (Wharton), “Residential Patterns in Urban Brazil”
12.00-12.05 – Q&A

12.05-12.15 – Jingwen Zheng (GWU), “Estimating the Negative Externalities from Urban Blight: Evidence from the Demolition of Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong”
12.15-12.20 – Q&A

Concluding Session, Chair: Carlos Rodriguez Castelan (Practice Manager in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank)

12.20-12.40 – Mini-keynote with Maisy Wong (Wharton). “Urban Slums and Development: the Research Frontier”
12.40-12.50 – Discussant with Policy Reflections: Judy Baker, (Global Lead – Urban Poverty, Inclusive Cities and Housing, World Bank)
12:50-12:55 – Q&A

12.55-1.00 – Closing Remarks: Nancy Lozano (Lead Economist Sustainable Development, LAC, World Bank) and Tanner Regan (GWU)

1.00-1.45 – Lunch

U.S. India Cooperation in a Changing Global Economy and India’s Pathways to Success

Thursday, April 20th, 2023
5:00-7:00 p.m EDT
In-Person

We are pleased to invite you to a panel on, “U.S. India Cooperation in a Changing Global Economy and India’s Pathways to Success” with speakers Dr. Uma Ganesh (Global Talent Track), Dr. Ejaz Ghani (Pune International), Dr. Remi Jedwab (IIEP), and Dr. Ganesh Natarajan (5F World) and moderator Pallabi Saboo. This event is co-sponsored by TiE DC and the Harvard Club of Washington DC.

 

About the Speakers:

Dr. Uma Ganesh is an expert in entrepreneurial strategy, skills development, and digital employee management platforms. She is the Founder of Global Talent Track, a leading vocational skills company that uses a blended learning model to bridge academia and the industry. She is the Co-Founder of 5F World, a platform for global consulting, investing, and mentoring in digital skills and digital transformation for start-ups and social enterprises, and has authored multiple books on knowledge, management, and digital success.

 

 

 

Dr. Ejaz Ghani is a Senior Fellow at Pune International. He is a former Lead Economist at the World Bank and former consultant at the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and UNICEF. He previously was a Professor of Economics at Oxford University and Delhi University. He is an expert on topics including economic growth, macroeconomic policy, poverty, employment, entrepreneurship, urbanization, gender trade, decentralization, and agriculture.

 

 

 

Dr. Remi Jedwab is an associate professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University, the Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and the Director of the ESIA Initiative on Climate Change and Sustainable Cities at George Washington University, and an Affiliated Scholar of the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Professor Jedwab’s main fields of research are urban and real estate economics, development and growth, environmental economics, and labor economics. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, urban construction and climate change, the economic determinants and effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of institutions, human capital and technology in development and growth. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the World Bank-GWU Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference and the Washington Area Development Economics Symposium.

 

 

 Dr. Ganesh Natarajan is the Co-Founder of 5F World, a platform for global consulting, investing, and mentoring in digital skills and digital transformation for start-ups and social enterprises. He is the Chairman of Honeywell Automation India and Lighthouse Communities Foundation, as well as a Central Board Member of the State Bank of India, Global Talent Track, and AVPN Singapore.

 

 

 

 

About the Moderator:

Pallabi Saboo is the Executive Chair and Founder of Harmonia Holdings Group, LLC. She serves on the Fairfax Economic Development Authority Board, Asian American Chamber of Commerce Board, George Mason University President’s Innovation Advisory Council, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) DC Board, Northern Virginia’s Chamber of Commerce Strategic Leadership Board of Advisors, and as an Officer of the Harvard Club of Washington DC. She was named one of the Top 25 Female CEOs in the DMV in 2008 and received the US President’s Volunteer Service Award in 2021

 

Reshaping the World Bank for the 21st Century: An Agenda for the New President

Wednesday, April 26th, 2023
9-10:30 p.m EST
Zoom

The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to invite you to join us on Wednesday, April 12th, 2023 to hear from a distinguished panel comprising Nancy Birdsall (Center for Global Development), Ana Palacios (Palacio y Asociados and Georgetown), and Johannes Linn (Brookings). The panel will discuss “Reshaping the World Bank for the 21st Century: An Agenda for the New President” in a session moderated by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. IIEP Director Remi Jedwab will introduce the session.

With the nomination of Ajay Banga by the US administration as the next World Bank president there is a unique opportunity to reshape the institution for the needs of the 21st century. This would include changing its strategic direction with a much greater focus on tackling climate change, as it pursues poverty eradication and shared prosperity. It must also include making its governance structure more representative of a changed global economic landscape and using its capital in more innovative ways to harness the vast sums of private capital to meet the challenges of sustainable development across the world. It must also find ways to focus more on global public goods as it helps individual countries address these challenges.

About the Speakers:

Nancy Birdsall is president emeritus and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a policy-oriented research institution that opened its doors in Washington, DC in October 2001. Prior to launching the Center, Birdsall served for three years as senior associate and director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as on the reform of the international financial institutions.

From 1993 to 1998, Birdsall was executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the regional development banks, where she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio. Before joining the Inter-American Development Bank, she spent 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank, including as director of the Policy Research Department.

 

Birdsall holds a PhD in economics from Yale University and an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

 

Ana Palacio was the first woman to serve as Foreign Minister of Spain, from 2002-2004. Before this, she was a member of the Spanish Parliament, where she chaired the Joint Committee of the two Houses for European Affairs. She also served as a member of the European Parliament, where she chaired the Legal Affairs and Internal Market Committee, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee and the Conference of the Committee Chairs, the most senior decision-making body on legislative policy and programs. As the Head of the Spanish Delegation to the European Union’s Intergovernmental Conference and a member of the Presidium of the Convention, Ms. Palacio was at the forefront of the debate on the future of the European Union and drafted and led legal discussions on the European Treaties reform.

Ms. Palacio also served on Spain’s Consejo de Estado (Council of State), and as Senior VP and General Counsel of the World Bank Group, as well as Secretary General of the ICSID – International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

 

Johannes F. Linn is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Distinguished Resident Scholar at the Emerging Markets Forum in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow at the Results for Development Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the international Scaling Community of Practice, which has over 2,500 participants.

Johannes currently serves as Global Facilitator for setting up and funding the Systematic Observations Financing Facility hosted by the World Meteorological Organization. In 2019 Johannes served as Global Facilitator for the 1st Replenishment of the Green Climate Fund. In 2011, 2014 and 2017 he chaired three Replenishment Consultations of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. From 2005-2010 he was Director of the Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings. Before that, he worked for three decades at the World Bank, including as the Bank’s Vice President for Financial Policy and Resource Mobilization and Vice President for Europe and Central Asia.

 

About the Moderator:

Ajay Chhibber is Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP), George Washington University, Washington D.C., Senior Visiting Professor at the Indian Council for Research on India’s Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

He was the first Director General, Independent Evaluation Office, India (Minister of State) and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. He also was Chief Economic Advisor to FICCI and now serves on CII’s Economic Advisory Council. He served earlier as Assistant Secretary General, UN and Assistant Administrator, UNDP where he was responsible for work on Asia and the Pacific. At the World Bank he served in senior positions as Country Director in Turkey and Vietnam, and Division Chief for Indonesia and the Pacific as well as the Director and Lead Author of the seminal 1997 World Development Report on the Role of the State.

He has a Ph. D 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 where he received BA Hons in Economics. He has also done advanced management courses at Harvard University and at INSEAD, France.

 

 

Cosponsored by GW-CIBER and the Growth Dialogue

Wenger Family Lecture on International Business and Finance: The Global Economy Post-Brexit: UK and US Perspectives

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023
Reception 5:00 – 5:30 ET
Lecture 5:30-6:30 pm ET
City View Room, Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, 7th Floor

We were pleased to invite you to join us on March 23rd, 2023 from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm EST for a conversation with Carl Richardson, MA ’99, and Sarah Hirsch, BA ’10, as part of the Wenger Family Lecture series on International Business and Finance. This lecture discussed “The Global Economy Post-Brexit: UK and US Perspectives.” IIEP Director Remi Jedwab will serve as the moderator. The event began with a reception from 5:00 – 5:30 pm, followed by the discussion from 5:30 – 6:30 pm.

This event was presented by the Elliott School Office of Development and Alumni Relations and underwritten by the Henry E. & Consuelo S. Wenger Foundation. It is co-sponsored by the Institute for International Economic Policy.

About the Speakers

Picture of Carl RichardsonCarl A. Richardson, ESIA MA ’99, leads the Richardson family business, alongside his brothers. Richardson is a multi-generational independent family-run trading and investment business which has a real estate and growth capital portfolio that is embedded across the world. Current growth capital investments include an award- winning Swiss technology company, a UK financial services business, the fastest growing automated carwash business in the US, and the largest avocado grower in New Zealand. Real estate holdings are significant in scale and content, encompassing office, residential, distribution centres, leisure and infrastructure properties both nationally and internationally.

Carl is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Trustee of the Richardson Brothers’ Foundation. He previously served as an International Officer at HSBC in London, UAE, and Hong Kong, and has also served as an Honorary Captain in the Royal Navy Reserve. He is a member of the Executive Circle of the Elliott School’s Institute for International Economic Policy and previously was a member of the school’s International Council advisory group.

Picture of Sarah HirschSarah Hirsch, ESIA BA ’10, is an economic and financial policy expert and former diplomat. She is currently Vice President of Global Corporate and Investment Banking at Bank of America. Since 2010, Sarah has advised senior public and private sector officials, including heads of state. Her areas of expertise include international economic policy, economic development, capital markets, and monetary policy.

From 2012-19, Sarah served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, most recently as senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance. As Acting U.S. Executive Director at the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, she facilitated the approval of $12 billion in development finance to countries throughout Africa and established partnerships between the Bank and U.S. government, including the Obama Administration’s Power Africa Initiative, Global Connect Initiative, and the Partnership on Illicit Finance. For her service, Sarah was awarded the Treasury Secretary’s Exceptional Service Award. She is a member of the Executive Circle of the Elliott School’s Institute for International Economic Policy.

About the Moderator

Picture of Remi JedwabRemi Jedwab is an associate professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University, the Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and the Director of the ESIA Initiative on Climate Change and Sustainable Cities at George Washington University, and an Affiliated Scholar of the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Professor Jedwab’s main fields of research are urban and real estate economics, development and growth, environmental economics, and labor economics. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, urban construction and climate change, the economic determinants and effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of institutions, human capital, and technology in development and growth. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the World Bank-GWU Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference and the Washington Area Development Economics Symposium.

Capitalism, Democracy, and Governance

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-LuciaJoe 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:

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).

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.

Measuring Multidimensional Poverty. A Global Assessment of Data Availability and Data Gaps

Monday, November 7th, 2022

Timely and disaggregated data are essential for effective policy-making, and achieving the ambitious goals outlined in Agenda 2030. To this date, over 30 countries launched national Multidimensional Poverty Indices (MPIs) to monitor SDG 1.2.2 and eradicate poverty in all its forms. In addition, figures on acute multidimensional poverty in over 100 developing countries are published regularly using the internationally comparable global Multidimensional Poverty Index. But there is a need to measure less acute forms of poverty, as well as to cover high income countries.

 

While advancements have been made on using administrative or census data for measuring multidimensional poverty, most national MPIs and the global MPI relies on household survey data for a comprehensive and timely assessment of poverty, and its changes over time. This presentation reviews the current data landscape with a focus on national and cross-national multi-topic household surveys that might be used to develop a genuinely global multidimensional index covering less acute forms of poverty.  It presents a comprehensive and detailed overview of the available resources and identifies important gaps in existing survey data. In addition, the presentation assess the feasibility of a new global moderate multidimensional poverty index with expanded indicator coverage and the inclusion of developed countries, while retaining frequent updates and sub-national dis-aggregation. The presentation proposes multiple options for a global ‘moderate MPI’ and evaluates each according to a set of common criteria. It also proposes a set of measures that could be developed exclusively for high-income countries. Last, the presentation will propose a set of recommendations for improving the availability and coverage of nationally representative household survey data – an essential resource for measuring poverty in all its dimensions, and achieving the overall goal of no poverty.

Speaker:

 Fanni Kovesdi (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Department of International Development, University of Oxford)

Since joining the OPHI in 2018, she has worked on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index and Changes over Time projects, harmonizing global MPI data to analyze trends in poverty for 80 countries. Prior to joining OPHI, she worked on an ESRC-funded research project on dual career couple trajectories and has completed internships at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Child Hub for Southeast Europe. Kovesdi received her Bachelors of Science in Politics and Sociology from the University of Bristol and her Masters of Science in Sociology from the University of Oxford. Her primary research interests are inequality, poverty, wellbeing, social identities, and migration.

 

Discussant:

Dean Jolliffe (Lead Economist in the Development Data Group, World Bank)

A Lead Economist at the World Bank and was previously co-director of the 2021 World Development Report on Data for Better Lives. He’s a member of the Global Poverty & Inequality team and the Living Standards and Measurement Study team. Dean currently holds appointments at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, the Institute for the Study of Labor, and the Global Labor Organization. He received his PhD in Economics from Princeton University.

 

About The series:

The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to host a special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions. The global MPI offers a tool to make progress towards this goal.

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

The seminars are taking place online on Mondays at 11 a.m. ET. They are open to everyone focused on improving the lived experience of those who are deprived.

 

The End of Growth and the Return of Ideology: Economics, Sustainability, and Technology in Xi Jinping’s China

Friday, 4th November, 2022

The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to the first event in the 15th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER).

This inaugural event featured the Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, Scott M. Moore, to discuss The End of Growth and the Return of Ideology: Economics, Sustainability, and Technology in Xi Jinping’s China. John Helveston (GWU) provided discussant remarks, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Barbara Stallings moderated the event.

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it is that the world is bound together by shared challenges—and that at the center of those challenges stands China. Thanks to decades of breakneck growth and development, Chinese officials, businesses, and institutions now play a critical role in every major global issue, from climate change to biotechnology. But China’s recent 20th Party Congress shows that Xi Jinping’s China is charting a very different path toward addressing these issues, all in the context of slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

This talk drew on a recently-published book, China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future, to re-envision China’s role in the world in terms of sustainability and technology. This reframing is essential both because none of these increasingly pressing, shared global challenges can be tackled without China, and because they are reshaping China’s economy and its foreign policy, with major implications for the world at large. At the same time, sustainability and technology issues present opportunities for intensified economic, geopolitical, and ideological competition—a reality that Beijing recognizes.

Drawing on the book, this talk explains that the danger is that China’s next act will drive divergence on the rules and standards the world desperately needs to tackle shared challenges in the decades ahead. In some areas, like clean technology development, competition can be good for the planet. But in others, it could be catastrophic: only cooperation can lower the risks of artificial intelligence and other disruptive new technologies.

With a particular focus on climate change, this talk addressed China’s role in providing global public goods and addressing global challenges, against a backdrop of growing economic, geopolitical, and ideological rivalry with other powers.

 

Speakers:

Scott M. Moore is a political scientist, university administrator, and former policymaker whose career focuses on China, sustainability, and emerging technology. As Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, Scott Moore works with faculty members from across the University to design, implement, and highlight innovative, high-impact global research initiatives in areas including sustainability and emerging technology. Dr. Moore directs Penn Global’s four research and engagement fund programs, including those designed to support faculty-led projects in China, India, and Africa as well as its At-Risk Scholars Program. In addition, Dr. Moore conducts research as an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China and The Water Center at Penn, and teaches in the Department of Political Science.

 

Discussant:

 

John Helveston is interested in understanding the factors that shape technological change, with a particular focus on transitioning to more sustainable and energy-saving technologies. Within this broader category, he studies consumer preferences and market demand for new technologies as well as relationships between innovation, industry structure, and technology policy. He has explored these themes in the context of China’s rapidly developing electric vehicle industry. He applies an interdisciplinary approach to research, with expertise in discrete choice modeling and conjoint analysis as well as interview-based case studies.

 

 

Moderator:

photo of Barbara StallingsBarbara Stallings is a William R. Rhodes Research Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of Studies in Comparative International Development. She is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University. Before arriving at Brown in 2002, she was director of the Economic Development Division of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile (1993–2002), and professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1977–1993). She has doctorates in economics (University of Cambridge) and in political science (Stanford University) and is a specialist in development economics, with an emphasis on development strategies and international finance. In addition, she works on issues of economic relations between Asia and Latin America and comparisons between the two regions. Her recent books are Innovation and Inclusion in Latin America: Strategies to Avoid the Middle Income Trap (2016) and Promoting Development: The Political Economy of East Asian Foreign Aid (2017). Her most recent book, Dependency in the Twenty-First Century?: The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations (2020), was selected as one of Foreign Affairs’ best books of 2020. She has taught at various universities in China and elsewhere in Asia; currently she is a distinguished visiting professor at the Schwarzman Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Human Development Report 2022 – Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives. Shaping Our Future in a Transforming World

Monday, November 14th, 2022

Zoom and In-Person

We live in a world of worry. The ongoing Covid-19 pan­demic, having driven reversals in human development in almost every country, continues to spin off variants unpre­dictably. War in Ukraine and elsewhere has created more human suffering. Record-breaking temperatures, fires, storms and floods sound the alarm of planetary systems increasingly out of whack. Together, they are fuelling a cost-of-living crisis felt around the world, painting a pic­ture of uncertain times and unsettled lives.Uncertainty is not new, but its dimensions are taking om­inous new forms today. A new “uncertainty complex” is emerging, never before seen in human history. Constitut­ing it are three volatile and interacting strands: the desta­bilizing planetary pressures and inequalities of the Anthro­pocene, the pursuit of sweeping societal transformations to ease those pressures and the widespread and intensi­fying polarization.This new uncertainty complex and each new crisis it spawns are impeding human development and unsettling lives the world over. In the wake of the pandemic, and for the first time ever, the global Human Development Index (HDI) value declined—for two years straight. Many coun­tries experienced ongoing declines on the HDI in 2021. Even before the pandemic, feelings of insecurity were on the rise nearly everywhere. Many people feel alienated from their political systems, and in another reversal, dem­ocratic backsliding has worsened.There is peril in new uncertainties, in the insecurity, polar­ization and demagoguery that grip many countries. But there is promise, too—an opportunity to reimagine our futures, to renew and adapt our institutions and to craft new stories about who we are and what we value. This is the hopeful path forward, the path to follow if we wish to thrive in a world in flux.

