S1 Ep6: Two centuries of commercial banking: crises, bailouts, mergers and regulation
Richard Grossman interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 23 July 2010 Richard Grossman of Wesleyan University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his new book ‘Unsettled Account: The Evolution of Banking in the Industrialized World since 1800’. Among other things, they discuss the problems of striking a balance between a dynamic banking system and a stable banking system. The interview was recorded a...
19m Jul 23, 2010
19m
S1 Ep6: The Cinderella of regulatory reform? Why cross-border resolution shouldn’t be neglected
Stijn Claessens interviewed by Viv Davies, 16 July 2010 Stijn Claessens of the IMF and the University of Amsterdam talks to Viv Davies about the 12th Geneva Report on improving the resolution of systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). Claessens discusses the trilemma of national authority, financial integration and global stability, and proposes a new concordat approach to the r...
26m Jul 16, 2010
26m
S1 Ep6: Fixing the financial system
Raghuram Rajan interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 09 July 2010 Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about ‘The Squam Lake Report’, which brings together 15 leading US financial economists to map out a long-term plan for financial regulation reform. Among other things, they discuss capital requirements, contingent convertibles, living wills and executive compe...
19m Jul 09, 2010
19m
S1 Ep6: Pull together or fall apart: can the Eurozone stand the stress?
Daniel Gros interviewed by Viv Davies, 02 July 2010 Daniel Gros of CEPS talks to Viv Davies about Vox's latest eBook, which brings together the views of leading economists on what more needs to be done to rescue the Eurozone. While not excluding the possibility of a breakup of the eurozone, Gros discusses a potential solution for Greece and the key role of the proposed stress tests on European...
16m Jul 02, 2010
16m
S1 Ep6: Africa has resisted protectionism – why can’t the EU?
Simon Evenett interviewed by Viv Davies, 25 June 2010 Simon Evenett of the University of St Gallen talks to Viv Davies about the fifth Global Trade Alert (GTA) report. They discuss why the EU – in contrast to Africa, which has resisted protectionist temptations – is now in the top five ‘offending nations’ on all of the GTA criteria. Evenett also answers recent criticisms that GTA has been ‘ove...
13m Jun 25, 2010
13m
S1 Ep6: The fall and rise of central banking
Howard Davies interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 18 June 2010 Howard Davies, former director of the London School of Economics, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his book co-authored with David Green, ‘Banking on the Future: The Fall and Rise of Central Banking’. Among other things, they discuss the cost-effectiveness of central banks, the characteristics of an ideal central bank governor, and...
26m Jun 18, 2010
26m
S1 Ep6: Be careful what you wish for! The US-Sino currency dispute
Simon Evenett interviewed by Viv Davies, 11 June 2010 Simon Evenett of the University of St Gallen talks to Viv Davies about his recent Vox e-book on the US-Sino currency dispute, which brings together the latest research on the behaviour of the renminbi, the role it has played in global imbalances and the potential responses of China and its trading partners to the dispute over balances and e...
14m Jun 11, 2010
14m
S1 Ep6: European financial vulnerability and the need for a rules-based international monetary system
David Vines interviewed by Viv Davies, 04 June 2010 David Vines of Oxford University talks to Viv Davies about the vulnerability of Europe's monetary union and the need for a rules-based international monetary system. He argues that due to an unprecedented show of cooperation and worldwide coordination of fiscal and monetary policies, an all-out collapse has been prevented: the same level of c...
23m Jun 04, 2010
23m
S1 Ep6: China and India: awakening giants, feet of clay
Pranab Bardhan interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 28 May 2010 Pranab Bardhan of the University of California, Berkeley, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his new book ‘Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India’. He argues that significant poverty reduction in both countries is mainly due to domestic factors – not global integration, as most would believe. T...
28m May 28, 2010
28m
S1 Ep6: The gold standard and the eurozone crisis
Richard Grossman interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 21 May 2010 Richard Grossman of Wesleyan University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the role of gold standard in propagating the Great Depression – and what we might learn for the crisis in the world’s most important fixed exchange rate system of today, the eurozone. The interview was recorded at a conference on ‘Lessons from the Great Depr...
13m May 21, 2010
13m
S1 Ep6: Finance, growth and development
Thorsten Beck interviewed by Viv Davies, 14 May 2010 Thorsten Beck of Tilburg University talks to Viv Davies about his current research in the areas of finance, growth and development - and the policy lessons for developing countries. The interview was recorded at Tilburg University in April 2010.
