[Postponed] Whither Inflation? - Round Table II

01 February 2023, 5:00 pm–6:30 pm

Seminar postponed due to UCL strike action taking place on the 1st February 2023. We will be in touch shortly to provide an update regarding the outcome of the seminar.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to: All
Availability: Yes
Cost: Free
Organiser: IIPP Comms

iippcomms@ucl.ac.uk

SEMINAR POSTPONED

This seminar has been postponed due to UCL strike action taking place on the 1st February 2023.The University and College Union (UCU), which represents lecturers and support staff, has announced plans for national industrial action which will take place throughout February and March 2023. The action relates to disputes over pay, working conditions and pensions.UCU is demanding a meaningful pay rise to deal with the cost-of-living crisis as well as action to end the use of insecure contracts.

UCL supports and will continue to participate in these national negotiations.

We will be in touch shortly to provide an update regarding the outcome of the seminar.

Inflation is eroding the purchasing power of households, increasing interest costs to borrowers, eroding stocks of wealth, and leading to enormous shifts of resources. Poorest households, with a lower budget capacity to absolve this price increase, are the ones hit the hardest. Yet this is the one area of macroeconomics where there was an apparent consensus that economic theory had contributed to frameworks which ensure that inflation would stay well contained. But as we look closely at this debate, policymakers and economists are divided between finding the causes, the right framework, and the best tools to fight inflation. Different theories (different approaches) lead to different diagnoses and, therefore, different policy solutions. While it is always convenient to look to the unfortunate 1970s, is this really the best framework for our current social and economic circumstances? Do we need to be open to different economic theories explaining the causes of inflation, or are the answers very much the same?

The IIPP Research Seminar Series has dedicated some space to discuss these questions and many others with researchers from a range of different traditions within economics. This discussion is also very close to our mission, as inflation affects how public and private organisations think about their collaboration and purpose-driven goals.

Guest Speakers

Crystal Simeoni | Director at Nawi - Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective (The Nawi Collective)
Josh Mason | Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York
Monica de Bolle | Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics
Ricardo Reis | Arthur Williams Phillips Professor of Economics, The London School of Economics and Political Science
Chair: Dr Carolina Alves | Associate Professor in Economics, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

This in person event will take place at 11 Montague Street, London, WC1B 5BP.

About the Speakers

Crystal Simeoni

Director at Nawi - Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective (The Nawi Collective)

Crystal Simeoni is a Pan African feminist activist working on macro level economic issues. She currently serves as the Director of Nawi - Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective (The Nawi Collective). In her role as director, Crystal curates the work of the collective towards contributing to building a feminist community in Africa of individuals and organisations working on influencing, analysing, deconstructing and reconstructing macroeconomic policies, narratives. The collective also works on reimagining alternatives through an intersectional Pan African feminist lens. Before this she was head of Advocacy with a focus on Economic Justice at FEMNET and was the Policy Lead of the Tax and the International Financial Architecture at TJN-A before that. She is currently an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics.

As we navigate through this global pandemic, we cannot talk of building back better ; What was built was never for us - only from us - what we must do is build back differently. This is the moment to completely reimagine what the world could be through feminist lenses - more just, more equitable and more inclusive.

More about Crystal Simeoni

J.W. Mason

Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York (CUNY)

J. W. Mason is Associate Professor of economics at John Jay College, CUNY and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. His research focuses on macroeconomic policy and on the history and political economy of money and credit, including the evolution of household debt, public-sector balance sheets, and the changing role of financial markets in business investment. His PhD in economics is from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and his BA is from the University of Chicago. He has published articles in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Development and Change, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Metroeconomica, Rethinking Marxism, Review of Keynesian Economics, and Review of Radical Political Economics. His popular writing has appeared in The American Prospect, The Baffler, Barron’s, Boston Review, City Limits, Dissent, The International Economy, In These Times, Jacobin, New Statesman, the New York Daily News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications. He is the author, with Arjun Jayadev, of Money and Things, forthcoming from University of Chicago Press. His personal blog is at jwmason.org/the-slack-wire. More about J.W. Mason

Monica de Bolle

Senior Fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics

Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since January 2017, is former director for Latin American studies and emerging markets at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. De Bolle was nonresident senior fellow at the Institute between March 2015 and January 2017. Named as "Honored Economist" in 2014 by the Order of Brazilian Economists for her contributions to the Brazilian policy debate, de Bolle focuses on macroeconomics, foreign exchange policy, monetary and fiscal policy, trade and inequality, financial regulation, and capital markets. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has also expanded into public health research and has specialized in immunology, genetics, and biochemistry at Harvard Medical School. De Bolle has just concluded her advanced graduate degree in infectious diseases and human immunology at Georgetown University. More about Monica de Bolle

Ricardo Reis

A.W. Phillips Professor of Economics at The London School of Economics

Ricardo Reis is the A.W. Phillips Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Recent honors include the 2002 Carl Menger prize, the 2021 Yrjo Jahnsson medal, election fo the Econometric Society in 2019, the 2017 BdF/TSE junior prize, and the 2016 Bernacer prize. Professor Reis is an academic consultant at the Bank of England, the Riksbank, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, he directs the Centre for Macroeconomics in the UK, and he serves on the council or as an advisor of multiple organizations. He has published widely on macroeconomics, including both monetary and fiscal policy, inflation and business cycles. Professor Reis received his PhD from Harvard University, and was previously on the faculty at Columbia University and Princeton University. More about Ricardo Reis

Dr Carolina Alves

Associate Professor in Economics at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Carolina specialises in macroeconomics and international political economy, with regional expertise in Latin America.

Carolina joins IIPP from Girton College at the University of Cambridge where she was the Joan Robinson Research Fellow in Heterodox Economics and a College Teaching Officer at the Faculty of Economics. At Cambridge, she led teaching in macroeconomics, political and social aspects of economics, and history and philosophy of economics, while also being the Director of Studies for Economics for second-year undergrads, and a member of Girton’s College Council responsible for the stewardship of the College.

Carolina is the co-founder of Diversifying and Decolonising Economics – a network of economists working to promote inclusiveness in economics in both the academic content and the field’s institutional structures. She is a member of the Rebuilding Macroeconomics Advisory Group - a research initiative aimed at re-invigorating macroeconomics and bringing it back to the fore as a policy-relevant social science, as well as being the co-editor for the Developing Economics blog, which takes a critical approach to creating discussion and reflection in the field of economics. She is also a board member on the Progressive Economy Forum Council (PEF) and Positive Money.