 

Speakers:

Yu-Chieh Hsu (Human Development Report Office)

Yu-Chieh is a member of the Human Development Report Office (HDRO)’s statistics team, working on the measurement and evaluation of human development and gender equality. Her work focuses on the Human Development Report (HDR)’s Human Development Index (HDI) and gender-related composite indices and indicators. Much of her research has been centered on health, education, gender, and inequality. She joined the HDRO as a Statistics Postdoctoral Consultant in 2014. Before coming to UNDP, she was a Senior Research Analyst at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). During that time, she was jointly appointed as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.Yu-Chieh graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a PhD and MPhil in Public Policy and Management. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Statistics from Columbia University. Yu-Chieh’s PhD dissertation focused on demography and applied statistics. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Demography, Population Studies, and Journal of Health Economics.

 

Tasneem Mirza (United Nations Development Programme)

Tasneem Mirza is an Economist at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) where she served in several roles. Currently, she is working at the Human Development Report Office as a researcher and co-author of the Human Development Report and the Multidimensional Poverty Index Report. Tasneem also worked with the SDG Integration Team at UNDP supporting countries to prioritise and make progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific at UNDP providing policy and advisory services to country offices. Prior to UNDP, Tasneem worked at the Asian Development Bank HQ in Manila, where she initially joined as a Young Professional. There she supported projects and programs to promote trade and economic integration in South Asia and managed the Secretariat for South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation jointly with the Governments of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Bhutan. During her graduate school years Tasneem worked at the Center for Global Trade Analysis Projects (GTAP) at Purdue University where she also completed her PhD in Economics. At GTAP she supported the development of the GTAP model/database and studied the impacts of trade liberalization policies on employment, poverty, and income.

 

About The series:

The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to host a special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions. The global MPI offers a tool to make progress towards this goal.

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

The seminars are taking place online on Mondays at 11 a.m. ET. They are open to everyone focused on improving the lived experience of those who are deprived.

 

 

Hidden Wealth

Wednesday, April 28, 2021
12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
via Zoom

This was the 12th webinar of the “Facing Inequality” series, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual 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. This is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invite you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.

The “Facing Inequality” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP 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. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

In this webinar, Neil Cummins discussed his current research. Using individual level records of all wealth-at-death in England, 1892-1992, together with new estimates of the wealth-specific rate-of-return on wealth, he estimates a plausible minimum level of the amount of inherited wealth that is hidden. Elites conceal around 20% of their inheritance. Among dynasties, this hidden wealth, independent of declared wealth, predicts appearance in the Offshore Leaks Database of 2013-6, house values in 1999, and Oxbridge attendance, 1990-2016. Accounting for hidden wealth eliminates at least 40% of the observed decline of the top 10% wealth-share over the past century. Cummins finds 8,549 dynasties that are hiding £7.7 Billion.

Marina Gindelsky (Bureau of Economic Analysis) and Jonathan Rothbaum (U.S. Census Bureau) served as discussants. IIEP Co-Director James Foster will moderate.

About the speaker:

Neil Cummins is an Associate Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics, where he also received his PhD in 2009. His research themes are “life, love and death”; Neil uses Historical Big Data to answer fundamental questions about economics, demography and history. Previously he has published papers on the decline of fertility in Europe, the effects of bubonic plague in London, the dynamics of the Malthusian economy, in France, and the lifespans of European Elites since the 9th century. Together with Greg Clark, he has documented the glacial rate of social mobility over the past 1,000 years in Britain. Currently he is using the individual information of hundreds of millions of English, 1838 to today, to describe and characterise wealth inequality, the hidden wealth of the English elite, assortment in the marriage market, and ethnic assimilation in England. This research will add new micro-evidence, on a population scale, for the historical development of, and the causal forces creating, inequality in contemporary Britain. His methods combine economic logic and historical sources with big data analytics. His research papers are available at neilcummins.com.

About the discussants:

Picture of Marina GindelskyMarina Gindelsky is a Research Economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Office of the Chief Economist. Her current research focuses on income distributions, including the newly launched Distribution of Personal Income, which distributes U.S. macro national accounts totals to households, and participation in the OECD Expert Group on Disparities in a National Accounts Framework. She has a wide range of research interests in labor, urban and development economics, and a diverse set of ongoing and published projects including forecasting and measuring multidimensional inequality, analyzing historical urban growth in developing countries, assessing immigrant assimilation outcomes, and estimating housing using Zillow data. Before joining the BEA, she consulted at the World Bank and completed a Masters in International Economics and Finance from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in Economics from GW.

Picture of Jonathan RothbaumJonathan Rothbaum is a research economist in the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. He works on the integration of administrative data into the production of income, resource, and wellbeing statistics. His research has focused on nonresponse, measurement error, and data quality in income surveys and on using surveys to study intergenerational mobility in the United States. Prior to joining the Census Bureau in 2013, Rothbaum received his doctorate in economics from George Washington University.

 

About the moderator:

Picture of James FosterJames 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).

“Saving Indian Capitalism from its Capitalists” featuring Pranab Bardhan

Wednesday, December 9th, 2020

11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST

This was the fourth webinar in the “Envisioning India” series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. It is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invited you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.

The “Envisioning India” 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 Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. The fourth event, “Saving Indian Capitalism from Its Capitalists” featured Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Economics at University of California-Berkeley, with Jean Dreze of Ranchi University and Michael Walton of the Harvard Kennedy School as discussants. The discussion was moderated by Professor James Foster, with an introduction by Dr. Ajay Chhibber. 

There are often conflicts in the interests of capital, between the individual capitalist and the capitalist class as a whole, or between the short-term and long-term interests of capital. In this talk Prof. Bardhan will give examples of this from the Indian debates on labor reform, health policy, policy relating to vocational education, and from the adverse effects of the growing concentration of capital and wealth distribution.

The Indian Government recently enacted a major labor reform that has been widely acclaimed in the business press and by many reform-mongering economists. The attempt to bring some order to the tangled mess that the old labor laws were in is welcome, as is more ‘flexibility’ in labor employment, but as part of a package deal with a reasonable scheme of unemployment benefits for workers; instead the new laws make the already insecure life of workers even more insecure. Capitalists envisioning a longer horizon should be aware that an insecure, disgruntled and unstable labor force is a sure bet for low productivity. Health Policy and Vocational Education also show cases where a more prudent corporate sector would have encouraged serious alternatives; this will be elucidated in the talk.

More broadly, in India the data suggest that corporate concentration and inequality in wealth distribution are galloping, and this is bound to have a negative effect on overall productivity and innovations, which is against the  long-term interests of capitalism, even though it may give a boost to short-term earnings of individual capitalists. Compared to some other capitalist countries, India is more of a crony oligarchy that is cozy with the current regime, which is not conducive to a healthy development of capitalism in India. Nor is the rise in inequality that exacerbates demand deficiency, or the brazen dilution of environmental regulations that poisons and uproots community life.

About the Speakers: 

pranabPranab Bardhan is Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was educated at Presidency College, Kolkata and Cambridge University, England. He had been at the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics before joining Berkeley. He has been Visiting Professor/Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and London School of Economics. He held the Distinguished Fulbright Siena Chair at the University of Siena, Italy in 2008-9. He was the BP Centennial Professor at London School of Economics for 2010 and 2011. He got the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982.

He has done theoretical and field studies research on rural institutions in poor countries, on political economy of development policies, and on international trade. A part of his work is in the interdisciplinary area of economics, political science, and social anthropology. He was Chief Editor of the Journal of Development Economics for 1985-2003. He was the co-chair of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Network on the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance for 1996-2007.

He is the author of 16 books and editor of 14 other books, and author of more than 150 journal articles including in leading Economics journals (like American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, American Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Oxford Economic Papers, etc.).

He has also contributed essays to popular outlets like New York Times, Scientific American, Financial Times, Die Zeit, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Project Syndicate, Yale Global Online, Times of India, Economic Times, Business Standard, Bloomberg Quint, Hindustan Times, Ideas for India, Economic and Political Weekly, Indian Express, Ananda Bazar Patrika (in Bengali), etc. From 2018 he has started writing a periodic column for a New York-based blog, 3 Quarks Daily.

 

Picture of Jean DrezeJean Dreze studied Mathematical Economics at the University of Essex and did his Ph.D. at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. He has taught at the London School of Economics and the Delhi School of Economics, and is currently Visiting Professor at Ranchi University as well as Honorary Professor at the Delhi School of Economics. He has made wide-ranging contributions to development economics and public policy, with special reference to India. His research interests include rural development, social inequality, elementary education, child nutrition, health care and food security. Jean Drèze is co-author (with Amartya Sen) of Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989) and An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (Penguin, 2013)”, and also one of the co-authors of the Public Report on Basic Education in India, also known as “PROBE Report”.

 

michael_waltonMichael Walton is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he has taught since 2004 and is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi.  He also works with the non-profit IMAGO Global Grassroots whose goal is to take established grassroots organizations to the next level, working especially in India, Latin America and the United States.  In addition to core teaching in HKS’ MPA in International Development, he leads the signature on-line course on Policy Design and Delivery.  Michael was VKRV Rao Professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore in 1998 and 1999, and visiting professor at the Delhi School of Economics in 1998. Before academia, Michael worked for 20 years at the World Bank, including on Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and Zimbabwe. While there he led two and worked on two other World Development Reports (on Poverty in 1990 and 2000, on Labor in 1995, and Inequality in 2005). Book publications include co-edited volumes on Culture and Public Action, and No Growth without Equity? on Mexico.  Current research in India, includes work on Self Help Groups and on scaling up of social enterprises of the Self Employed Women’s Association.  Michael is also a dancer.  He has a B.A. in Philosophy and Economics and an M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University.

 

This event was sponsored with the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

IMF October 2020 World Economic Outlook

October 28, 2020

11:00 am – 12:30 pm

via WebEx

The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hosted a virtual discussion of the IMF’s October 2020 World Economic Outlook.

Agenda

11:00 – 11:05 a.m.     Welcoming Remarks:
James Foster and Jay Shambaugh, IIEP Co-Directors, George Washington University

11:05 – 11:35  a.m.     Chapter 1: Global Prospects and Policies 
Presenter:   Malhar Nabar, International Monetary Fund
Discussant: Claudia Sahm, SAHM Consulting

11:35 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.     Chapter 2: The Great Lockdown: Dissecting the Economic Effects 
Presenter:   Francesca Caselli, International Monetary Fund
Discussant: Tara Sinclair, George Washington University

12:00 – 12:25 p.m.     Chapter 3: Mitigating Climate Change: Growth-and-Distribution-Friendly Strategies
Presenters: Florence Jaumotte , International Monetary Fund 
Discussant: Ken Gillingham, Yale University

12:25 – 12:30 p.m.                 General Q&A and Concluding Remarks

 

Chapter 1: Global Prospects and Policies

The months after the release of the June 2020 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update have offered a glimpse of how difficult rekindling economic activity will be while the pandemic surges. During May and June, as many economies tentatively reopened from the Great Lockdown, the global economy started to climb from the depths to which it had plunged in April. But with the pandemic spreading and accelerating in places, many countries slowed reopening, and some are reinstating partial lockdowns. While the swift recovery in China has surprised on the upside, the global economy’s long ascent back to pre-pandemic levels of activity remains prone to setbacks.

Chapter 2: The Great Lockdown: Dissecting the Economic Effects

To contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and protect susceptible populations, most countries imposed stringent lockdown measures in the first half of 2020. Meanwhile, economic activity contracted dramatically on a global scale. This chapter aims to dissect the nature of the economic crisis in the first seven months of the pandemic. It finds that the adoption of lockdowns was an important factor in the recession, but voluntary social distancing in response to rising infections also contributed very substantially to the economic contraction. Therefore, although easing lockdowns can lead to a partial recovery, economic activity is likely to remain subdued until health risks abate.

Chapter 3: Mitigating Climate Change: Growth-and-Distributional-Friendly Strategies

Without further action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is on course to reach temperatures not seen in millions of years, with potentially catastrophic implications. The analysis in this chapter suggests that an initial green investment push combined with steadily rising carbon prices would deliver the needed emission reductions at reasonable transitional global output effects, putting the global economy on a stronger and more sustainable footing over the medium term.

Short and long-run distributional impacts of COVID-19 in Latin America

Monday, October 12, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

“Facing Inequality” is a webinar series hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual series focuses on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe. The series brings attention to aspects of inequality being made increasingly relevant by the current COVID-19 pandemic and associated crises. It is organized under the stewardship of IIEP 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. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

This was the eighth event in the facing inequality series. Our distinguished speakers, Nora Lustig and Guido Neidhöfer discussed their paper, “Short and long-run distributional impacts of COVID-19 in Latin America ” (Lustig, Neidhöfer and Tommasi). They simulate the short- and long-term distributional consequences of COVID-19 in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. They show that the short-term impact on income inequality and poverty can be very significant but that additional spending on social assistance has a large offsetting effect in Brazil and Argentina. The effect is much smaller in Colombia and nil in Mexico, where there has been no such expansion. To project the long-term consequences, they estimate the impact of the pandemic on human capital and its intergenerational persistence. Hereby, they use information on school lockdowns, educational mitigation policies, and account for educational losses related to parental job loss. Their findings show that in all four countries the impact is strongly asymmetric and affects particularly the human capital of the most vulnerable. Consequently, educational inequality and inequality of opportunity are expected to increase substantially, in spite of the mitigation policies.

 

About the Speakers:

Picture of Panelist Nora Lustig Nora Lustig is Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and the founding Director of the Commitment to    Equity Institute (CEQ) at Tulane University. She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the  Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Dialogue. Professor Lustig’s research focuses on economic development, inequality and social policies with emphasis on Latin America. Her recent publication Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty is a step-by-step guide to assessing the impact of taxation and social spending on inequality and poverty in developing countries. Prof. Lustig is a founding member and President Emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and was a co-director of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000, Attacking Poverty. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Inequality and is a member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality’s Executive Council. Prof. Lustig served on the Atkinson Commission on Poverty, the High-level Group on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress, and the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Picture of Panelist Guido Neidhöfer Guido Neidhöfer is an advanced researcher in the Labor Markets and Human Resources department at ZEW Mannheim, Germany, as well as a fellow at the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (CIDER), visiting scholar at the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS) of the National University of La Plata, and an associated researcher of the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Humano (CEDH) of the Universidad de San Andres in Argentina. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of economic inequality, social mobility, education and migration.

 

About the Discussants:

Picture of Professor Stephen. B. Kaplan Stephen B. Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.

Professor Kaplan joined the GWU faculty in the fall of 2010 after completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University and his Ph.D at Yale University. While at Yale, Kaplan also worked as a researcher for former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Prior to his doctoral studies, Professor Kaplan was a senior economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, writing extensively on developing country economics, global financial market developments, and emerging market crises from 1998 to 2003.

Picture of Michael Wolfson Dr. Michael C. Wolfson received his B.Sc with honours from University of Toronto jointly in mathematics, computer science and economics in 1971, and then a Ph.D. from Cambridge in economics in 1977.  He retired as Assistant Chief      Statistician, Analysis and Development (which included the Health Statistics program and the central R&D function) at Statistics Canada in 2009.  He was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modeling in the Faculty of      Medicine at the University of Ottawa for 2010-2017.  Prior to joining Statistics Canada, he held increasingly senior positions in the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Department of Finance, the Privy Council Office, the House of Commons, and the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office.  While a senior public servant, he was also a founding Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program in Population Health (1988-2003). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a member of the recently created Canadian Statistics Advisory Council.

No Going Back: Post Corona Reconstruction Program

Tuesday, September 29, 2020
11 am EDT
WebEx

We are pleased to invite you to a conversation with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh who created a model for combating poverty through microlending. He is also the founder of the Yunus Centre, a think tank for issues related to social business. He is the author of three books, including Banker to the Poor. The event will be moderated by Dr. James Foster, Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at the George Washington University. This event is jointly sponsored by IIEP, the Elliott School of International Affairs, the LEAP Initiative, and the George Washington University.

About the Speaker:
Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus is the father of both social business and microcredit, the founder of Grameen Bank, and of more than 50 other companies in Bangladesh. For his constant innovation and enterprise, Fortune magazine named Professor Yunus in March 2012 as “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time. In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to “create economic and social development from below.”

Dr. Yunus is the recipient of 61 honorary degrees from universities across 24 countries. He has received 136 awards from 33 countries including state honours from 10 countries. He is one of only seven individuals to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the United State Presidential Medal of Freedom and the United States Congressional Gold Medal. He has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Newsweek and Forbes magazine. In 2016 GWU awarded him the President’s Medal in recognition of his service.

 

About the Moderator:

Picture of James FosterJames 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 joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in Mexico. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu.

Professor Foster’s 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.

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement: Trading Up in the Era of COVID-19

 

Friday, October 23, 2020
9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. (EDT)
Via Webex

The ACFTA and Africa’s Economic Future
A conversation with Albert Muchanga, African Union Commissioner for Trade and Industry, on the road ahead for the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. If successful, the AfCTFA agreement will create the largest free trade area in the world, connecting 1.3 billion people across 55 countries, for a combined GDP of some $3.4 trillion. The COVID-19 crisis has generated new challenges but has made the success of the agreement–which offers a major opportunity to accelerate growth, increase exports and foreign direct investment, and potentially lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty–a matter of even greater urgency. Joining the conversation was be Florizelle Liser, president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa and former U.S. Trade Representative for Africa; and Anthony Carroll, Vice President of Manchester Trade, and a specialist in trade, investment, and development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

About the Speakers:

Albert Muchanga joined the African Union Commission as Commissioner for Trade and Industry in March 2017. In this position, he has spearheaded the AU’s efforts in driving the negotiations, conclusion and ratification of the AfCFTA agreement, which entered into force in May 2019. Ambassador Muchanga has extensive experience in the promotion of inter-governmental relations, engagement with the private sector and civil society as well as promotion of regional integration and cooperation as levers of sustainable development. He previously worked in the Zambian Civil Service and served as Zambia’s Ambassador to Brazil and Ethiopia, and Deputy Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Community.
 
 

Florizelle (Florie) Liser is the third President and CEO of CCA. Ms. Liser brings expertise and an extensive network on trade and Africa to her new role, along with a strong track record of working with the private sector to translate policy into action. She is the first woman to lead the Council since its founding in 1993.

Ms. Liser joined CCA from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where she was the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa since 2003. At USTR, she led trade and investment policy towards 49 sub-Saharan African nations and oversaw implementation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Previously, Ms. Liser served as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Industry, Market Access, and Telecommunications from 2000-2003. She also served as Senior Trade Policy Advisor in the Office of International Transportation and Trade at the Department of Transportation from 1987-2000; worked as a Director in USTR’s Office of GATT Affairs, and served as an Associate Fellow at the Overseas Development Council (ODC) from 1975-1980.

Currently, she is a member of the Advisory Council for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Advisory Committee and Sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee for the Export-Import Bank (EXIM), and a Board member with the Women in International Trade (WITT). Ms. Liser holds a M.A. in International Economics from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a B.A. in International Relations and Political Science from Dickinson College.