16m May 14, 2010
16m
S1 Ep6: Rethinking monetary policy – lessons from the crisis
Claudio Borio interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 07 May 2010 Claudio Borio of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about where the pre-crisis consensus on monetary policy-making went wrong; the implementation, effectiveness and costs of ‘unconventional monetary policy-making’ in response to the crisis; the idea that it is no longer ‘better to clean than to l...
21m May 07, 2010
21m
S1 Ep6: US monetary and fiscal policy in the 1930s – and now
Price Fishback interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 30 April 2010 Price Fishback of the University of Arizona talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about whether the current US economic situation is really comparable to the Great Depression. He argues that today’s monetary policy response is heavily and positively influenced by the failures of the past – but that today’s fiscal stimulus is far stronger th...
16m Apr 30, 2010
16m
S1 Ep6: Banking panics and banking reform
Michael Bordo interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 23 April 2010 Michael Bordo of Rutgers University compares US banking panics in the early 1930s with panics in the shadow banking system and the repo market in 2007 and in investment banks and the universal banking system after Lehman failed. He argues that the bailouts of ‘too big to fail’ banks may lead to future crises, and discusses possible...
12m Apr 23, 2010
12m
S1 Ep5: Economical crime control
Philip Cook interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 16 April 2010 Philip Cook of Duke University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about cost-effective ways of reducing crime. They discuss his own research on private contributions to public order, as well as the potential impact on crime of higher taxes on alcohol, 'coerced abstinence' for convicted criminals, and social policies that may deter people fr...
21m Apr 16, 2010
21m
S1 Ep5: From financial crash to debt crisis
Carmen Reinhart interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 09 April 2010 Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the sequencing of the cycle of debt build-ups – from private debt surges to banking crises to sovereign debt crises – and the four ‘deadly D’s’ that once again threaten many governments as a consequence of the current crisis – deficits, debt, downgrad...
18m Apr 09, 2010
18m
S1 Ep5: The effect of lottery prizes on physical and mental health
Andrew Clark interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 02 April 2010 Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his research on the relationship between income and health, which examines changes in the health and health behaviours (smoking and drinking) of British people who win prizes in the national lottery. The interview was recorded at the Royal Economic Socie...
13m Apr 02, 2010
13m
S1 Ep5: Experimental economics: evolution, methods and achievements
Robert Sugden interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 26 March 2010 Robert Sugden talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the new book of which he is a co-author, ‘Experimental Economics: Rethinking the Rules’. They discuss the development of experimental research in economics over the past 30 years, the design of laboratory experiments and the achievements of these methods in increasing understanding of...
19m Mar 26, 2010
19m
S1 Ep5: How the IMF thinks
Jeffrey Chwieroth interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 19 March 2010 Jeffrey Chwieroth of the London School of Economics talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the evolution of economic ideas at the International Monetary Fund, drawing on his book, ‘Capital Ideas: The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization’. They discuss changes in IMF thinking about capital controls, the Tobin tax and macroeco...
22m Mar 19, 2010
22m
S1 Ep5: Policies to encourage entrepreneurship
Josh Lerner interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 12 March 2010 Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School talks to Vox about the policies that governments employ to encourage venture capital and entrepreneurial activity, drawing on the findings in his book, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed – and What to Do About It. The intervie...
12m Mar 12, 2010
12m
S1 Ep5: Measuring management practices
John Van Reenen interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 05 March 2010 How important are management practices in driving the performance of firms and the productivity of nations across Asia, Europe and North America? John Van Reenen, director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about CEP’s research programme on the economics of ...
23m Mar 05, 2010
23m
S1 Ep5: Restoring fiscal credibility
Tim Besley interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 26 February 2010 Tim Besley of the London School of Economics – and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) – talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the idea of creating a politically neutral, expert body to ensure the proper long-term scrutiny of a country’s public finances – by analogy with the UK’s MPC, a Fiscal Polic...
14m Feb 26, 2010
14m
S1 Ep5: Bailing out the banks: reconciling stability and competition
Paul Seabright interviewed by Viv Davies, 19 February 2010 Paul Seabright of the Toulouse School of Economics talks to Viv Davies about a new CEPR report, Bailing out the Banks, which analyses state-supported schemes for financial institutions in the current crisis and the need to reconcile the potentially conflicting policy goals of financial stability and competition in the banking industry....
12m Feb 19, 2010
12m
S1 Ep5: Sovereign wealth funds: government as institutional investor
Josh Lerner interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 12 February 2010 Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School talks to Vox about sovereign wealth funds, which are the focus of a chapter in his new book, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed – and What to Do About It. The interview was recorded in London in January 2010.
