Climate change, inequalities, and ageing: the major economic challenges ahead

Looking beyond the Covid-19 crisis, we are faced with three long-term, structural economic challenges: climate change, economic inequalities, and demographic changes. In January 2020, the French President Emmanuel Macron invited Olivier Blanchard, Professor Emeritus at MIT and former Chief Economist at the IMF, and Jean Tirole, Nobel Prize-winner and Honorary President of the Toulouse School of Economics, to chair a commission that would propose responses to these three time bombs.

The commission recently published their report, “The Major Future Economic Challenges”, outlining key recommendations for better economic policies that would allow France, and comparable countries such as the UK, to respond more effectively to these challenges.

We are very pleased that Professors Blanchard and Tirole have agreed to present their findings to a UK audience at this IFS event. After their presentations, they will be joined by Carol Propper, one of the authors of the report, and Richard Blundell and Nick Stern, both members of the Commission, to answer your questions.