 

Tony Carroll is vice president of Manchester Trade, a Washington trade, development and business consulting firm. He is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University/SAIS and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has 35 years of business and development experience in Africa dating from his Peace Corps service in Botswana (1976-78). He specializes in investments that involve transferring new technologies and methodologies to Africa. He served as assistant general counsel to the Peace Corps, member of the advisory boards of EXIM Bank, OPIC and USTR and was a congressional nominee to the Board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. He currently serves as a director to the Acorus Fund in Hong Kong. He has degrees in economics and law from the University of Denver and an MAPA from the Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

 

 

 

Jennifer G. Cooke is director of the Institute for African Studies at The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. The Institute serves as central for research, scholarly discussion, and debate on issues relevant to Africa. She is a professor of practice in international affairs, teaching courses on U.S. Policy Toward Africa and Transnational Security Threats in Africa.

Cooke joined George Washington University in August 2018, after 18 years as director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she led research and analysis on political, economic, and security dynamics in Africa. While at CSIS, Cooke directed projects on a wide range of African issues, including on violent extremist organizations in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin, China’s growing role in Africa, democracy and elections in Nigeria, religion and state authority in Africa, “stress-testing” state stability in Africa, Africa’s changing energy landscape, and more. She is a frequent writer and lecturer on U.S.-Africa policy and has provided briefing, commentary, and testimony to the media, US Congress, AFRICOM leadership and the U.S. military.

She has traveled widely in Africa and has been an election observer in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, and Nigeria. As a teenager, she lived in Cote d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic. She holds an M.A. in African studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. in government, magna cum laude, from Harvard University.

 

Cosponsored by:

 

Fiscal Dominance: A Theory of Everything in India

Wednesday, September 9, 2020
10:00 am – 11:30 am EDT
WebEx

Read Prof. Acharya’s responses to our discussants here.

This was the first webinar in the “Envisioning India” series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. It is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invited you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.

The “Envisioning India” 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 Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. The first talk in the Envisioning India Series was “Fiscal Dominance: A Theory of Everything in India” and featured Viral V. Acharya of NYU-Stern.

He discussed the following: Financial stability is perhaps the most important prerequisite for stable growth. It is surprisingly also the most compromised one. Encouraging cheap credit and rapid balance-sheet growth in the financial sector is a temptation that many governments find hard to resist to register well on the short-run growth scorecard. Post 1991 reforms, India undertook an upward and onward march in economic progress for close to two decades. Since then, lack of financial stability has emerged as its Achilles’ heel. The reasons for this are many but a first and foremost contributor has been the increasing dominance of banking and financial sector regulation by the unyielding deficit situation of the consolidated government balance-sheet. Reining in this fiscal dominance requires not just a strengthening of the institutional framework of financial sector regulation but also the right balance between the role played by the government, the central bank, the markets, and the private sector in the economy.

 

About the Speaker:

Viral V. Acharya is the C.V. Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business (NYU-Stern) and an Academic Advisor to the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Philadelphia. Viral was a Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) during 23rd January 2017 to 23rd July 2019 in charge of Monetary Policy, Financial Markets, Financial Stability, and Research. His speeches while at the RBI will release in the end of July 2020 in the form of a book titled “Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India” (SAGE Publications India), with a new introductory chapter “Fiscal Dominance: A Theory of Everything in India”. Viral completed Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in 1995 and Ph.D. in Finance from NYU-Stern in 2001. Prior to joining Stern, he was at London Business School (2001-2008), the Academic Director of the Coller Institute of Private Equity at LBS (2007-09) and a Senior Houblon-Normal Research Fellow at the Bank of England (Summer 2008). Viral’s primary research interest is in theoretical and empirical analysis of systemic risk of the financial sector, its regulation and its genesis in government-induced distortions, an inquiry that cuts across several other strands of research – credit risk and liquidity risk, their interactions and agency-theoretic foundations, as well as their general equilibrium consequences. He has published articles in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Review of Finance, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and Financial Analysts Journal. He is currently associate editor of the Review of Corporate Finance Studies (RCFS, 2011-) and Review of Finance (2006-), and was an editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation (2009-12) and associate editor of the Journal of Finance (2011-14).

 

Discussants:

Liaquat Ahamed is the author of the critically acclaimed best-seller, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, about central bankers during the Great Depression of 1929-1932. The book won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2010 Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Gold Medal, and the 2009 Financial Times-Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award. Ahamed was a professional investment manager for twenty-five years. He has worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and the New York-based partnership of Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, where he served as chief executive. He is currently a director of the Putnam Funds. He is on the board of trustees of the Journal of Philosophy, the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference and a former trustee of the Brookings Institution and the New America Foundation. He has degrees in economics from Harvard and Cambridge.

Rakesh Mohan is one of India’s senior-most economic policymakers and an expert on central banking, monetary policy, infrastructure and urban affairs. Most recently he was executive director at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., representing India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan, and chairman, National Transport Development Policy Committee, Government of India, in the rank of a Minister of State. He is also a former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India. As deputy governor he was in charge of monetary policy, financial markets, economic research and statistics. In addition to serving in various posts for the Indian government, including representing India in a variety of international forums such as Basel and G20, Mohan has worked for the World Bank and headed prestigious research institutes. He is also Senior Advisor to the McKinsey Global Institute and Distinguished Fellow of Brookings India. Mohan has written extensively on urban economics, urban development, Indian economic policy reforms, monetary policy and central banking.

A Paradox of Morality: Using Games to Understand Group Moral Responsibility

Thursday, August 20, 2020
10:00 am – 11:30 am EDT
WebEx

This event is co-sponsored by the Elliott School, the Leadership, Ethics, and Practice (LEAP) Initiative, the GW Economics Department‘s Microeconomics Workshop, and the GW Philosophy Department.

The challenge of distributing moral responsibility when a group behaves badly occurs in many walks of life, from war and politics to corporate behavior. This has been discussed at length in economics, philosophy and law. This lecture will draw on moral philosophy and game theory to shed light on this topic, and demonstrate how we often make mistakes when attributing responsibility for collective behavior to individuals. The lecture will present real-life contexts where this problem arises and develop some new games which help us deal with the challenge. It will also present some open-ended questions for further research.

Event Schedule:

Welcome Remarks by IIEP Director James Foster and LEAP Director Christopher Kojm
Address by Prof. Kaushik Basu
Discussant Remarks by James Foster
Q&A moderated by James Foster

About the Speaker:

Kaushik Basu is Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. He is currently the President of the International Economic Association and a nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. He recently served as Chief Economist at the World Bank and before that was Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. During his four years at the Bank he co-taught a popular course in the Elliott School with James Foster, entitled Introduction to Game Theory and Strategic Thinking, which every week brought 150 GW students and many visitors from the Bank and other neighboring institutions to the Harry Harding Auditorium of the Elliott School. One class per term was held in Preston Auditorium of the World Bank. As one student commented “Being taught by Prof. Basu was definitely an only at GW moment!” He has now returned to Cornell but fondly remembers his time in DC – especially his weekly chats with GW students and his daily strolls across the GW campus from home to work in the Bank, and back again.

Professor Basu has research interests that span across development economics, welfare economics, game theory, industrial organization, and law. As a professor at the Delhi School of Economics, he founded the Centre for Development Economics in 1992 and served as its first Executive Director. Kaushik Basu holds a B.A. in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, and M.Sc. and PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics, and several honorary degrees, including doctorates from IIT Bombay, Fordham University New York, Bath University, England, and the University of Florence. His recent books are “An Economist in the Real World” and “The Republic of Beliefs.”

In this presentation, Professor Basu will be recounting his latest research which shows how simple insights from game theory can shed light on problems in moral philosophy. After the presentation, Professor Foster will provide a short commentary and then will moderate an extended session for Q&A from the audience.

Are Informal Workers Benefiting from Globalization? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in India

Tuesday, August 4, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

We were pleased to invite you to the webinar series “Facing Inequality”, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual series focuses on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe. The series brings attention to aspects of inequality being made increasingly relevant by the current COVID-19 pandemic and associated crises. The series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP 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. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

The seventh event, “Are Informal Workers Benefiting from Globalization? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in India” featured Dr. Nita Rudra of Georgetown University. The discussion focused on the following: Are citizens in the developing world convinced about the benefits of globalization? By leveraging their comparative advantage in low labor costs, economists predict once-poor citizens will be better off with open markets. Yet, surprisingly little rigorous research exists on if and how workers in developing countries actually experience the benefits of increasing trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), particularly in an era of rapidly expanding global supply chains. To answer this question, we focused on the largest cluster of low-wage laborers in developing countries, informal workers, and their experience with FDI. Using observational and experimental methods, we find that both formal and informal workers in India strongly approve of foreign investment. However, the latter are deeply skeptical that the benefits of FDI will ever trickle down to themselves or their future generations. India’s much smaller population of formal workers, by contrast, are confident that they have privileged access to coveted jobs in foreign firms – regardless of skill level- and social mobility prospects will improve. These findings provide new insights on (macro and micro-level) drivers of growing global inequalities, and call for caution amongst scholars, policymakers, the international business community, and all those who anticipate that globalization is lifting all boats.

About the Moderator:

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

About the Speaker:

Nita Rudra is a Professor of Government at Georgetown University. Her research interests include: the distributional impacts of trade and financial liberalization as they are mediated by politics and institutions; the influence of international organizations on policies in developing economies; the politics of trade agreements involving developing economies, and the causes and effects of democracy in globalizing developing nations. Her most critical works appear in the British Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization and International Studies Quarterly . Her most recent book with Cambridge University Press is entitled: Democracies in Peril: Taxation and Redistribution in Globalizing Economies. Her current projects analyze how and why widespread poverty persists in rapidly globalizing economies, the politics supporting/resisting changes to the informal sector, the anti-globalization backlash, and the politics of trade and trade agreements.

About the Discussants: 

Picture of Maggie ChenMaggie Chen is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. She has served as Director of GW’s Institute for International Economic Policy and worked as an economist in the research department of the World Bank and a consultant for the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Professor Chen’s research areas include multinational firms, international trade, and regional trade agreements. Her work has been published in academic journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of Development Economics. She is a co-editor of Economic Inquiry and an associate editor of Economic Modeling.

 

Picture of Deepa OllapallyDeepa Ollapally is a political scientist specializing in Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, and Asian regional and maritime security. She is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center. She also directs the Rising Powers Initiative, a major research program that tracks and analyzes foreign policy debates in aspiring powers of Asia and Eurasia. Dr. Ollapally is currently working on a funded book, Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indian Ocean Region, which assesses the shifting patterns of geopolitical influence by major powers in the region since 2005 and the drivers of these changes. She is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012) and The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge, 2008). Her most recent books are two edited volumes, Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia (Routledge, 2017), and Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Dr. Ollapally has received grants from the Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Asia Foundation for projects related to India and Asia. Previously, she was Associate Professor at Swarthmore College and has been a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London and at Columbia University. Dr. Ollapally also held senior positions in the policy world including the US Institute of Peace, Washington DC and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She is a frequent commentator in the media, including appearances on CNN, BBC, CBS, Diane Rehm Show and Reuters TV. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

IMF’s Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Economic Outlook (REO)

Thursday, July 23, 2020
11:00 am – 12:30 pm EDT
WebEx

Please join the Institute for International Economic Policy for a virtual discussion of the International Monetary Fund’s Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Economic Outlook

Schedule
11:00 – 11:05 a.m. Welcoming Remarks:

James Foster, George Washington University

Jennifer Cooke, IAFS Director, George Washington University

11:05 – 11:35  a.m. Chapter 1: Covid-19: An Unprecedented Threat to Development

Presenter: Andrew Tiffin John, Senior Economist, International Monetary Fund

Discussant: Louise Fox, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings, and on the Advisory Board of the G-7
Inclusive Growth Financing Forum, former USAID Chief Economist and World Bank official

11:40 – 12:05 p.m. Chapter 2: Adapting to Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

Presenter: Seung Mo Choi, Senior Economist, International Monetary Fund

Discussant: Stephen C. Smith, Chair, Economics Department, and Professor of Economics and International Affairs, George Washington University

12:05 – 12:30 p.m. Chapter 3: Digitalization in Sub-Saharan Africa


Presenters: Preya Sharma, Special Assistant to the Director, African Department, International Monetary Fund

Discussant: Esther Chibesa, Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions for SSA, Citigroup; and Michael Mutiga,
Managing Director and Head of Corporate Finance for SSA, Citigroup

12:30 p.m.  Concluding Remarks


Summary Chapter: A Cautious Reopening

The outlook for 2020 for sub-Saharan Africa is considerably worse than was anticipated in April and subject to much uncertainty. Economic activity this year is now projected to contract by some 3.2 percent, reflecting a weaker external environment and measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. Growth is projected to recover to 3.4 percent in 2021 subject to the continued gradual easing of restrictions that has started in recent weeks and, importantly, if the region avoids the same epidemic dynamics that have played out elsewhere. Africa’s authorities have acted swiftly to support the economy, but these efforts have been constrained by falling revenues and limited fiscal space. Regional policies should remain focused on safeguarding public health, supporting people and businesses hardest hit by the crisis, and facilitating the recovery. The region cannot tackle these challenges alone, and a coordinated effort by all development partners will be key.

 

Chapter 2: Adapting to Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is especially vulnerable to climate change, as it relies heavily on rain-fed agriculture and has limited resilience and coping mechanisms. On average, climate change could reduce GDP growth by at least 1 percentage point in the month a climate shock occurs. Improving access to finance and insurance, education, health, telecommunications, and physical infrastructure would be most effective in raising resilience. Ensuring food security and raising agricultural productivity in the face of intensifying weather shocks will require targeted social assistance, crop diversification, and improved irrigation. While these measures involve large public spending, they should be prioritized as they will be more cost-effective than frequent disaster relief. Limited fiscal space poses a challenge and means that development partners’ support will be critical.

 

Chapter 3: Digitalization in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is rapidly becoming digitally connected and closing gaps with the rest of the world. Digital solutions have taken on added importance as countries grapple with the unprecedented fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. While countries have leveraged digital solutions and policy responses, the connectivity gap between sub Saharan Africa and the rest of the world suggests that greater digital readiness could have allowed the region to do even more. Analysis conducted before the pandemic found that a one percentage point increase in internet penetration in the region can raise per capita growth by 0.1–0.4 percentage points. There does not appear to be an impact on overall employment, although the share of service sector jobs increases. Evidence suggests that digitalization can help reduce corruption, improve public sector accountability and efficiency, and support financial development. However, digitalization brings new risks (e.g., cybersecurity, business continuity) and challenges to macro-policy making (e.g., monetary policy transmission, changes to the tax base). As attention turns to policies for the recovery, the pandemic will likely serve to accelerate the digital transformation. Policies to enable and leverage greater connectivity include investing in complementary infrastructure and human capital; developing legislative and regulatory frameworks; and supervisory powers to ensure consumer protection and address risks.

Participants:

James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at the George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University and holds a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (Mexico). Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in México. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu. Foster regularly teaches introductory and doctoral courses on international development and each spring joins with Professor Basu in presenting an undergraduate course on Game Theory and Strategic Thinking, to which staff and Board members of the World Bank are also invited. Professor Foster is also Research Fellow at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Department of International Development, Oxford University, and a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) Working Group, Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, University of Chicago. He also previously served as an Advisory Board Member on the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty.

 

Jennifer CookeJennifer G. Cooke is director of the Institute for African Studies at The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. The Institute serves as central for research, scholarly discussion, and debate on issues relevant to Africa. She is a professor of practice in international affairs, teaching courses on U.S. Policy Toward Africa and Transnational Security Threats in Africa. Cooke joined George Washington University in August 2018, after 18 years as director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she led research and analysis on political, economic, and security dynamics in Africa. While at CSIS, Cooke directed projects on a wide range of African issues, including on violent extremist organizations in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin, China’s growing role in Africa, democracy and elections in Nigeria, religion and state authority in Africa, “stress-testing” state stability in Africa, Africa’s changing energy landscape, and more. She is a frequent writer and lecturer on U.S.-Africa policy and has provided briefing, commentary, and testimony to the media, US Congress, AFRICOM leadership and the U.S. military. She has traveled widely in Africa and has been an election observer in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, and Nigeria. As a teenager, she lived in Cote d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic. She holds an M.A. in African studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. in government, magna cum laude, from Harvard University.

 

Andrew TiffinAndrew Tiffin is a senior economist at the IMF, working in the regional studies division of the Fund’s African Department. He is also keenly involved in the effort to incorporate artificial intelligence/machine-learning techniques into the standard analytical toolkit of the Fund. Previously, he has worked on Middle Eastern countries, with a particular interest in refugee issues in Jordan and Lebanon, as well as numerous countries in Europe–he was part of the Italy team during the debt crisis of 2012, and part of the Russia team for the global financial crisis of 2008. Raised in Sydney, Andrew is an Australian national. He received his post-graduate training at Princeton University, where he obtained both a Ph.D. in economics and an M.P.A. in international relations. In addition to his work with the Fund, Andrew has held positions at the Reserve Bank of Australia, and with the Australian Government.

 

Louise Fox Louise Fox is an experienced development economist who specializes in strategies for employment creation, opportunity expansion, economic empowerment, and poverty reduction. She has advised governments in the developed and developing world, international organizations, and philanthropic and non-profit organizations on problem diagnosis, strategies for results, and outcome measurement. She held full-time positions at USAID (as Chief Economist) and at the World Bank. She is currently affiliated with the African Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution and the Blum Center for Developing Economies, University of California, Berkeley. She was previously affiliated with the Overseas Development Institute, where she led a major research project. Louise has published in the areas of inclusive growth, structural transformation, youth employment, the political economy of poverty reduction, gender and women’s economic empowerment, employment, labor markets, and labor regulation, pension reform, reform of child welfare systems, social protection, effective public expenditures in the social sectors, and female-headed households and child welfare. Her most recent book was Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, published by the World Bank in 2014.

 

Seung Mo Choi is a Senior Economist working on regional surveillance in the IMF’s African Department. He has worked on banking crises, financial market policies, climate change, low-income country issues, and capacity development, including in the IMF’s European Department and in the Institute for Capacity Development. His research has been published in economics and finance journals such as International Economic Review. Prior to joining the IMF, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Washington State University and obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in economics from Seoul National University.

 

Stephen C. SmithStephen C. Smith is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. In 2018 he was UNICEF Senior Fellow at the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, Florence, Italy. Smith received his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University and has been a Fulbright Research Scholar, a Jean Monnet Research Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings, a Fulbright Senior Specialist, a member of the Advisory Council of BRAC USA, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. He has twice served as Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU. Smith is the co-author with Michael Todaro of Economic Development (12th Edition, Pearson, 2014). He is also author of Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works (paperback edition Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and co-editor with Jennifer Brinkerhoff and Hildy Teegen of NGOs and the Millennium Development Goals: Citizen Action to Reduce Poverty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He is also author or coauthor of about 45 professional journal articles and many other publications. Smith’s recent research has focused on extreme poverty and strategies and programs to address it; and on the economics of adaptation and resilience to climate change in low-income countries, emphasizing autonomous adaptation by households and communities and its effects, and adaptation financing.