14m Feb 12, 2010
14m
S1 Ep5: The enlightened economy: how ideas drive growth
Joel Mokyr interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 05 February 2010 Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his book, The Enlightened Economy, which argues that we cannot understand the Industrial Revolution without recognising the importance of the intellectual sea changes of Britain’s Age of Enlightenment. They discuss the importance of cultural beliefs for the pur...
24m Feb 05, 2010
24m
S1 Ep5: Economics of digital media
Joel Waldfogel interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 29 January 2010 Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the economics of digital media, including: music file sharing (both illegal and legal) and the impact on artists and record labels; the threat that intellectual property piracy poses to the movie business; and the future of books and newspapers in th...
14m Jan 29, 2010
14m
S1 Ep5: Water economics and management: lessons from Australia’s drought
Mike Young interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 22 January 2010 Mike Young, executive director of the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about how Australia has responded to the big shock to its water supply – through new regulations, through technological solutions, through public education and through the introduction of market mechanisms. The inte...
17m Jan 22, 2010
17m
S1 Ep5: London’s first financial markets: Private equity and public debt before the South Sea Bubble
Anne Murphy interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 15 January 2010 Anne Murphy, lecturer in history at the University of Hertfordshire and associate director of the Centre for Financial History at Newnham College, Cambridge, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about her new book ‘The Origins of English Financial Markets: Investment and Speculation before the South Sea Bubble’. The interview was recorded i...
29m Jan 15, 2010
29m
S1 Ep5: Unwinding the monetary and fiscal stimulus
Pablo Guidotti interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 08 January 2010 Pablo Guidotti, Director of the School of Government at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and former deputy minister of finance in Argentina, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the challenges facing monetary and fiscal policy-makers as they plan their exit strategies from the extraordinary measures taken to deal with the global c...
14m Jan 08, 2010
14m
S1 Ep5: Portfolios of the poor
Jonathan Morduch interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 18 December 2009 Jonathan Morduch of New York University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his new book, Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day – co-authored with Daryl Collins, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven – which reports on the yearlong ‘financial diaries’ of villagers and slum dwellers in Bangladesh, India, ...
26m Dec 18, 2009
26m
S1 Ep5: BRICs and brickbats: doing economics at Goldman Sachs
Jim O'Neill interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 11 December 2009 Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the crisis and its impact on the emerging giants of the world economy, the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China). They also discuss the value of economic research in both the commercial and academic spheres, and how the economics pr...
28m Dec 11, 2009
28m
S1 Ep5: Making migration work after the crisis
Demetrios Papademetriou interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 04 December 2009 Demetrios Papademetriou, president and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the key elements of wise migration policy both at a time of economic crisis and for the longer term. The interview was recorded at the Global Economic Symposium in Schleswig-Holstein i...
18m Dec 04, 2009
18m
S1 Ep5: Trust, law and social norms: fundamentals of economic progress
Partha Dasgupta interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 27 November 2009 Sir Partha Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about why some countries are rich and others are poor. He argues that trust is the fundamental building block of societies – without it, there can be no basis for cooperation, which in turn leads to progress and economic development. The interview w...
21m Nov 27, 2009
21m
S1 Ep5: World Trade Organization decision-making for the future
Patrick Low interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 20 November 2009 Patrick Low, chief economist at the World Trade Organization (WTO), talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the case for ‘critical mass’ decision-making as an element of the WTO’s overall decision rules in the future, once the Doha Round has been completed. The interview was recorded in Geneva at the inaugural Thinking Ahead on Internat...
10m Nov 20, 2009
10m
S1 Ep5: Avoiding a new inflationary cycle
Domingo Cavallo interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 13 November 2009 Domingo Cavallo, former minister of economy and minister of foreign affairs in Argentina, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the dangers of a future resurgence in world inflation, as economies that have adopted very expansionary monetary and fiscal policies in response to the crisis are tempted to ‘inflate away the debt’. The i...
16m Nov 13, 2009
16m
S1 Ep5: The effect of maternal fasting during pregnancy
Douglas Almond interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 06 November 2009 Douglas Almond of Columbia University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his research with Bhashkar Mazumder on women who are pregnant during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and the impact of fasting on their children – in terms of birth weight and the likelihood of being a boy or girl, as well as later life health outcomes. T...
12m Nov 06, 2009
12m
S1 Ep5: The Tobin tax: feasible, desirable?
Avinash Persaud interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 30 October 2009 Avinash Persaud, chairman of Intelligence Capital, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about financial regulation after the crisis, including whether it is feasible and desirable to introduce a ‘Tobin tax’ on financial transactions. The interview was recorded at the Global Economic Symposium in Schleswig-Holstein in September 2009.
