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Gorman Lectures 2022: UCL Economics hosts Penny Goldberg from Yale University
25 May 2022
Catch up with the video recordings of Penny Goldberg’s two-part lecture series as part of the Gorman Lectures.
Lecture 1: Informality and Development
Lecture 2: Trade and Informality in the Presence of Labor Market Frictions and Regulations
A substantial share of economic activity in many emerging and developing economies is informal, meaning that it is invisible to the government. Yet, the informal sector is nearly absent from theoretical and empirical work in International Trade and Economics more generally
The two lectures explore informality, both its causes and its implications for growth, welfare and inequality in an open economy. The first lecture defines informality; present several stylised facts; discuss existing work and views regarding the role of informality; and draw parallels between the informal sector and the gig economy. The second lecture focuses on the interplay of trade and informality. It explores how openness affects informality as well as how the presence of an informal sector affects predictions of standard trade models.
Established in 2001, the Gorman Lectures are sponsored by UCL and Princeton University Press in honour of the influential economist William Moore "Terence" Gorman.
The annual series features a different leading economist each year and has so far included; Eric Maskin, Dan McFadden, James Heckman, Avinash Dixit, Robert M. Townsend, Ken Binmore, Robert Hall, Jerry Hausman, Thomas Sargent, Pierre-Andre Chiappori, Jean Tirole and Torsten Persson. The lectures cover a range of sub-discipline in Economics and are usually produced in book form by the Princeton University Press after the event. A list of W M Gorman's publications can be found on the Trinity College Dublin website and more information about his life and achievements can be found on the Guardian webpage.
UCL Economics academic, Richard Blundell