 

Preya SharmaPreya Sharma is a senior economist in the African Department of the IMF where she is Special Assistant to the Director. Her research has focused on structural transformation, the future of work, and digitalization in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as emerging market crises and development. Before joining the IMF she was the Head of Emerging Markets at HM Treasury in the UK. She holds a Masters in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.

 

Esther Chibesa Picture

Esther Chibesa has 20 years of diverse corporate banking experience, serving in various capacities for Citigroup in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. In her current role, Esther is driven by Africa’s promise, and seeks to realize the opportunities presented at the intersection of technology, regulatory evolution, and inclusive finance. She leads a team in the visioning and execution of a transaction services strategy that addresses the continent’s ongoing financial services transformation. She leads the execution and deployment of innovative treasury & trade finance solutions for multinational corporations, financial institutions and public sector organizations across Sub-Saharan Africa. In her various roles within the organization, she has championed the development of several groundbreaking solutions such as fully integrated tax & fiscal collections systems, receivables digitization solutions, automated mobile money channels and settlement processes, and enhanced, digitized trade and supply chain solutions. She is a past recipient of the prestigious Top 40 Women under 40 (Business Daily Kenya), past member of the Junior Achievement Zambia Board, is an alum of University of Botswana (First Class Honors), and holds an MBA from Heriot Watt Business School, Edinburgh University.

 

 

Webinar: Innovations in Digital Trade: The Sequel

Thursday July 16, 2020

11:00AM – 12:00PM EDT

via Zoom.us

The US and the UK have a long history of collaborating to create innovative trade agreements. Continuing discussions on innovations in digital trade and data governance, this webinar addresses how the two nations may negotiate the digital trade chapter of the proposed US/UK trade agreement. The UK’s approach may build on its draft negotiating language for its free trade agreement with the EU, while the US plans to include “state of the art” rules, including a ban on mandates to disclose source code and algorithms and “rules limiting platform liability for third-party content.” The event was held on Thursday, July 16. Our speakers included:

 

– Sabina Ciofu, Head of EU and Trade Policy, techUK

– Sam duPont, Deputy Director, Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative, German Marshall Fund (former Director, Digital Trade, Office of the US Trade Representative)

– Nigel Cory, Associate Director, Trade Policy, Information and Technology Innovation Foundation (and former Australian trade official)
 
Susan Aaronson, (moderator) Research Professor and Director of the Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub, also GWU Cross-Disciplinary Fellow and Senior Fellow at CIGI

This event is co-sponsored by Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub; UK Trade Policy Observatory; Internet Society: Greater Washington DC Chapter; George Washington Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER); Centre for International Governance Innovation; World Wide Web Foundation; and Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.

Central Banking in the Age of Inequality

Tuesday, July 28, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

Dr. Benjamin Braun of the Institute for Advanced Study

We are pleased to invite you to a new webinar series, “Facing Inequality”, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual series will focus on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe. The series will bring attention to aspects of inequality being made increasingly relevant by the current COVID-19 pandemic and associated crises.

The series is organized under the stewardship of the following IIEP Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, IIEP Faculty Affiliate and Assistant Professor of History Trevor Jackson and Aditi Sahasrabudde, PhD Candidate in the Department of Government at Cornell University. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

The sixth event, “Central Banking in the Age of Inequality,” will feature Dr. Benjamin Braun of the Institute for Advanced Study. Monetary policy during the so-called Great Moderation was defined by the trinity of price stability as the primary goal; central bank independence as the institutional arrangement; and short-term open market operations as the central bank’s sole instrument. The distributional consequences of monetary policy were considered negligible, and inequality was not a concern for central bankers. After more than a decade of ever-expanding central bank interventions and balance sheets, this narrow conception of monetary policy looks unlikely to return anytime soon. Focusing primarily on the European Central Bank, this talk will examine the political economy of central bank actions beyond conventional open market operations. This includes large-scale asset purchases as well as central bank forays into regulatory policy-making, notably in the areas of financial and labor market policies. The unequal distributional consequences of these actions raise important questions about central bank mandates, independence, and democratic accountability.

Aditi Sahasrabudde, PhD Candidate in the Department of Government at Cornell University (discussant) 

Trevor Jackson, IIEP Faculty Affiliate and Assistant Professor of History (discussant) 

How Should We Measure Multidimensional Inequality? A Philosopher’s Approach (with COVID applications)

Tuesday, July 14, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

We are pleased to invite you to a new webinar series, “Facing Inequality”, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual series will focus on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe. The series will bring attention to aspects of inequality being made increasingly relevant by the current COVID-19 pandemic and associated crises. The series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP 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. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

The fifth event, “How Should We Measure Multidimensional Inequality? A Philosopher’s Approach (with COVID applications)” will feature Dr. Kristi Olson of Bowdoin College. The discussion will focus on the following: When we measure multidimensional inequality, we must decide how much weight to give each dimension. The simple approach—giving each dimension equal weight—is almost certainly wrong, but what are the alternatives? This paper critiques some of the familiar approaches: subjective utility and the envy test. It then introduces a new approach. We take as the equal baseline those bundles that could be cooperatively distributed if everyone were free to choose from among all bundles. Using these bundles as the baseline, we can measure the extent of deviation from equality. The approach can be used to evaluate inequalities in, for example, the distribution of COVID risk and income.

 

About the Speakers:

Kristi Olson

Kristi A. Olson is an assistant professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College where she works on issues of distributive justice. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University under the supervision of Thomas Scanlon, Frances Kamm, and Amartya Sen. Her research has been published in such journals as Philosophy & Public Affairs, the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and Politics, Philosophy & Economics. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., she worked as a public interest lawyer.

 

Discussants 
Luis Felipe López-Calva, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, United Nations Development Programme
Jeffrey Brand, Associate Professor of Philosophy, the George Washington University

Imperfect Competition on the Cathedral Floor: Labourers in London 1672 to 1748

Tuesday, June 30, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

We are pleased to invite you to a new webinar series, “Facing Inequality”, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual series will focus on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe. The series will bring attention to aspects of inequality being made increasingly relevant by the current COVID-19 pandemic and associated crises. The series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP 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. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

The fourth event, “Imperfect Competition on the Cathedral Floor: Labourers in London 1672-1748” will feature Judy Stephenson and Patrick Wallis. In their paper, they present a new data set for the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century to explore the operation of the market for unskilled construction workers, the reference occupation for long run urban wage series, at one major building site in London. They find patterns of work distribution and pay which indicate characteristics of imperfect competition, most notably high worker and job flows alongside remarkable nominal wage rigidity, and evidence of an internal labour market alongside a much shorter and more fragile working year than has been previously found. The results suggest that wages, or labour’s share of income, may resist response to changes in productivity and labour supply and demand even in the long run, and highlight that labour markets created inequalities of experience, income and returns to work before modern institutions and firms. Professor Bryan Stuart will be a discussant.

About the Speakers:

Judy Stephenson

Judy Stephenson is a Professor of Construction Economics and Finance, and Economic History; a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; and a Departmental Tutor and Director of Teaching & Learning at Bartlett CPM. She is an economic historian of early modern London, its construction industry and associated markets. She researches construction, labour markets, institutions, firms, finance and industries in London between about 1600 and 1850 and is known for her work on London and English wages between 1650 and 1800. She has published on contracts and wages, and the boundaries of the firm before 1800.

Patrick Wallis

Patrick Wallis is a Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics. His research explores the economic, social and medical history of Britain and Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. His two main interests are in apprenticeship and human capital and the transformation of healthcare in early modern England. He has recently published two publications, including Access to the Trade: Monopoly and Mobility in European Craft Guilds in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Journal of Social History and Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press; November 2019).

About the Discussants:

Bryan Stuart is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 2017 and joined George Washington University in August 2017. His research interests include labor, public, and urban economics. Recent and current projects examine the effects of recessions on individuals and local areas, the effects of government policies on labor market outcomes, and the determinants and consequences of household location decisions.

Barry Chiswick is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in Economics with Distinction from Columbia University and joined George Washington University in 2011. He has held permanent and visiting appointments at UCLA, Columbia University, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Chicago, City University (New York), Hebrew University (Jerusalem), Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, and Ben-Gurion University. From 1973 to 1977, he was Senior Staff Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. In addition, he served as chairman of the American Statistical Association Census Advisory Committee and past president of the European Society for Population Economics. He is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics and Research in Economics of the Household and is on the editorial boards of four other academic journals. Since 2004, he has been the Program Director for Migration Studies at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany. 

Reckoning with Systemic Hazards

Thursday, June 25, 2020
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT
Zoom

From the pandemic to global social protests to economic and financial crises to the ever-more-evident impacts of climate upheaval, we are seeing in real time the consequences of decades of misguided mindsets about how systems operate. Managing systemic hazards will require a new mind-set and new principles for policy design and action.

In this webinar, IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma and his co-author ASU-Thunderbird School of Global Management professor Ann Florini will discuss why and how to develop policy and business solutions to these systemic fragilities, based on principles that foster resilience.

Just Governance: Lessons on Climate Change Justice from People in Poverty

Tuesday, June 16, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

We are pleased to invite you to the third webinar of the “Facing Inequality” series, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual 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. This is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invite you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.

The “Facing Inequality” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP 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. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics. 

 
The third event, “Just Governance: Lessons on Climate Change Justice from People in Poverty”, focuses on issues of climate change and inequality. Specifically, the discussion will prompt attendees to ask, as our world faces catastrophic climate change and related global injustice and oppression, what can those living in the poorest communities most vulnerable to its effects teach us about its causes? Drawing on interdisciplinary and collaborative research in southwestern Bangladesh, this talk shifts the paradigm of responsibility for climate change from the familiar terrain set out by law, economics, and moral philosophy focused on ‘commons’ problems and distributive inequalities to one centered on the lived experience of climate change. Those living with environmental degradation that is exacerbating with climate change and that foreshadows the effects of climate change elsewhere offer clarifying insight into the kinds of normative problems that climate change raises for both justice and governance. Relying on community fabric worn thin by the legacies of colonialism, foreign aid experiments, and exploitable social hierarchies, these communities’ experiences and reflections have implications for how political theorists and policy-influencers, especially large global philanthropists and investors, do and should attend to justice and governance in their work for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and survival.

The climate change crisis reveals the full gamut of humanity’s failure to govern itself in ways that do not exploit nature and humans. This talk identifies what those in poverty most urgently facing the consequences of this failure can teach those must urgently trying to address it. Richly informed by ethnographies, surveys, interviews, and project assessments in 26 communities of those most effected by climate change, the talk will point toward new normative approaches to climate justice and provide a refreshed ethical map to political efficacy.

About the Speaker:

Brooke Ackerly is a Professor of Political Science, Philosophy, and Law, and Affiliated Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies at Vanderbilt University and co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2018-2021)In her research, teaching, and collaborations, she works to clarify without simplifying the most pressing problems of global justice, including human rights and climate change. Using feminist methodologies, she integrates into her theoretical work empirical research on activism and the experiences of those affected by injustice (Grounded Normative Theory). See Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (Cambridge 2000), Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (Cambridge 2008), Doing Feminist Research with Jacqui True (Palgrave Macmillan 2010, second edition forthcoming), and most recently, Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice (Oxford University Press 2018), which won the APSA Victoria Schuck Award for the best book on women and politics.

She is currently working on the intersection of global economic, environmental, and gender justice in their material and epistemic dimensions. She teaches courses on justice, ethics and public policy, feminist theory, feminist research methods, human rights, contemporary political thought, and gender and the history of political thought. She is the winner of the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science Graduate Teaching Award and the Margaret Cuninggim Mentoring Prize. She is the founder of the Global Feminisms Collaborative, a group of scholars and activists developing ways to collaborate on applied research for social justice. She advises academics and donors on evaluation, methodology, and the ethics of research. She serves the profession through committees in her professional associations including the American Political Science Association (APSA), International Studies Association (ISA), and the European Consortium on Politics and Gender (ECPG). She currently serves on the APSA Committee for the Status of Women in the Profession. She has been a member of the editorial board for Politics and Gender (Journal of the APSA, Women and Politics Section) and is currently a member of the editorial boards of the Political Research QuarterlyJournal of Politics, and Politics, Gender and Identities.

IMF April 2020 World Economic Outlook

Thursday, June 11, 2020
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT
via Webex

Please join the Institute for International Economic Policy for a virtual discussion of the International Monetary Fund’s April 2020 World Economic Outlook.

Agenda

1:00 – 1:05 p.m.: Welcoming Remarks

James Foster, George Washington University 

1:05 – 1:35  p.m.: Chapter 1: Global Prospects and Policies 

Presenter: Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, International Monetary Fund

Discussant: Jason Furman, Harvard Kennedy School

1:40 – 2:05 p.m.: Chapter 2: Countering Future Recessions in Advanced Economies: Cyclical Polices in an Era of Low Rates and High Debt 

Presenter:  Wenjie Chen, International Monetary Fund

Discussant: Jay Shambaugh, George Washington University & Hamilton Project                

2:05 – 2:30 p.m.: Chapter 3: Dampening Global Financial Shocks in Emerging Markets: Can Macroprudential Regulation Help?             

Presenters: Katharina Bergant, International Monetary Fund

Niels-Jakob Hansen, International Monetary Fund

Discussant: Sunil Sharma, George Washington University

2:30 p.m.: Concluding Remarks            

Read the full World Economic Outlook here

The COVID-19 pandemic is inflicting high and rising human costs worldwide, and the necessary protection measures are severely impacting economic activity. As a result of the pandemic, the global economy is projected to contract sharply by –3 percent in 2020, much worse than during the 2008–09 financial crisis. In a baseline scenario–which assumes that the pandemic fades in the second half of 2020 and containment efforts can be gradually unwound—the global economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2021 as economic activity normalizes, helped by policy support. The risks for even more severe outcomes, however, are substantial. Effective policies are essential to forestall the possibility of worse outcomes, and the necessary measures to reduce contagion and protect lives are an important investment in long-term human and economic health. Because the economic fallout is acute in specific sectors, policymakers will need to implement substantial targeted fiscal, monetary, and financial market measures to support affected households and businesses domestically. And internationally, strong multilateral cooperation is essential to overcome the effects of the pandemic, including to help financially constrained countries facing twin health and funding shocks, and for channeling aid to countries with weak health care systems.
 
More than a decade after the global financial crisis, the world is struggling with the health and economic effects of a profound new crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Advanced economies entered this crisis with interest rates at historical lows and public debts, on average, higher than they had been over the past 60 years. They will come out from the crisis with even higher public debts. Drawing on analysis completed before the emergence of the pandemic, this chapter examines policymakers’ options to respond to adverse shocks and build resilience when rates are low and debts high.
 
As discussed in Chapter 1, the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting emerging markets through an unprecedented mix of domestic and external shocks whose combined effects are very hard to predict. Among these, emerging markets are confronting a sharp tightening in global financial conditions. Against this backdrop, this chapter asks whether, based on historical experience, countries that have adopted a more stringent level of macroprudential regulation—aimed at strengthening financial stability—are better placed to withstand the impact of global financial shocks on domestic macroeconomic conditions.

Can Internationally Accepted Principles Yield Trustworthy AI?

Thursday June 4, 2020

11:00AM – 12:00PM EDT

When you use spell-check, shop on Amazon, or find a movie on Netflix, you are using AI. While AI may improve our quality and standard of living, use of poorly designed AI may undermine human autonomy, reduce employment, and yield discriminatory outcomes.  To forestall such potential  negative spillovers, in 2019, the 37 members of the OECD (and 7 non-members) approved Principles on Artificial Intelligence, the first internationally accepted principles for AI. The principles include recommendations for policymakers and all stakeholders.  

The OECD is not the only body working on such principles. The members of the G-7 are also working on mutually agreed principles to govern trustworthy explainable AI. 

For this webinar, on Thursday June 4 at 11:00AM – Noon EDT, we will explore these principles, focusing in particular on those at the OECD, which our speakers helped design. We will discuss whether these principles can help all stakeholders. Moreover, we will examine whether such principles should evolve into an internationally shared rules-based system, given the wide diversity in national capacity to produce and govern AI. We will begin with a moderated discussion and then move on to your questions. Please join us.   Please note some of our speakers have changed. 

Speakers:

– Ryan Budish, Assistant Research Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University

– Adam Murray, U.S. diplomat in the Office of International Communications and Information Policy at the Department of State.

– Nicolas Miailhe, Founder and President, The Future Society

Women and the Web Webinar

When: Thursday May 28, 11AM EDT
Where: Zoom.us

While we can’t generalize, gender identity colors how many individuals experience the web. We write to invite you to our next webinar, where we will focus on women’s online experience. Our discussion will build on research done by the World Wide Web Foundation and US Agency for International Development, among others. The webinar, Women and the Web, will take place on Thursday May 28 at 11 AM EDT. We will discuss issues of access and participation, discrimination, bullying, other online issues, and potential remedies. We will begin with a moderated discussion and then move on to your questions. Please join us.

Speakers:
– Chenai Chair, Research Manager – Gender and Digital Rights, Web Foundation, Johannesburg, South Africa
– Revi Stirling, Director, US AID, WomenConnect Challenge

We are grateful to Dhanaraj Thakur, Research Director at Center for Democracy and Technology, who suggested this webinar. Until then, the DataGovHub team — Thomas Struett, James Nelson, and Susan Aaronson, wish you the best.
datagovhub.elliott.gwu.edu

This event is co-sponsored by Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub; Internet Society: Greater Washington DC Chapter; George Washington Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER); Centre for International Governance Innovation; World Wide Web Foundation; Center for New American Security; and Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.

Will Covid-19 Raise Inequality? Evidence from Past Epidemics and Crises

Tuesday, May 26, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

We are pleased to invite you to the second webinar of the “Facing Inequality” series, hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual 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. This is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invite you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.
 
The second event, “Will Covid-19 Raise Inequality? Evidence from Past Epidemics and Crises”, features Prakash Loungani and Jonathan D. Ostry. Major epidemics in this century, such as SARS and H1N1, have raised income inequality and disproportionately hurt employment prospects of people with low skills and education levels. What impacts will the COVID-19 pandemic have on inequality in the near term? And how will inequality evolve over the longer-term as governments act to mend the disruptions to globalization and unwind the build-up in their public debts? The talk will draw on the authors’ recent work (with Davide Furceri) on the distributional impacts of epidemics and their book on other drivers of inequality such as austerity and financial globalization. Discussants Lucia Rafanelli and Remi Jedwab will provide commentary from the perspectives of political science and economic history, respectively.
 