14m Oct 30, 2009
14m
S1 Ep5: Climate change and the world trading system
Gary Hufbauer interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 23 October 2009 Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about potential conflicts between global agreements on tackling climate change and the rules of the international trading system, including possible outcomes from the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference. The interview was recorded i...
16m Oct 23, 2009
16m
S1 Ep5: Global governance and domestic political economy
Jeffry Frieden interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 16 October 2009 Jeffry Frieden, professor of government at Harvard University, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about global economic governance – including the world trading system, financial regulation and the G-20 – and their interactions with domestic politics, particularly in the United States. The interview was recorded at the Global Economic ...
21m Oct 16, 2009
21m
S1 Ep5: New challenges in food and agricultural trade
Tim Josling interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 09 October 2009 Tim Josling of Stanford University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about emerging challenges for the world trading system around trade in food and agriculture – including price volatility, the emergence of private food standards and the future of farm policies in developed countries. The interview was recorded in Geneva at the inaugura...
15m Oct 09, 2009
15m
S1 Ep5: Balancing risk-taking and financial regulation
Axel Weber interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 02 October 2009 Axel Weber, President of the Deutsche Bundesbank, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the need to rebalance between risk-taking and regulation in financial markets. They discuss the opportunity for central bankers and other G20 players to design and implement new regulation, and the likely future size of the financial sector in the ov...
16m Oct 02, 2009
16m
S1 Ep5: The protectionist juggernaut threatening world trade
Simon Evenett interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 24 September 2009 Simon Evenett of the University of St Gallen talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about ‘Broken Promises’, the latest report from Global Trade Alert, which collates information on state measures taken since last November that discriminate against foreign commercial interests, and reveals how the G20 countries have broken their 'no prote...
14m Sep 24, 2009
14m
S1 Ep5: Fiscal policy after the crisis
Peter Heller interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 18 September 2009 At the Global Economic Symposium in Schleswig-Holstein in September 2009, Peter Heller of Johns Hopkins University spoke at a session on ‘dealing with the new social divides’. Afterwards, he talked to Romesh Vaitilingam about the challenges of restoring sustainable public finances after the fiscal stimulus – and the potential im...
14m Sep 18, 2009
14m
S1 Ep5: Global economic solutions
Dennis Snower interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 10 September 2009 Dennis Snower, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the 2009 Global Economic Symposium, which meets this week at Plön Castle in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He calls for a new age of global cooperation to supplement the age of globalisation, and to tackle such challenges as th...
10m Sep 10, 2009
10m
S1 Ep5: Lessons from the financial crisis
Hyun Song Shin interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 04 September 2009 Hyun Song Shin of Princeton University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the role of securitisation, mark-to-market accounting and banks’ incentives in the current financial crisis, making an analogy between the feedback mechanisms that made London’s Millennium Bridge wobble dramatically when it was first opened and those that...
21m Sep 04, 2009
21m
S1 Ep5: Game theory: emergence, applications and prospects
Avinash Dixit interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 28 August 2009 Avinash Dixit of Princeton University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about game theory in economics: its emergence and development after the Second World War, particularly from the 1970s onwards; its applications in business, public policy and daily life; and the future research agenda. The interview was recorded in Princeton in Augu...
13m Aug 28, 2009
13m
S1 Ep5: Hurricane Katrina: benefits for student evacuees
Bruce Sacerdote interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 21 August 2009 Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth College talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his research on the academic performance of school children from New Orleans who were forced to relocate as a result of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The interview was recorded at the Centre for Market and Public Organisation in Bristol (UK) in February 2...
10m Aug 21, 2009
10m
S1 Ep5: Animal spirits
Robert Shiller interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 14 August 2009 Robert Shiller of Yale University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his book, co-authored with George Akerlof, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism. The interview was recorded in London in May 2009.
29m Aug 14, 2009
29m
S1 Ep5: Resegregation in US schools: unintended consequences of parental choice
Helen Ladd interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 07 August 2009 Helen Ladd of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about her research on the impact of parental choice on educational segregation, which analyses data on the changing racial composition of schools in North Carolina. The interview was recorded at the Centre for Market and Public Organisati...
23m Aug 07, 2009
23m
S1 Ep5: Microfinance and commitment contracts
Dean Karlan interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 31 July 2009 Dean Karlan of Yale University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his research programme on microfinance, which uses experimental methodologies to examine what kinds of products work and why. They also discuss his work on ‘commitment contracts’, which people can use to try to modify their own behaviour. The interview was recorded at th...
18m Jul 31, 2009
18m