The “Facing Inequality” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP 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. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

About the Speakers:

Prakash Loungani is Assistant Director and Senior Personnel Manager in the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office. He is a co-author of Confronting Inequality: How Societies Can Choose Inclusive Growth (Columbia University Press, 2019). Previously, he headed the Development Macroeconomics Division in the IMF’s Research Department and was co-chair of the IMF’s Jobs and Growth working group from 2011-15. He is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey School of Business, a member of the Research Program in Forecasting at George Washington Univeristy, and Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a think-tank based in Rabat, Morocco.

Jonathan D. Ostry is Deputy Director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). His recent responsibilities include leading staff teams on capital account management and financial globalization issues; fiscal sustainability issues; and the nexus between income inequality and economic growth. Past positions include leading the division that produces the IMF’s flagship multilateral surveillance publication, the World Economic Outlook. He is the author of a number of books on international macro policy issues and numerous articles in scholarly journals. His most recent books include Taming the Tide of Capital Flows (MIT Press, 2017) and Confronting Inequality (Columbia University Press, 2018).

With James Foster, Lucia Rafanelli, Remi Jedwab, and Trevor Jackson

Co-sponsored by the GW Inequality Series

Elliott Experts Weigh in: The Global Economic System in the Age of Coronavirus

Thursday, May 7, 2020
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
via Zoom (EDT)

In this edition of the Elliott School’s Experts Weigh In Series, Professor Maggie Chen (George Washington University) discussed the global economic system in the age of coronavirus. Following the best year for stocks since 2019, coronavirus managed to fell the global market faster than during the Great Depression. More Americans have filed for unemployment than ever before and dozens of countries have already sought the assistance of the IMF. Professor Chen will provide an overview of the current state of play and the factors influencing the global economic situation, as well as offer thoughts on what recovery might look like.

 

Maggie Chen New HeadshotMaggie Xiaoyang Chen is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. She has worked as an economist in the research department of the World Bank and a consultant for the World Bank, the International Finance Cooperation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Congressional  Budget Office. She has served as Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University and is a co-editor of the Economic Inquiry and an associate editor of the Economic Modelling. Professor Chen’s research areas include multinational firms, international trade, and regional trade agreements. Her work has been published in academic journals such as the Review of Economics  and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of Development Economics. Professor Chen received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her B.A. in Economics from Beijing Normal University.

Data & Human Rights During the Pandemic

Thursday April 30 2020

11AM EDT

Zoom

While many analysts have focused on threats to online privacy, other human rights, including freedom of expression and access to information online, can also be affected. For example, some countries have not fully informed their citizens about public health risks, which can affect not only their citizens’ right to access information, but possibly their right to life. This webinar will examine the responsibilities of both firms and governments during this pandemic, with a particular focus to human rights online.

Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub’s speakers will be:

– Professor David Kaye, University of California, Irvine, Director, International Justice Clinic and UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression

– Dr. Courtney Radsch, Advocacy Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists and author of Cyberactivism and Citizen Journalism in Egypt

Our speakers will speak for 10 minutes each and then answer questions from the audience. Please email questions in advance to: datagovhub@gwu.edu

Due to the growing popularity of this webinar series, Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub is streamlining their registration process. Please register for each individual webinar in order to receive a Zoom link to attend. Please read on for details and the registration link for the next webinar. 

This event is co-sponsored by Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub; Internet Society: Greater Washington DC Chapter; Centre for International Governance Innovation; World Wide Web Foundation; and Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.

Webinar on Data Governance in Smart Cities

Thursday, April 9, 2020
11:00 am EST

Zoom

We are pleased to invite you to the second webinar hosted by The Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub. The webinars focus on current and emerging data governance issues. Seminar 2 will be on “Data Governance in Smart Cities” and will take place on April 9 at 11am EST. This event will be co-sponsored by the Internet Society, the World Wide Web Foundation, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and the Institute for International Economic Policy.

Although we often talk about data governance as a national or international issue, cities are on the front lines of dealing with a wide range of data governance issues from privacy to the regulation of AI. This webinar will give attendees a greater understanding of why they might want to learn more about how cities are trying to balance the costs and benefits of data-driven services.

The speakers will be Professor Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law, University of Ottawa Law School and Bianca Wylie, Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). They will address the following questions:

  • What is a smart city?
  • What kinds of rules must cities develop to determine what entities can own, utilize and monetize smart city data?
  • Should cities adopt special rules and considerations for personal data and human behavioral data?
  • Cities have bought into very complex data-driven systems, in the belief that data is “the solution.” Is it adding value and leading to more effective city management? What are the trade offs–e.g. energy efficiency vs. the loss of privacy

This event is co-sponsored by Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub; Internet Society: Greater Washington DC Chapter; Centre for International Governance Innovation; World Wide Web Foundation; and Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.

Webinar on E-Commerce at the WTO: What’s Going On?

Monday, March 30, 2020
11:00 am EST

Zoom

We were pleased to invite you to the first webinar hosted by The Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub in a series of free webinars on current and emerging data governance issues. As we “social distance,” we can simultaneously build a broader understanding of domestic and international data governance issues. The Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub is partnering with business associations such as the Computer and Communications Industry Association, civil society groups such as the Internet Society Washington DC and the World Wide Web Foundation, and other research organizations such as the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) to host these events. The webinars were conducted on Zoom and attendees were encouraged to ask questions of the speakers.

The inaugural seminar, which took place at 11am (EST) on March 30, 2020, was “E-Commerce at the WTO: What’s Going On?” The speaker was be Victor do Prado, Director, Council and Trade Negotiations Committee Division, WTO. The event was be co-organized with the Computer and Communications Industry Association and co-sponsored with the Institute for International Economic Policy. Mr. do Prado’s remarks covered the history, status and future of the talks, including the e-commerce moratorium. He spoke for 15 minutes and then the floor was opened to questions using Zoom’s raise-your-hand application. As a WTO official, Mr. do Prado spoke off the record. His remarks cannot be attributed but can be used on background. The press was welcome to attend and observe Chatham House rules.

Please contact James Nelson, Director of Communications and Strategy at the Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub, with any questions or suggestions for webinars jinelson@gwu.edu

This event is co-sponsored by Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub; Internet Society: Greater Washington DC Chapter; Centre for International Governance Innovation; World Wide Web Foundation; and Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.

Why Has Data Become a National Security Issue?

Thursday, April 16, 2020
11:00 am EDT

via Zoom

We are pleased to invite you to the third webinar hosted by The Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub. The webinars focus on current and emerging data governance issues. Seminar 3 will be on “Why has data become a national security issue?” and will take place on April 16 at 11am EDT. This event will be co-sponsored by the Internet Society, the World Wide Web Foundation, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the Center for a New American Security, the Institute for International Science & Technology Policy, GW Ciber, and the Institute for International Economic Policy. 

The speakers will be Carrie Cordero, Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow and General Counsel at the Center for a New American Security, Colonel Sarah Albrycht, Senior Military Fellow, CNAS and Colonel in the US Army, and Susan Aaronson, Hub Director and Senior Fellow, CIGI. While the conversation will be on the record, Colonel Abrycht’s views are her own, and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense or the U.S. government. Our moderator will be Aaron Shull, Managing Director and General Counsel at CIGI.   

For a quick overview of their perspectives, see 

Cordero – The National Security Imperative of Protecting User Data (CNAS, Apr. 24, 2019)

Albrycht – When the homefront becomes the (cyber) front line (Fifth Domain, Feb. 3, 2020)

Aaronson – Inadequate data protection: A threat to economic and national security (VoxEU, Feb. 5, 2020) (this is a summary of the full CIGI paper, available shortly.)

Cordero, Albrycht and Aaronson will speak for 7 minutes each and then answer questions from the audience. Please email questions in advance to: datagovhub@gwu.edu

A Zoom link will be sent out 24 hours prior to the webinar.

Please join us! 

This event is co-sponsored by Digital Trade & Data Governance Hub; Internet Society: Greater Washington DC Chapter; George Washington Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER); Centre for International Governance Innovation; World Wide Web Foundation; Center for New American Security; and Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.

The LEAP Initiative with Jorge Dajani, Chief Ethics Officer, World Bank

Tuesday, April 14th, 2020

12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

The event will be held virtually via Zoom Webinar with a Moderated Q&A.
 

Jorge Dajani is the Chief Ethics Officer of the World Bank Group. He will describe the organization and activities of the ethics function of the World Bank Group, and explain, more generally, the specificities of ethics functions in international public organizations. He will emphasize the importance of creating a value-based culture. He will conclude with examples of challenging questions that an ethics function needs to address and discuss these with the students.

Jorge Dajani’s Bio: 

Jorge Dajani became the Chief Ethics Officer of the World Bank Group on June 15, 2018.

Dajani brings to this role a deep knowledge of multilateral development banks, a proven track record in corporate strategy and development, and a reputation for effective stakeholder engagement.  He has been widely recognized for his management skills and stewardship of policies and procedures within international financial institutions with a focus on strategy, ethics and governance. 

Prior to this position, Mr. Dajani was Alternate Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund, a position he held since 2016. Previously, he served as Director General for Macroeconomic Analysis and International Finance at the Ministry of Economy of Spain. He has served on the Boards of Governors and Boards of Directors of several multilateral banks, including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, CAF-Development Bank of Latin America, and the African Development Bank. He was Spain’s chief negotiator for the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Green Climate Fund.  He has also been a member of the economic policy committees of the European Union and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

As Chief Ethics Officer, Mr. Dajani directs the Ethics and Business Conduct Department, which promotes the development and application of the highest ethical standards by staff members in the performance of their duties. He provides overall strategic leadership on ethics and business conduct, ensuring that ethics and the Bank Group’s values are fully incorporated into the strategy of the entire World Bank Group. He reports directly to the President of the World Bank Group.

Mr. Dajani, a Spanish national, has a Bachelor´s and a Master´s degree in Economics from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He speaks Spanish, English, French and Mandarin.

This event is co-sponsored by the Elliott School of International Affairs, and is a part of the Leadership, Ethics, and Practice (LEAP) Initiative.

 

“Intervention without Empire: The Ethics of Foreign Influence in a Neo-Colonial World” with Dr. Lucia Rafanelli

Monday, February 3, 2020
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Lindner Family Commons 602
The Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E St. NW

In a world filled with state-sanctioned oppression, many look to the international community to help secure justice when states fail or refuse to do so. But attempts by actors in one society to “promote justice” in another evoke the specter of colonialism. Indeed, even after formal decolonization, global politics bears potent markers of its imperial past. Current geopolitical power structures, embodied in both formal institutions and informal behavioral patterns, continue to empower people in the global West and North and disempower people in the global South, and what some refer to as the “Third World.” This raises the question: is there any way international actors can promote (their ideas of) justice around the world without reinforcing and perpetuating the objectionable power hierarchies associated with colonialism?

 

Dr. Rafanelli will argue there are ways for international actors to do so, but to meet this challenge, they must adhere to certain moral principles.

 

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Lucia Rafanelli’s work has been published in Political Studies (2019) and The Journal of Political Philosophy (2017). Her book project, Promoting Justice Across Borders: Political Theory for the New Global Politics, develops ethical standards for what she calls “reform intervention” – an expansive category encompassing any deliberate attempt to promote justice in another society. Her primary research interests include contemporary political theory, global justice, and theories of human rights. She also has philosophical interests in collective agency and collective personhood, philosophy of law, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. She received her Ph.D. in Politics (with a specialization in Political Theory) from Princeton University in 2018.

She is an Assistant Professor of Political Science & International Affairs at the George Washington University and is a former affiliate of the Princeton Dialogues on AI and Ethics program and a current affiliate of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University.

Read more about her here.

Agricultural Transformation and Farmers’ Expectations: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

12:30 pm -2.00pm

Monroe Hall, Seminar Room 321 

2115 G St NW, Washington, DC 20052

Why adoption rate of potentially pro table agricultural technologies in Africa remains low is still puzzling. This paper uses a randomized control trial to study Ugandan subsistence smallholders’ decisions to adopt cash crops. A unique way of eliciting farmers price and yield expectations allows us to investigate the role of farmers’ ex-ante beliefs about crop profitability on adoption decisions. We find that the provision of extension services increases oilseeds adoption by 15%, and farmers who underestimate oilseeds price at baseline are the most likely to adopt the new crops. The results suggest that changes in expectations drive agricultural technology take-up.

Paper: “Agricultural Transformation and Farmers’ Expectations: Experimental Evidence from Uganda” by Harounan Kazianga (Oklahoma State University)

Colonial Origins and Fertility: Can the Market Overcome History?

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

12:30 pm -2.00pm

Monroe Hall, Seminar Room 321

2115 G St NW, Washington, DC 20052

Can market incentives overcome the long-term impact of historical institutions? We address this question by focusing on the role of colonial reproductive laws in shaping fertility behavior in Africa. Exploiting the arbitrary division of ancestral ethnic homelands and the resulting discontinuity in institutions across the British-French colonial borders, we find that women in former British areas are more likely to delay sexual debut and marriage, and that they have fewer children. However, these effects disappear in areas with exogenously high market access, where the opportunity cost of childbearing appears to be high irrespective of colonizer identity. They are only present in areas with low market access, where economic opportunities are scarcer. This heterogeneous impact of colonial origins remarkably extends to various measures of local economic development and household welfare. Examining causal mechanisms, we find that the fertility effect of colonial origins is directly linked to colonial reproductive laws and their impact on the use of modern methods of birth control. We rule out the impact of British colonization on income and women’s human capital as the primary channels through which its fertility effect operates. By uncovering novel findings on the heterogeneous nature of the colonial origins of comparative fertility behavior and economic development, our analysis implies that appropriately designed economic incentives can overcome the bonds of historical determinism.
 

Paper: “Colonial Origins and Fertility: Can the Market Overcome History?” by Roland Pongou (University of Ottawa)

Data as a Development Issue Conference

Friday, January 31, 2020
9:00am-5:00pm
Elliott School of International Affairs
Linder Commons Room
1957 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052

Agenda

9:00am: Welcome Professor James Foster, Professor and Director, Institute for International Economic Policy and George Washington University

9:15am: Presentation by Vivien Foster, World Bank, Chief Economist for the Infrastructure Vice-Presidency

9:50am: Coffee Break

10:00am: Data and Development: How will data and the data-drive economy affect development?

  • Emmanuel F. LeTouze, Co-founder and Director, Data Pop

  • Vivian Ranson, Lead, Development Informatics Team, US Agency for International Development

  • Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief of Research and Development, Governance, The Governance Lab
  • Chair: Susan Aaronson, Research Professor and Director, Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub, George Washington University 

11:30am: Lunch & Keynote Presentation by Claire Melamed, CEO, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data

1:15pm: Governing Data for Development: What does good data governance look like? How can

development organizations best promote sound data practices?

  • Shaida Badiee, Managing Director, Open Data Watch

  • Agnieszka Rawa, Managing Director, Data Collaboratives for Local Impact, Millennium Challenge Corporation

  • Priya Vora, CEO, Future State

  • Chair: Michael Pisa, Policy Fellow, Center for Global Development

2:45pm: Coffee Break

3:00pm: A Global Framework for Inclusive Development: How can low- and middle-income countries participate on equal terms in a data-driven economy?

  • Burcu Kilic, Director, Digital Rights Program & Research Director, Public Citizen

  • Nanjala Nyabola, Writer, Humanitarian Advocate and Political
    Analyst

  • Sreekanth Mukku, Project Manager, Data Privacy in the Global South, Konnektiv Kollektiv

  • Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law
  • Chair: Sabine Muscat, Program Director, Technology and Digital Policy, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Washington, DC

4:30pm: Concluding remarks by Shantayanan Devarajan, Commissioner of the Pathways to Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development and Professor at Georgetown University

5:00pm: Conference Concludes

Conference Organizers
Susan Aaronson, Ph.D, George Washington University
Sebastian Duwe, Ph.D., Heinrich Boll Foundation, Washington DC
Michael Pisa, Center for Global Development, Washington DC
Sabine Weyand Heinrich Boll Foundation, Washington DC
Thanks to Kyle Renner and his staff for making the trains run on time, outreach, and food..

 

7th Annual Conference Washington Area Development Economics Symposium (WADES)

Friday, April 5, 2019
Center for Global Development
2055 L St NW, 5th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20036

The Washington Area Development Economics Symposium (WADES) is an annual research conference which highlights academic work from researchers at leading economics institutions in development economics in the Washington DC area. Researchers from George Washington University, University of Maryland, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Virginia, the World Bank, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), American University, George Mason University, and the Center for Global Development are all participants in the symposium.

Conference Organizers:
Remi Jedwab, George Washington University
Jessica Goldberg, University of Maryland
Molly Lipscomb, University of Virginia
Andrew Zeitlin, Georgetown University

Agenda

8:30 – 9:00: Registration

9:00 – 9:45: Faculty Presentation:

“The Sustainability of Early Education Interventions: Do Learning Gains and Improved Teacher Practices Persist?” Jacobus Cilliers (Georgetown University)

9:45 – 10:30: Graduate Student Presentation:

“The gains from market integration: Rural roads, and separability of production and consumption decisions in smallholder farms” Hundanol Kebede (University of Virginia), Discussant: Jessica Goldberg (University of Maryland)

10:30 – 10:45: Coffee Break

10:45 – 11:30: Graduate Student Presentation:

“Measuring External Validity” Hao Bo (University of Maryland), Discussant: Owen Ozier (World Bank)
11:30 – 12:15 Faculty presentation: “Repelling Rape: Foreign Direct Investment Empowers Women” Sheetal Sekhri (University of Virginia)

12:15 – 1:00: Lunch

1:00 – 1:45: Graduate Student Presentation:

“The Precocious Period: Menarche, Education and Marriage in India” Madhulika Khanna (Georgetown University), Discussant: Pamela Jakiela (Center for Global Development)

1:45 – 2:30: Graduate Student Presentation:

“The Silenced Women: An Investigation on Reporting of Violence Against Women” Abhilasha Sahay (George Washington University), Discussant: Kelly Jones (American University)

2:30 – 3:15: Faculty Presentation:

“Peer effects on Violence: Experimental Evidence in El Salvador” Lelys Dinarte (World Bank)

3:15 – 3:30: Coffee Break

3:30 – 4:15: Faculty Presentation:

“Including Males: Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health for Female Adolescents” Jennifer Muz (George Washington University)

4:15 – 5:00: Faculty Presentation:

“Persuasion by Populist Propaganda: Individual Level Evidence from the 2015 Argentine Ballotage” Sebastian Galiani (University of Maryland)

Mardi Dungey Memorial Research Conference

Mardi Dungey Memorial Research Conference
Friday, February 21, 2020
8:00 am – 5:30 pm (Conference)
5:30pm – 7:30 pm (Reception)
Lindner Commons, Suite 602
1957 E St NW
Washington, D.C. 20052

On behalf of the Institute for International Economic Policy, the Research Program on Forecasting, the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, University of Tasmania, and the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, you are cordially invited to the Mardi Dungey Memorial Research Conference on February 21, 2020. The event is named in honor of Mardi Dungey, Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Tasmania, Adjunct Professor and Program Director, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, ANU, Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Agenda

8:00am- 8:45am: Breakfast

8:45am – 9:10am

Introduction, Stephen Smith, Chair, Department of Economics and Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Institute for International Economic Policy, GWU

Opening Remarks, Tara Sinclair, George Washington University

9:10 – 9:30am: A Panel on Mardi Dungey’s Contributions

Vanessa Smith, University of York

Renee Fry-McKibbin, Australian National University

Warwick McKibbin, Australian National University

Chaired by: Renee Fry-McKibbin, Australian National University

9:30 – 10:30am

Econometrics of Option Pricing with Stochastic Volatility, Eric Renault, University of Warwick

Chaired by: Vance Martin, University of Melbourne

10:30 – 11:00am: Coffee Break

11:00 – 11:45am

Leaning Against the Wind: An Empirical Cost-Benefit Analysis, Gaston Gelos, International Monetary Fund

Chaired by: Tara Sinclair, George Washington University

11:45am – 12:30pm

The Gains from Catch-up for China and the U.S.: An Empirical Framework, Denise Osborn, University of Manchester

Chaired by: Simon van Norden, HEC Montréal, CIREQ & CIRANO

12:30 – 1:30pm: Lunch Break

1:30 – 2:30pm

Measurement of Factor Strength: Theory and Practice, Hashem Pesaran, Cambridge University

Chaired by: Nigel Ray, International Monetary Fund

2:30 – 2:45pm: Coffee Break

2:45 – 3:30pm

Inflation: Expectations, Structural Breaks, and Global Factors, Pierre Siklos, Wilfrid Laurier University

Chaired by: Gerald Dwyer, Clemson University

3:30 – 4:15pm

Multivariate Trend-Cycle-Seasonal Decomposition with Correlated Innovations, Jing Tian, University of Tasmania

Chaired by: Edda Claus, Wilfrid Laurier University

4:15 – 4:30pm: Coffee Break

4:30 – 5:15pm

The Center and the Periphery: Two Hundred Years of International Borrowing Cycles, Graciela Kaminsky, George Washington University

Chaired by: Brenda Gonzalez-Hermosillo, International Monetary Fund

5:15 – 5:30pm: Closing Remarks

Marty Robinson, Australian Treasury

Vladimir Volkov, University of Tasmania

Warwick McKibbin, Australian National University

Chaired by: Renee Fry-McKibbin, Australian National University

5:30 – 7:30pm: Reception

Seminar on Governing Finance for Sustainability

Wednesday, October 16th, 2019

9:30am-11:30am, Light Lunch: 11:30am-12:30pm

City View Room, 7th Floor

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E St NW, Washington, DC 20052

Synopsis

The nexus between financial governance, macroeconomic and financial stability, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability has become the subject of a growing debate among policymakers and market participants. Current beliefs on central banking and financial regulation are being questioned in the face of systemic challenges such as rising income inequality, growing market concentration, political polarization, accelerating climate change, and  disruptions from new financial technologies.  

Do the mandates and instruments of financial authorities remain fit for purpose? Do the objectives and operations of central banks and financial regulators, along with their independence and accountability, need revision to deal with the rapidly changing conditions of the 21st century? How do financial authorities ensure alignment with longer term policy goals? To what extent should social and environmental sustainability feature on their agendas?

The panel discussion will examine this important debate, including the following questions: 

  • What objectives should central banks and financial regulators pursue?
  • What reforms, if any, are required to reflect these objectives in mandates, instruments, and institutions?
  • What could be the pathways to reform?

Agenda

9.00 – 9.30 am Arrival of panelists and participants

9.30 – 9.45 am: Welcome and Introductory Remarks

James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Economics, and Director, Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP), Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University (GWU).

Sunil Sharma, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, IIEP, Elliott School, GWU, former Assistant Director, Research Department, IMF.

9.45 – 11.30 am: Panel Discussion and Q & A

Patrick Honohan, Honorary Professor of Economics, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; former Governor, Central Bank of Ireland.

Signe Krogstrup, Assistant Governor, Head of Economics and Monetary Policy, Danmarks Nationalbank; former Adviser, Research Department, IMF.

Gillian Tett, Chair, Editorial Board, and Editor-at-Large, US, The Financial Times. 

William White, Senior Fellow, C.D. Howe Institute, Canada; and former Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department, Bank for International Settlements.

Moderator: Alexander Barkawi, Director, Council on Economic Policies, Switzerland.

11.30 am – 12.30 pm: Light Lunch 

Organizing Committee: Alexander Barkawi (CEP), Kyle Renner (IIEP, GWU), Sunil Sharma (IIEP, GWU), Simon Zadek (UNDP).

Co-sponsored by the Council on Economic Policies

 

A New Push on Women’s Economic Empowerment: A High Level Ministerial Panel

Wednesday, October 16th, 2019
3:00pm- 4:15pm
City View Room, 7th Floor
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW Washington DC 20052

The aim of the high-level ministerial panel is to provide fresh impetus to the push for Women’s Economic Empowerment, bringing together thought leaders and policy practitioners in a frank discussion of what more can be done in the context of effective and inclusive development strategies. The panel will focus on concrete ways to remove constraints to women’s economic activity, enabling them to increase incomes and status, while at the same time contributing to more equitable economic growth.

Speakers include:

Hon. Arturo Herrera, Minister of Finance, Mexico.

Hon. Benigno Lopez, Minister of Finance, Paraguay.

Dr. Nancy Birdsall, Founder of the Center for Global Development and former Executive Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Moderated by: Prof. Danny Leipziger, Professor of International Business and International Affairs, George Washington University, Managing Director of the Growth Dialogue

This event is co-sponsored by the Growth Dialogue at the George Washington Business School and the Latin American and Hemispheric Studies M.A. Program and the Gender Equality in International Affairs Initiative.

Policy-making in a World of Greater Uncertainty

Wednesday, October 16, 2019
4:45 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

City View Room, 7th Floor
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW
Washington, D.C., 20052

The aim of the high-level panel is to consider the host of new economic challenges facing policymakers, as they face increased global uncertainty. In Emerging Market Economies in particular, trade wars, uncertain monetary stances, disruptive technologies, and increased nationalism have created new sets of policy problems for governments attempting to deal with their domestic concerns in an increasingly fractured global environment.

Speakers include: 

Hon. Ahmed Shide, Minister of Finance, Ethiopia.
Dr. Reza Moghadam, Vice Chairman, Morgan Stanley International.
Dr. Joaquim Levy, former Minister of Finance, Brazil.

Moderator: Dr.Danny Leipziger, Professor of International Business and International Affairs, George Washington University and Managing Director of the Growth Dialogue.

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Growth Dialogue at the George Washington School of Business and the Latin American and Hemispheric Studies M.A. program (LASP).

Ethics and Leadership: A discussion on ‘America First’ Foreign Policy with Patrick Fine

Monday, September 16th from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Elliott School of International Affairs
Conference Room 505
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052


Patrick C. Fine is the Chief Executive Officer of FHI 360, a nonprofit human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions.

Before joining FHI 360, Fine served as the Vice President for Compact Operations at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), where he helped to shape nontraditional approaches to U.S. bilateral assistance through his oversight of large-scale investment partnerships with 24 countries. From 2006 to 2010, he was Senior Vice President of the Global Learning Group at the Academy for Educational Development (AED).

As a career member of the Foreign Service at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Fine served as the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Africa Bureau and Mission Director in Afghanistan, where he led the rapid expansion of U.S. assistance for reconstruction and development…read more

The Power of Public Private Partnerships to Drive Gender Equality – SDG #5

Thursday, October 17th, 2019

4:00 pm – 5:30pm

Lisner Auditorium

800 21st St NW, Washington, DC 20052

This panel aims to build a greater understanding of the power of public-private partnership investments and their ability to impact and accelerate change in support of SDG #5.

The program will provide a forum for exchange on global best practices related to education, healthcare, access to capital/business and leadership.

Please also join us for a networking reception immediately following the panel session.

MODERATOR:
Ambassador Melanne Verveer
Co-founder Seneca Women

SPEAKERS:
Stephanie von Friedeburg
Chief Operating Officer, International Finance Corporation
Jane Fraser
CEO of Latin America, Citi
Julie Monaco
Global Head of Public Sector Coverage, Citi
Henriette Kolb
Manager, Gender Business Department, International Finance Corporation
Kathryn Kaufman
Managing Director for Global Women’s Initiatives, Overseas Private Investment Corporation
Jacqueline Caglia
Director of Communications and US Programs, Merck
Jill Miller
Chief Program and Administrative Officer, Girl Rising
Anna Falth
Senior Programme Manager of the WE EMPOWER – G7, UN Women

This event is co-sponsored by Citi and the International Finance Corporation. 

IMF October 2019 World Economic Outlook

Friday, November 1, 2019
9:30a.m. – 12:15p.m.
Lindner Family Commons (6th Floor)
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW Washington, DC 20052

Schedule of Events 

9:00 a.m. – Breakfast and Registration

9:30 a.m. – Opening Remarks
                     James Foster, Director, Institute for International Economic Policy,
                    GWU

9:45 a.m. – Chapter 1:Global Prospects and Policies
                     Presenter: Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti

10:15 a.m. – Coffee Break

10:30 a.m. – Chapter 2: Closer Together or Further Apart? Subnational Regional
                     Disparities and Adjustment in Advanced Economies

                     Presenter: Natalija Novta
                     Discussant: Ryan Nunn

Chapter 2 of the latest World Economic Outlook examines the rise in within-country regional disparities in economic performance across advanced economies.  The chapter explores how lagging regions differ from the rest, in terms of demographics, labor market outcomes, sectoral labor productivity and sectoral employment. It also explores how regions adjust to trade and technology shocks, comparing lagging to other regions.

11:15 a.m. – Coffee Break

11:30 a.m. – Chapter 3: Reigniting Growth in Emerging Market and Low-Income
                     Economies: What Role for Structural Reforms?

                     Presenter: Cian Ruane
                     Discussant: Danny Leipziger

The forthcoming IMF World Economic Outlook analytical chapter provides new evidence on the short-to-medium-term effects of reforms, based on a newly constructed database of reforms in domestic and external finance, trade, labor and product markets. The chapter discusses sources of cross-country heterogeneity in reform payoffs, including the role of governance and informality in mediating the gains from reforms, and  political economy issues related to reform implementation.

12:15 p.m. – Concluding Remarks

12:30 p.m. –  Lunch

 

The Venezuelan Migration Crisis: its Human and Economic Faces

Wednesday, November 13, 2019
5:30 p.m.- 7:00 p.m.* 
Linder Family Commons, Room 602
Elliot School of International Affairs
1957 E St NW, Washington, DC 20052

With a repressive regime and a collapsing economy driving millions of people out of Venezuela, the hemisphere is faced with the ramifications of this massive exodus. The tragic impact on the lives of Venezuelans living as refugees and migrants combined with the economic costs for the receiving countries makes this a crisis that is screaming for greater attention. This panel will examine these two different, yet overlapping, components by looking at the economic and human faces of this migration crisis. This discussion will be led by the following speakers:
 
Moderator/Commentator: Marie Price, Professor of Geography and International Affairs, George Washington University (GWU)
Oscar Valencia, Lead Specialist at the Fiscal Management Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB)
Francisco Quintana, Director of the Venezuelan Human Mobility Program and the Andean, North-American and Caribbean Region of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL)

This event is co-sponosored by the Latin American & Hemispheric Studies Program (LAHSP), the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP at GWU), the International Development Studies Program (IDS), and LATAM@GW.

Shared Values in U.S.- Taiwan Relations: Strengthening Democracy Through Open Governance

Tuesday, April 23, 2019
12 – 2 p.m.
Lindner Family Commons (6th Floor)
Elliott School of International Affairs – GWU
1957 E Street, NW

Open. Collective. Experimental. Sustainable. Taiwan’s first Digital Minister Audrey Tang will address what happens when people who grew up on the internet get their hands on the building blocks of government. As a self-described “conservative anarchist” and a so-called “white-hat hacker,” Minister Tang will show how she works with her team to channel greater combinations of intelligence into policy-making decisions and the delivery of public services. Minister Tang will also discuss “tech for good” and how Taiwan is “SDG

(Sustainable Development Goals) indexing everything.” This event is free and open to the public and the media. This event will be live streamed on the Sigur Center’s YouTube channel. During the moderated Q&A session, Minister Tang will use the Sli.do polling platform to include audiences on the internet in the discussion.

 

Agenda

12 – 12:05 p.m. Welcome Remarks by Sigur Center for Asian Studies Director Benjamin Hopkins

12:05 – 12:25 p.m. Keynote Address by Minister Audrey Tang

12:25 – 12:45 p.m. Commentary by Dr. Susan Aaronson and Dr. Scott White

12:45 – 1:15 p.m. Moderated Q&A Discussion by Dr. Deepa Ollapally

1:15 – 1:45 p.m. Conclusion and Lunch

IMF World Economic Outlook

Schedule

9:30 – 9:45  Opening Remarks: Maggie Chen, Director, Institute for International Economic Policy, George Washington University 
9:45 – 10:15 

Chapter 1: Global Prospects and Policies 

• Presenter: Malhar Nabar, Deputy Division Chief, WEO Division, Research Department, International Monetary Fund 

10:15 – 10:30  Coffee Break 
10:30 – 11:15 

Chapter 2: The Rise of Corporate Market Power and Its Macroeconomic Effects 

• Presenter: Romain Duval, Advisor to the Chief Economist, Research Department, International Monetary Fund

• Discussant: Zia Qureshi, Visiting Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institution

11:15 – 11:30  Coffee Break 
11:30 – 12:15 

Chapter 3: The Price of Capital Goods: A Driver of Investment Under Threat? 

• Presenter: Natalija Novta, Economist, WEO Division, Research Department, International Monetary Fund
• Discussant: Paulo Bastos, Senior Economist, DECTI, World Bank

12:15  Concluding Remarks

 

Maggie Chen

George Washington University 

Maggie Chen is a professor of economics and international affairs at The George Washington University. Her areas of research expertise include foreign direct investment, international trade, and regional trade agreements and her work has been published extensively in academic journals such as American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and Journal of International Economics. She has worked as an economist in the research department of the World Bank, a trade policy advisor at the U.S. Congressional Budget Office leading policy analysis on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and a consultant for various divisions of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation advising issues ranging from foreign direct investment and technical trade barriers to the Belt and Road Initiative and contributing to various World Bank flagship studies and the World Development Report. She is a co-editor of the Economic Inquiry. Professor Chen received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her B.A. in Economics from Beijing Normal University. 

Malhar Nabar 

International Monetary Fund 

Malhar Nabar is Deputy Division Chief in the World Economic Studies Division, where he is part of the core team that produces the WEO. In previous roles at the IMF, Malhar has covered China and Japan, and was Mission Chief to Hong Kong SAR. Prior to joining the IMF, Malhar taught at Wellesley College. His research interests are in investment and productivity growth, and he has published in various journals including Journal of Development Economics, Economic Inquiry, and Journal of Macroeconomics. He holds a PhD from Brown University and a BA from Oxford University. 

Romain Duval 

International Monetary Fund 

Romain Duval is an advisor to the Chief Economist in the IMF Research Department, where he also leads the Structural Reforms Unit. Previously he was the division chief for Regional Studies of the IMF Asia Pacific Department and led the Regional Economic Outlook. Prior to joining the Fund, he was the division chief for Structural Policies Surveillance at the OECD Economics Department, where he was also the editor of the flagship publication Going for Growth. He has published extensively in leading academic and policy-oriented journals on a wide range of topics including the economics and political economy of labor and product market regulations, growth, productivity, trade, monetary policy, equilibrium real exchange rates, and climate change economics. Over the years his research has also been profiled numerous times in leading global newspapers and magazines such as The Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. 

Zia Qureshi 

Brookings Institution 

Zia Qureshi is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He also advises and consults for several other organizations. His research and commentary cover a broad range of global economic issues, including a recent focus on how technology is reshaping the economic agenda. He has published widely on these issues. Prior to joining Brookings, he worked at the World Bank and the IMF for thirty-five years, holding several leadership positions, including serving as Director, Development Economics, at the Bank and as Executive Secretary of the Joint Bank-Fund Ministerial Development Committee. He represented the Bank at major international forums, including the G20. He led a number of Bank and Fund flagship publications. He holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. 

Natalija Novta 

International Monetary Fund 

Natalija Novta is an Economist at the IMF’s Research Department, where she works on the World Economic Outlook. She previously worked in the Western Hemisphere and the Fiscal Affairs Departments contributing to the Regional Economic Outlook and the Fiscal Monitor, respectively. Before joining the Fund, she worked at the Fiscal Council of Serbia, the Serbian Ministry of Finance, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. She holds a PhD in Economics from New York University, and a BA from Harvard University. Her research has focused on economic development, conflict, climate change, trade flows, and public sector employment. She has published at the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Conflict Research and International Tax and Public Finance. 

Paulo Bastos 

World Bank 

Paulo Bastos is a Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank in the Trade and International Integration Unit (DECTI). His research interests include the drivers of firm performance in export markets, links between globalization and technological change, and the distributional impacts of trade and FDI. His recent research exploits large administrative data sets to address these topics. He has published in scholarly journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics and International Journal of Industrial Organization. Prior to joining the World Bank, he held positions at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Commission and the University of Nottingham. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Nottingham and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Porto. 

Artificial Intelligence: What Can We Learn from Other Countries’ Approaches?

Friday, January 25, 2019

12:30pm to 2:00pm – Lunch will be provided

 

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

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are changing the way that we live, work and learn. In many countries, policymakers and business leaders recognize the transformational importance of AI and are developing policies to ensure that their country is competitive. To be competitive in AI requires not only significant capital, but also skills, research, an adequate supply of data, and effective governance policies. Hence, the United States has the “Artificial Intelligence for the American People” strategy. The EU has a Euros 20 billion AI investment strategy and the European AI Alliance. Canadian officials have drafted a Pan-Canadian AI Strategyand the Superclusters initiative. Germany has prepared a new plan, investments and a marketing strategy for AI services. In addition, Japan has created an initiative to fund collaborative AI projects between start-ups and large companies.  

This event will examine what policymakers can learn from these distinct government approaches. Should governments take the lead in AI investment and in prioritizing areas for research, development and commercialization? Or should the private sector lead with taxpayer investment in basic AI R & D and public-private partnerships where needed? Please join IIEP, the GWU Institute for International Science and Technology Policy, and the Software & Information Industry Association(SIIA) for a lunchtime discussion on these important issues.

Welcoming remarks: Susan Ariel Aaronson, Research Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University

Moderator: Carl Schonander, Senior Director, International Public Policy, SIIA

Confirmed Speakers:

Anthony J. Scriffignano, Ph.D., SVP / Chief Data Scientist, Dunn and Bradstreet
Jesse Spector, Policy Officer, Digital Economy; ICT, European Union
Dr. Tim Persons, Chief Scientist and Managing Director of the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics team of the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO)
Brad Wood, Senior Policy Advisor, Embassy of Canada
Masayuki Matsui, Counselor, Economic Section, Embassy of Japan

Organizers: Carl Schonander and Dr. Susan Ariel Aaronson

Professor Aaronson will provide an overview document on comparative advantage in AI to all attendees.

Event Summary

This well attended event entitled: “Artificial Intelligence: What Can be Learned from Other Countries Approaches?” can be viewed on youtube here.   Some takeaways included the reality that there are no meaningful estimates of the impact of AI on job creation – in fact, available data can be used to posit both that it contributes to job loss or gain; cybersecurity will include an AI component; and, the AI use skills deficiency in people capable of an inter-disciplinary approach to AI use is both real but also an opportunity.  Given that McKinsey (among other estimates of the economic impact of AI) estimates that AI could deliver up to 16% higher global GDP by 2030, understanding and taking advantage of this technology in a “human-centric” way will be crucial to building popular acceptance of the technology if countries and companies are going to be able to take full advantage of possible AI applications.   

 

Panelists

 

Japanese Embassy Economic Counselor Masayuki Matsui provided valuable information on the Japanese approach to AI development, especially in the international space.  Japan is hosting the G20 Ministerial Meeting on Trade and the Digital Economy on June 8-9, 2019, which will include discussions on AI.  The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) Chief Scientist and Managing Director, Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics Timothy M. Persons spoke (link needed) about the GAO’s work on Artificial Intelligence, as well as Administration policy in “Artificial Intelligence for the American People.”  The GAO has focused on AI’s impact for cybersecurity, automated vehicles, criminal justice and financial services.  Canadian Embassy Senior Policy Advisor Brad Wood focused on the AI ecosystem in Canada, especially efforts to foster research excellence, promote AI across sectors, enhance public trust in the technology, and spearhead international collaboration.  European Union Digital Policy Officer Jesse Spector spoke about the “four pillars” of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Policy, which includes policies around investment, data, skills and trust.  With respect to trust, the Digital Policy Officer noted the European Commission’s draft ethics guidelines on Artificial Intelligence developed by a multi-stakeholder High Level Expert Group (SIIA will submit a comment on those guidelines on February 1, 2019).    Dun and Bradstreet Senior Vice President and Chief Data Scientist Anthony J. Scriffignano talked  about how while there are many “head winds” propelling AI adoption, there are “tail winds,” including a serious skills gap, something all the panelists agreed was a serious problem. 

 

Some Takeaways

 

Cybersecurity and law enforcement in general will depend on smart applications of AI:  The “changing face of malfeasance,” as Anthony J. Scriffignano puts it, involves using AI to combat it.  The GAO considers that AI will be crucial in ensuring cybersecurity.  For instance, automated systems can help by identifying vulnerabilities; patching vulnerabilities; detecting attacks, and defending against active attacks.  In general, AI technologies are important to the SIIA member companies that are engaged in providing anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism, know-your-customer and other services important to law enforcement. 

 

There are no meaningful estimates of the impact of AI on net job creation or destruction:  There is a wide debate on the possible impact of AI on jobs.  And there are many reports with estimates based on seemingly large data sets and solid methodologies.  But the reality seems to be that available data can support the notion that AI leads to job loss and vice versa.  For instance, many reports are based on what computer scientists guess with respect to which tasks in which jobs can possibly be done technically by today’s machine learning programs.  So, for example, salad making could be programmed; therefore that part of the job of short order cooks is at risk and therefore there will be a need for fewer of them.  However, often the cost of using a robot to make that salad is not factored into the analysis, thereby not providing a realistic sense of whether an employer would want to use AI technologies to make the salad in the first place.     

 

There is a consensus that there is a need for skills development, especially in inter-disciplinary work: If there was one thing that all panelists agreed upon, other than than that AI will have a profound impact, it is that there is a growing need for skills development.  Interestingly, that does not mean that everybody needs to learn how to write code and become a computer programmer, although there is certainly a need for more coders and more computer programmers.  There is a reason why U.S. college students are demanding more courses in this field as the NYT recently reported.   What it does mean, particularly in this era of growing calls for “explainable AI” (itself a challenging concept), is that there will be an increasing need for individuals who know how to use AI technologies appropriately.  There was a discussion, for instance, about how AI is going to become an increasingly important part of the criminal justice system.  So that means that prosecutors and others have to work with professionals who are conversant with the technology and who also understand the laws and ethical considerations underpinning criminal justice work.  That is a different skill set from the work conducted by today’s IT professionals.    

 

Conclusion

 

There is a reason why AI dominated the conversation at the Davos World Economic Forum.  Although AI has experienced period of hype in the past, it seems like “this time it is different,” in terms of usable relatively near term potential AI applications in fields as different as drug discovery, criminal justice, cybersecurity, financial services, fraud prevention and many many other spaces.  SIIA will continue to work with academic institutions such as George Washington University in exploring the policy implications of AI developments.  We also hope to work with the U.S. Congress and international institutions in understanding better what kind of inter-disciplinary training is needed to prepare the professionals of tomorrow.   Given the U.S., Japanese, EU, and Canadian interest in skills development, this need for inter-disciplinary expertise could perhaps be supported at the June 8-9, 2019 G20 meeting in Japan. 

The Digital Revolution and the State: The Great Reversal

William H. Janeway

Senior Advisor and Managing Director, Warburg Pincus

Friday, October 12, 2018

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.


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

William H. Janeway is a Senior Advisor and Managing Director of Warburg Pincus.  He joined Warburg Pincus in 1988 and was responsible for building the information technology investment practice.  Previously, he was executive vice president and director at Eberstadt Fleming. Dr. Janeway is a director of Magnet Systems and O’Reilly Media. He is an Affiliated member of the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge University.

Dr. Janeway is a co-founder and member of the board of governors of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.  He is a member of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council and of the Field Institute for Research in the Mathematical Sciences and of the Advisory Board of the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance.  He is a member of the management committee of the Cambridge-INET Institute, University of Cambridge and a Member of the Board of Managers of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (CERF).  He is the author of Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy: Reconfiguring the Three-Player Game between Markets, Speculators, and the State, the 2nd edition of the book initially published by Cambridge University Press in November 2012.

Dr. Janeway received his doctorate in economics from Cambridge University where he was a Marshall Scholar. He was valedictorian of the class of 1965 at Princeton University.

William H Janeway

A Fresh Look at Digital Trade in North America

Susan Ariel Aaronson

Research Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University

Jessica Nicholson

Department of Commerce

A Fresh Look at Digital Trade in North America

Friday, December 1, 2017

12:00 to 2:00pm

 

 

Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

While TPP has the first binding language in its e-commerce chapter, NAFTA could be the first digital economy trade agreement designed to facilitate data-driven sectors such as the cloud, AI, and the Internet of Things. The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) and the Latin American and Hemispheric Studies Program (LAHS) at the George Washington University as well as the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) present a free event on the data-driven economy in North America. To read Susan Ariel Aaronson’s paper, please click here.

Agenda
Panel 1: Measuring the North American Digital Economy
  • Speaker: Jessica Nicholson, Department of Commerce
  • Commentary by:
    • Martha Lawless, USITC
    • Jordan Khan, Embassy of Canada
    • Nicholas Bramble, Google
  • Moderator: Carl Schonander, Software & Information Industry Association
Panel 2: A Comprehensive Approach to Digital Trade in NAFTA 2.0
  • Speaker: Professor Susan Ariel Aaronson
  • Commentary by:
    • Dan Ciuriak, Centre for International Governance Innovation
    • Guillermo Malpica Soto, Embassy of Mexico
  • Moderator: Dan Ikenson, Cato Institute

For more information, please contact Kyle Renner at iiep@gwu.edu or 202-994-5320.

EGAP Evidence Summit on Elections and Political Accountability

Friday, June 9, 2017

9:30am to 3:300pm

 

Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

You’re invited to an Evidence Summit on Elections and Political Accountability, sponsored by the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP)research network. The event will take place on Friday, June 9, 2017 from 9:30am – 3:30pm at The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. Lunch will be provided for free; please RSVP using the free ticket option. (If you work for an organization that prevents you from accepting a free lunch, we have provided an at-cost ticket option that allows you to pay for your meal.)

EGAP researchers will be on hand to showcase six new field experimental studies that were carried out in coordination, all of which examine the consequences of making voters more informed about their politicians. EGAP will also present the integrated results from the six studies. This research is part of EGAP’s Metaketa Initiative, which is a new grant-making model designed to foster innovation and cumulative learning through simultaneous replication or research across multiple contexts. In addition, EGAP will use the event to study the potential utility of research for policymakers and practitioners.

Please RSVP, save the date on your calendars, and forward this notification to your colleagues!

Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Since 2002, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University has collaborated widely with academics, policymakers and practitioners around the world to advance knowledge about the conditions for and interactions among democracy, broad-based economic development, human rights, and the rule of law.

Evidence in Governance and Politics

Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) is a cross-disciplinary network of researchers and practitioners united by a focus on experimental research and dedicated to generating and disseminating rigorous evidence on topics of governance, politics, and institutions. EGAP seeks to forge partnerships between researchers and practitioners committed to understanding the politics of global development, advancing evidence-based policy making, and improving the quality of empirical research in the social sciences.

New Avenues to Govern Cross-Border Information Flows

Monday, November 14th, 2016

12:00 to 2:00pm

 

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

Cross-border data flows are the life-blood of an integrated world economy.  They support manufacturing and service supply chains and enable the flow of diverse and innovative goods and services to customers all over the world. But domestic policies must allow for these flows.  In the last several years, we have seen increasing attempts to close down the flow of information across borders – through requirements for domestic location of computer facilities and explicit bans on the transfer of data into or out of countries.  While domestic policy space must be large enough to permit legitimate regulations such as privacy and consumer protection, it should also ensure that these measures are no more restrictive than necessary to accomplish these purposes. The TPP was the first trade agreement to include binding provisions regarding these flows, but it has not yet been approved by any government.  But there are additional avenues to discuss cross-border data flows. They include:

  •  the Trade in Services Agreement being negotiated at the WTO
  • the WTO E-Commerce working group
  • bilateral discussions, discussions and resolutions at meetings of international economic leaders such as the G7 and the G20.  Herein we focus on what’s happening at the multilateral level at the WTO.

Join us for a discussion with a panel of experts and advocates on these avenues.

The Institute for International Economic Policy, along with the sponsorship of the Software and Information Industry Association, is hosting a panel discussion on November 14 as part of our continuing work on digital trade.  You are invited to bring your own lunch to enjoy during the panel.

Speakers will include:

  • Sam Dupont,  Director for Digital Trade, USTR
  • Michael Joseph FerrantinoWorld Bank
  • Carl SchonanderSenior Director International Policy, SIIA
  • Deborah JamesDirector, International Programs, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Moderator: Research Professor and Cross-disciplinary Fellow Susan AaronsonPh.D. GWU

Cosponsored by the Washington D.C. Chapter of the Internet Society

Internet Governance Forum USA 2015

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Marvin Center Grand Ballroom
800 21st Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

The IGF-USA 2015 was a full-day conference that brought together thought leaders from across the Internet multi-stakeholder community to highlight and engage in discussions about key issues that will drive the future of the Internet.

Topics

  • Encryption, Backdoors, Security and Privacy
  • The Politics of Innovation: Can the Internet Spur Too Much Disruption?
  • Truth and Trolls: Dealing with Toxic Speech while Protecting Free Speech Online
  • The state of digital rights and Free Expression Online
  • Critical Internet Resources: An update on progress and challenges remaining for the transition of IANA stewardship and enhancing ICANN accountability.
  • Enhancing Multistakeholder Cooperation
  • Internet of Things
  • The Digital Trade Imbalance: There is an imbalance in trade strategies between the US and many of its trade partners
  • Connecting the Next Billion

Confirmed keynotes

  • Catherine A. Novelli – Under Secretary of State & Senior Coordinator for International Information Technology Diplomacy
  • Ambassador Daniel A. Sepulveda – Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy
  • Lawrence E. Strickling – Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
  • Vint Cerf – Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
  • Steve Crocker – Chairman of the Board of Directors, ICANN
  • Kathryn Brown – President and CEO, The Internet Society

For more information, please contact Kyle Renner at iiep@gwu.edu or 202-994-5320.

Co-Sponsored by:

ARIN
ICANN
Public Interest Registry
Microsoft
NetChoice
Software and Information Industry Association

Disney
The Internet Society
Verisign
Internet Infrastructure Coalition
Verizon
Wiley Rein

Videos from the Forum

Welcome Remarks

 

Keynote by Larry Strickling

Keynote Conversation with Vinton Cerf and Steve Crocker, moderated by Nancy Scola

Breakout Session – Critical Internet Resources: An update on progress and challenges remaining for the transition of IANA stewardship and enhancing ICANN accountability

Keynote remarks by Julie Zoller – Deputy Coordinator, International Communications and Information Policy, U.S. Department of State

Keynote remarks by Kathryn Brown – President and CEO, The Internet Society

Breakout Session – Maintaining Trust Online: Cybersecurity, Encryption, Backdoors, and Privacy

Keynote Session – “Connecting the World”

Plenary – Connecting the Next Billion

Closing Plenary – Breakout Summaries

The Future of the Internet in the Wake of Charlie Hebdo and Increased Government Surveillance Online

Monday, May 18, 2015

Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

Governments have a special responsibility among stakeholders to make the Internet secure. However, the Snowden revelations revealed that many governments, including the US, use the Internet to monitor, spy on and attack other governments, organizations, individuals and businesses. In March, we also learned that that China is using the Great Cannon, a new malware tool to censor information. These revelations have stimulated a global backlash against pervasive Government data collection, Internet surveillance, and government use of malware. Netizens are increasingly worried about Internet stability and security.

Our panel will discuss how increasing surveillance and use of malware could impact the future of the Internet, including:

  • Increased pressure from law enforcement for backdoors to encryption;
  • Increased calls for data localization (as in France);
  • International pressure influencing the IANA transfer;
  • Less legal emphasis/protections on privacy at national levels;
  • Less trust in government policies and strategies to maintain Internet stability
  • The threat of Internet fragmentation.

Panelists:

Bruce Schneier, Security Technologist and Author. Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a “security guru” by The Economist. He is the author of 12 books – including his latest best-seller Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Survive – as well as hundreds of articles and essays, and many more academic papers. His influential newsletter “Crypto-Gram,” and his blog “Schneier on Security,” are read by over 250,000 people. He has testified before Congress, is a frequent guest on television and radio, served on several government technical committees, and is regularly quoted in the press.

Chris Riley, Senior Policy Manager, Mozilla. M. Chris Riley is a Senior Policy Engineer at Mozilla, working to advance the open Internet and Web through public policy analysis and advocacy, strategic planning, coalition building, and community engagement. Prior to joining Mozilla, Chris worked as a program manager at the U.S. Department of State on Internet freedom, a policy counsel with the non-profit public interest organization Free Press, and an attorney-advisor at the Federal Communications Commission. Chris holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He has published scholarship on topics including innovation policy, cognitive framing, graph drawing, and distributed load balancing.

Organizers:

This event is organized by Dr. Susan Aaronson and Kyle Renner of the Institute for International Economic Policy and David Vyorst of the Greater Washington DC Chapter of the Internet Society and is part of a larger seminar series. We are grateful to an anonymous donor for their support of these seminars, and would also like to thank our co-sponsors at the Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute.

The DC Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-DC) aims to build a better internet for the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia community. The chapter strives to promote open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of people worldwide. ISOC-DC brings together individuals from within the DC area, as well as abroad, to engage in events, discussions, and information exchanges to advance these goals.

For more information, please contact Kyle Renner at iiep@gwu.edu or 202-994-5320.

Cosponsored by:

Working for All? New Ideas and Innovative Strategies to Enhance Economic and Social Benefits in Trade Agreements

Thursday, May 14, 2015

9:00am to 5:00pm

 

Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

How Can TTIP benefit workers and promote employment? Read Professor Susan Aaronson’s latest paper.

The US, Canada, and Mexico agreed to the first labor rights provisions in NAFTA, which went into force in 1993. Some 22 years later, the bulk of the world’s economies, from Albania to Zimbabwe, participate in a trade arrangement with labor rights provisions, whether through a free trade agreement, a preferential trade arrangement, or in an investment agreement. Since 2008, 41 out of 93 new trade agreements included labor provisions and over 60 per cent of the trade agreements concluded in 2013 and 2014 included labor provisions.

But there is a lot that we do not know about these agreements. Scholars, policymakers, labor rights activists, and the business community do not know if these provisions are effective in improving working conditions. Moreover, in instances where they have been effective it is unclear why and what has been the role of the different stakeholders?

How can trade agreements promote employment, enhance the link between economic and social benefits and achieve sustainable development? How can the interconnectedness between economic, social and environmental objectives be protected and promoted? Which complementary policies are key to inclusive growth and help in capitalizing opportunities from trade openness?

For more information, please contact Kyle Renner at iiep@gwu.edu or 202-994-5320.

 

Co-Sponsored by:

View the Schedule

Conference Agenda

8:30 – 9:00 – Registration and Breakfast

9:00 – 9:30 – Welcome and Opening Remarks

  • Dr. Jay Shambagh (Director Institute for International Economic Policy)
  • Nancy Donaldson (ILO Washington DC)
  • Carol Pier (Deputy Undersecretary, International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor)

9:30 – 11:00 – Session I: Decent work for all? How to bridge the gap between the social and economic dimensions of trade agreements?

  • Moderator: Marva Corley (ILO)
  • Rudi Delarue (European Commission)
  • Lance Compa (ILR, Cornell University)

11:00 – 11:15 – Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:45 – Session II: Roundtable: To ensure that trade agreements work for all, can we achieve coherence within and among trade agreements?

  • Moderator: Anil Verma (University of Toronto)
  • Pierre Bouchard (Bilateral and Regional Labor Affairs, Canada)
  • Silvia Formentini (Trade and Sustainable Development, EC)
  • Kevin Kolben (Rutgers University)
  • Pablo Lazo Grandi (Permanent Mission of Chile to UN in Geneva)

12:45 – 2:00 – Lunch

2:00 – 3:30 – Session III: What evidence do we have that trade agreements are working for all? How do we measure the effectiveness of labor provisions in FTAs?

  • Moderator: Jan Van Hove (University of Leuven)
  • Raymond Robertson (Macalester College)
  • Bill Gibson (University of Vermont)
  • Werner Raza (Austrian Foundation of Development Research)

3:30 – 3:45 – Coffee Break

3:45 – 5:15 – Session IV: Roundtable: What innovative ideas with regard to the promotion of labour rights and improvement of working conditions can be explored to ensure that trade agreements do work for all?

  • Moderator: Susan Aaronson (Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU)
  • Ms. Xiaoyan Qian (Chinese Embassy, Washington DC)
  • Tonia Novitz (University of Bristol)
  • Thomas Zielke (RGIT)
  • Ariel Meyerstein (USCIB)
  • Celeste Drake (AFL-CIO)

5:15 – 5:30 – Closing Remarks

The Future of the Global Internet for Business and Entrepreneurs

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

4:00 to 6:00pm

 

601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW (North Building, Suite 900)
Note: The entrance to the building is on Indiana Avenue, next to Fiola restaurant.

 

Please join the Global Innovation Forum, on December 2 for a discussion about the future of the global Internet in partnership with Cisco, the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University and Tech Cocktail. The forum will feature a conversation with:

Shawn Chang, Former Democratic Chief Counsel, Communications and Technology, House Energy and Commerce Committee
Gordon Goldstein, Managing Director and Head of External Affairs, SilverLake
Christopher Mondini, Vice President, ICANN Global Stakeholder Engagement for North America and Global Business
Robert Pepper, Vice President, Technology Policy, Cisco
John Williams, General Counsel, U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation

Discussants will address —

  • The impact of the global Internet on businesses and startups
  • How the Internet governance debate can affect access to the global marketplace
  • The role of ICANN in Internet governance
  • The conversation about  the open Internet and Internet governance issues in Congress

An informal networking reception will follow the discussion.

Human Rights, Accountability, and Internet Governance: A Panel Discussion

Read the event summary here

Monday, November 17, 2014

12:30 to 7:00pm – Reception to Follow

 

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

Change is coming to Internet governance. But change is scary. It involves compromises, and may yield a less accountable approach. Moreover, the US Government wants any changes to protect human rights, Internet openness and stability, and the multistakeholder model. This free luncheon seminar considers how recent proposed changes in Internet governance will affect human rights online and how Internet governance institutions and processes might be made more accountable to netizens.

Sizing Up the Digital Economy: A Panel Discussing the Digital Economy and International Trade

Monday, April 23, 2018

5:30 to 7:00pm – Reception to Follow

 

Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Commons, 6th floor
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
The Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University and the Greater Washington DC Chapter of the Internet Society invite you to a panel analyzing the new report of the US International Trade Commission (ITC) on the “digital economy.” The Senate Finance Committee requested that ITC analyze the economic impact of the digital economy. They also requested that ITC examine digital protectionism around the world.

The ITC found that “digital trade, through the combined effects of the Internet in enhancing productivity and lowering international trade costs in certain digitally intensive industries, has resulted in increase in U.S. gross domestic product of some four percent.”

James Stamps, Project Leader, will discuss the ITC Report. He will be followed by a panel of four commentators:

• Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist of the Progressive Policy Institute ,will provide an economic assessment of the report.

• Jacquelynn Ruff, Vice President, International, of Verizon will provide a view from a leading Internet Service Provider (ISP).

• Linda Kinney, Senior Vice President, Motion Picture Association of America, will provide perspective from an association representing content providers.

• Usman Ahmed, Policy Counsel of eBay, will provide analysis from an e-commerce company’s viewpoint.

This event is a brown bag lunch. Light refreshments will be provided by the Progressive Policy Institute.

Internet Governance Forum USA 2014

Cosponsored by ISOC-DC

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

8:30am to 7:00pm – Reception to Follow

Marvin Center, 800 21st Street NW
Grand Ballroom, 3rd Floor
Washington, DC 20052

The IGF-USA provides a domestic forum in the US for civil society, government, technologists, research scientists, the media, industry and academia, and other interested communities to engage in dialogue about development of best practices for multistakeholder governance and help move Internet policy forward.

IGF-USA 2014 seeks to help establish creative partnerships and to build a US based coalition to generate momentum around priority Internet governance issues and practices under consideration.

Scenarios for the Future of Internet Governance

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

9:30am to 2:00pm

Elliott School of International Affairs
Institute for International Economic Policy
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

Seminar on Human Rights and Internet Governance

Scenarios for the Future of Internet Governance

April 30, 2013

Agenda and Bios available here.

Panel 1: What is the IANA Function? What led to the US decision to reduce its role in IANA? What are the risks and opportunities associated with this fundamental change?

  • Fiona Alexander – Office of International Affairs, NTIA, US Department of Commerce
  • Pat Kane – Senior Vice President, Naming and Directory Services, Verisign
  • Richard Jimmerson – Chief Information Officer, ARIN
  • Steve DelBianco – Executive Director, NetChoice
  • Milton Mueller – Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies
  • Moderator – Tim Lordan – Executive Director, Internet Education Foundation

 

Panel 2: Possible scenarios for the future of the IANA functions – what are the implications for Internet governance?

  • Christopher Mondini – VP, Stakeholder Engagement North America & Global Business Engagement, ICANN
  • Raquel Gatto – Chapter Development Manager, the Americas, ISOC
  • Beatrice Covassi – First Counsellor, Digital Economy, EU Delegation to the United States
  • Derrick Cogburn – Associate Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service at American University
  • Becky Burr – Deputy General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer at NeuStar, Inc.
  • Moderator – Roger Cochetti – Principal at RJC Associates

Who is Bashing Whom? China, Cyber-attack, Democracy, and Retaliation

Moderator: Dr. Susan Ariel Aaronson

A luncheon forum: March 22, GWU, 12-2
Elliott School Commons, 6th fl, 1957 E Street, NW
Visit the conference website here.

 

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

About the Event

On January 31, The New York Times, America’s paper of record, made front page news. Several months after it published several articles delineating the financial holdings of the families of Chinese leaders, the Times reported that the Chinese military had hacked into its computers, inserted malware and stolen its employees’ e-mail account passwords. Soon thereafter, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Voice of America and other media outlets publicly claimed their computers were also allegedly hacked by Chinese citizens.

Many Americans were outraged and expressed concerns about the importance of cyber-security for the fourth estate, which must protect the privacy of sources, ensure freedom of the press, and play such an important role in American democracy. But the incidents also raised questions of governance. How should the US respond to such cyber-attacks when it too is attacking? Congressman Mike Rodgers, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, called for retaliation. However, retaliation is unlikely to build greater support for shared international cyber norms.

The event, organized by the Trade and Internet Governance Project of GWU, and the Minerva Initiative of the Department of Defense, examined the hacking from several different perspectives: cyber-security, economics, trade, human rights, and global governance.

Speakers:

Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post
Dr. Irving Lachow, Director, Technology and Security, Center for a New American Security
Delphine Halgand, Washington Office Director, Reporters without Borders
Grady Summers, Vice President of Mandiant Security
Michael Nelson, Bloomberg Government

The State of the World Economy

Olivier Blanchard

Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund

Co-sponsored by the George Washington University Department of Economics

View the presentation in pdf here.

 

Thursday, March 7, 2013

6:30 to 8:00pm – Reception to Follow

 

Harry Harding Auditorium
1957 E St., NW, Room 213
Elliott School of International Affairs
George Washington University
Washington, DC

The Institute for International Economic Policy and the George Washington University Department of Economics are proud to present Olivier Blanchard, Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund, to present a policy address regarding current issues in international financial policy. Dr. Blanchard is also a professor of economics at his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a macroeconomist who has worked on a wide variety of issues including, the role of monetary policy, the nature of speculative bubbles, the nature of the labor market and the determinants of unemployment, and transition in former communist countries. He is a fellow and Council member of the Econometric Society, a past vice president of the American Economic Association, and a member of the American Academy of the Sciences.

Olivier Blanchard

“Can Trade Policies and Agreements Advance Internet Freedom?”

Hosuk Lee-Makiyama (Director, ECIPE); Susan Aaronson (George Washington University); and others

 

Co-sponsors:
Institute for International Economic Policy, National War College, MacArthur Foundation, Computer and Communications Industry Association, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, GW-Center for International Business Education and Research and the Software and Information Industry Association

For more information, please visit the blog of the Project on Trade Agreements and Internet governance at tradeandinternet.wordpress.com

Thursday, December 6, 2012

8:15am – 3:30pm

 

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

TAIG hosted this free conference, providing a wide range of insight into the potential and pitfalls of trade policy to regulate the Internet. Panels included: views from the US, EU, and Canada; a discussion of privacy, intellectual property rights, and Internet freedom; and new ideas to promote trade and Internet freedom. Lee Hibbard from the Council of Europe offered “A Human Rights Perspective”, and Andrew McLaughlin of betaworks gave the luncheon keynote address on “The Future of Internet Freedom”. The full agenda is here. The conference benefited from the support of the John and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the Software and Information Industry Association, the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) at GWU, the National War College and the Minvera Initiative.

Our policy brief, “Can Trade Policy Set Information Free? Trade Agreements, Internet Governance, and Internet Freedom” is here.

Click here to view Dr. Aaronson’s slides (requires Flash)

 

Can Trade Agreements Facilitate the Free Flow of Information? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as a Case Study

Organized by
The Institute for International Economic Policy

In partnership with:
The Computer Communications Industry Association
The Heinrich Boell Foundation
and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Friday, September 21, 2012

12:00 to 1:30pm – Beverages will be provided

 

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

Jonathan McHale, Deputy Assistant United States Trade Representative for Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce Policy, Office of the United States Trade Representative
Jayme White, Staff Director, Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness, United States Senate
Usman Ahmed, Policy Counsel, eBay, Inc.
Rashni Rangnath, Director, Global Knowledge Initiative at Public Knowledge

 

President Obama has described the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as the first 21st century trade agreement. These negotiations are particularly important to advocates of an open Internet. The U.S. wants its TPP negotiating partners to accept language designed to protect intellectual property online, to encourage regulatory transparency for Internet governance, and to ensure open access to digital goods, applications, consumers, devices, networks, and information. Other governments have a different vision. Currently, although several non-profit U.S. bodies oversee technical specifications and the domain name system, international multi-stakeholder groups collaborate to maintain the free flow of information on the web. However, Russia, China and several other nations want to use “the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union,” a U.N. agency, to regulate the Internet. They believe the current system is too ad hoc, U.S.-centric, and does not allow national policymakers to restrict the free flow of information when such officials deem it appropriate. This discussion will examine what the U.S. is proposing. Representatives from the private sector, the Internet advocacy community, and the Senate Finance Committee will present their views on the implications of these provisions for the future of the Internet.

Getting Rights…Right: How Companies are Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

In partnership with:
U.S. Institute for Peace
U.N. Global Compact U.S. Network
Ford Motor Company
Heinrich Böll Stiftung North America
GW-CIBER

 

For a policy brief created from the conference outcomes, click here.
Download the full document here.

 

To mark International Human Rights Day 2011, George Washington University, the UN Global Compact US Network, and the US Institute of Peace hosted a 1 day conference on the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. These principles, approved by the UN Human Rights Council in June, are designed to help business monitor its human rights impact. These guidelines clarified both the human rights responsibilities of states and firms and made them clear and actionable. Our speakers, representing business, civil society, the US Government, and academia, focused on practical approaches to implementing the Guiding Principles (the GPs).

Thursday, December 8, 2011

9:00am to 4:30pm

 

Grand Ballroom, 3rd Floor
Marvin Center
800 21st Street, NW
Schedule

Thursday, December 8, 2011
9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Grand Ballroom, 3rd Floor
Marvin Center
800 21st Street, NW

 

9:00-9:10 – Welcoming Remarks

  1. Stephen C. Smith (GWU)
    Dave Berdish (Ford Motor Company)

9:10-9:45 – David Arkless President and CEO, Global Corporate and Government Affairs, Manpower, “Why Firms Should Advance Human Rights: Manpower’s approach”

 

9:45-11:15 – Panel 1 – Addressing the Problems of Slavery and Human Trafficking

Moderator: Pamela Passman, President and CEO, Center for Responsible Enterprise And Trade (CREATe)

  1. Brenda Schultz, Manager, Responsible Business, Carlson Hotels Worldwide
  2. Samir Goswami, Director of Corporate Responsibility, Rule of Law, Lexis Nexis
  3. Jean Baderscheider, Vice President, Global Procurement, Exxon Mobil
  4. Jean Baderscheider – Exxon Mobil
  5. Karen Stauss, Director of Programs, Free the Slaves

11:15-11:30 – Coffee Break

 

11:30-12:00 – General Discussion: What should policymakers do to encourage adoption of the GPs?

led by Susan Aaronson

  1. Procurement set asides?
  2. Education?
  3. Corporate governance rules?

12:00-1:00 – Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Maria Otero

  1. The Department of State’s Approach to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

1:00-2:00 – Luncheon Keynote

  1. Ursula Wynhoven (General Counsel, UN Global Compact) “The Case for Supporting Human Rights”
  2. Ursula Wynhoven – United Nations
  3. Gerald Pachoud, Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary General, UN and former Senior Advisor, Special Representative on Business and Human Rights) “Business and Human Rights… and States”

 

2:05-3:35 – Panel 2 – How Business Should Operate in Conflict Zones

Moderator: Raymond Gilpin, Director, Center for Sustainable Economies, U.S. Institute of Peace

  1. Bennett Freeman, Senior Vice President for Social research and Policy, Calvert Group
  2. Bennett Freeman – GE Audio
  3. Charlotte Wolff, Corporate Responsibility Manager, Arcellor Mittal
  4. Charlotte Wolff – Arcellor Mittal Audio
  5. Olav Ljosne, Regional Director of Communications, Africa, Shell Corporation
  6. Olav Ljosne – Shell Corporation Audio
  7. Jenny Vaughan, Program Officer, Conflict Management, Mercy Corps
  8. Jenny Vaughan – Mercy Corps
  9. Jenny Vaughan – Mercy Corps Audio
  10. Panel 2 – Entire Audio
  11. Panel 2 – Discussion Audio

3:35-3:50 – Coffee Break

 

3:50-5:20 – Panel 3: General Implementation of the Guiding Principles: Is it difficult to get buy in? Is it costly? What recommendations or roadblocks have you found?

Moderator: Susan Aaronson (GWU)

  1. Mark Nordstrom, Senior Labor & Employment Counsel, General Electric
  2. Mark Nordstrom – Fordham University
  3. Mark Nordstrom – Fordham University Audio
  4. Dave Berdish, Manager of Sustainable Business Development, Ford Motor Company
  5. Dave Berdish – Ford Motors
  6. Dave Berdish – Ford Motor Company Audio
  7. Motoko Aizawa, Sustainability Advisor, International Finance Corporation
  8. Meg Roggensack, Senior Advisor for Business and Human Rights, Human Rights First
  9. Panel 3 – Discussion Audio

5:20 – Conference End

 

Conference organized by:

 

  • Dr. Susan Aaronson and Kyle Renner, GWU
  • Dr. Raymond Gilpin and Amanda Mayoral, USIP
  • Thanks too to Ursula Wynhoven and the staff of the UN Global Compact for their help.

 

 

Ford Motor Company and the Heinrich Böll Foundation provided generous financial support to ensure a free conference.

Euro at the Crossroads?

Fred Joutz

Professor of Economics and Director of the Research Program on Forecasting, GWU

Desmond Lachman

Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Holger Wolf

Associate Professor, BMW Center for German and European Studies, Georgetown University

Audio of “Euro at the Crossroads?” can be found here.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

12:00 to 1:30pm

 

Lindner Commons, 6th floor
1957 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052

Corruption and Conflict

Organized by
The Institute for International Economic Policy
and
Transparency International’s (UK) International Defence & Security Programme

To listen to the podcast, click here.
To view the PowerPoint, click here.

Wednesday October 26, 2011

12:30 to 2:00pm

Elliott School of International Affairs
Suite 505
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

Mark Pyman (Head of Transparency International, the UK’s Defence & Security Programme)
Sir Stewart Eldon (Senior Adviser to TI-DSP and former UK Permanent Representative to NATO)

Corruption is both a symptom of and a cause of conflict. As example, many Afghans initially welcomed the Taliban because they promised to restore order and reduce corruption. Policymakers increasingly recognize that if they want to create clean and effective state institutions and sustain peace, they must also counter corruption. Without addressing corruption, officials may be unable to restore state authority and deliver services to war-ravaged communities. According to the UNDP, several factors shape the interaction of corruption and peace: how a peace agreement is formed; the legacy of wartime corruption; the circumstances and potential turmoil of transitional governments; and resource wealth and potential for exploitation. Transparency International UK’s Defense & Security Program, based in London, has been studying how to counter corruption in conflict and post-conflict environments to create a roadmap towards stability and a well-functioning state. Pyman and Eldon will discuss the Program’s emerging findings, examine case studies such as that of Afghanistan, and address questions.

Can Trade Agreements Facilitate the Free Flow of Information: The Trans-Pacific Partnership as a Case Study

Organized by
The Institute for International Economic Policy

In partnership with:
The Computer Communications Industry Association
The Heinrich Boell Foundation
and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

12:00 to 1:30pm

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

Jonathan McHale, Deputy Assistant United States Trade Representative for Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce Policy, Office of the United States Trade Representative
Jayme White, Staff Director, Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness, United States Senate
Usman Ahmed, Policy Counsel, eBay, Inc.
Rashni Rangnath, Director, Global Knowledge Initiative at Public Knowledge

 

President Obama has described the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as the first 21st century trade agreement. These negotiations are particularly important to advocates of an open Internet. The U.S. wants its TPP negotiating partners to accept language designed to protect intellectual property online, to encourage regulatory transparency for Internet governance, and to ensure open access to digital goods, applications, consumers, devices, networks, and information. Other governments have a different vision. Currently, although several non-profit U.S. bodies oversee technical specifications and the domain name system, international multi-stakeholder groups collaborate to maintain the free flow of information on the web. However, Russia, China and several other nations want to use “the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union,” a U.N. agency, to regulate the Internet. They believe the current system is too ad hoc, U.S.-centric, and does not allow national policymakers to restrict the free flow of information when such officials deem it appropriate. This discussion will examine what the U.S. is proposing. Representatives from the private sector, the Internet advocacy community, and the Senate Finance Committee will present their views on the implications of these provisions for the future of the Internet.

Beverages will be provided.