Spring 2011 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Edward Hugh | A surprising feature of economic analysis of the current crisis has been the pivotal role played by a small number of bloggers, often positioned far from the academic mainstream. This event will feature one of the top bloggers on the Euro Crisis who will discuss the role the bloggers have played in our understanding of the current Euro Crisis, and in what ways having more data in our hard drive than the sum total of all previous economists changes our understanding of macroeconomics. Edward Hugh is an independent macro economist based in Barcelona. He studied at the LSE, where he obtained his BSc (econ). He then went to Manchester University where he was awarded an MSc in the philosophy and sociology of science. He subsequently persued doctoral studies there for a thesis which was never completed. He is a regular contributor to a number of weblogs, including A Fistful of Euros, Roubini Global Economics Monitor, Global Economy Matters and Demography Matters. He also has an active and widely followed Facebook community. For more information on Edward Hugh see the recent profile in the New York Times. Luis Garicano is a Professor of Economics and Strategy at the LSE's departments of Management and Economics.

Contributor(s): Dr Roman Frigg | Predicting how climate change will affect us is of paramount importance, yet it is beset with both practical and conceptual problems. This lecture explores the impact that chaos has on what we can reasonably assert on the basis of climate models. Roman Frigg is deputy director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Ephraim Kleiman | Ephraim Kleiman is Don Patinkin Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds a PhD from the London School of Economics. After serving briefly with the Israel Finance Ministry, he joined the Economics Department of the Hebrew University in 1963. He has held visiting appointments at universities and research institutes in the U.S., the U.K, Sweden and Australia. He has been Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1995, Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington in 1996, Academic Visitor at the London School of Economics in 1999 and Visiting Professor of Economics at MIT in the Fall terms of 2001 and 2003. Dr. Kleiman's research interests over the years included international trade, public finance, and history of economic thought, as well as the role of wage and financial indexation under inflation. A long-time student of the Palestinian economy and of its relationships with Israel, He has participated over the last 25 years in many both formal and Track II Israeli-Palestinian discussions, as well as in various task forces searching for solutions to the Middle Eastern conflict. He also served as the senior economic advisor to the Israeli delegation at the Israel-PLO economic negotiations in Paris in 1993/94.

Contributor(s): George Magnus | George Magnus will look at China and emerging markets from a post-financial crisis perspective, inviting us to reconsider how they will adapt to a new world economy. What reforms are needed to meet global goals? George Magnus is senior economic advisor at UBS Investment Bank, London. His latest book is Uprising: will emerging markets shapes or stoke the world economy.

Contributor(s): Professor Paul Dolan | In Absolute Beginners by The Jam, Paul Weller sang "I need the strength to go and get what I want". The problem is that we often want things that do not improve our wellbeing. Or at least that is what we think the evidence is telling us. This lecture explores the sources of our mistakes and the robustness of the evidence. It considers the implications for public policy of us being absolute beginners about the sources of our wellbeing. Paul Dolan is a Professor in the Department of Social Policy, LSE. He is the chief academic advisor on economic appraisal to the Government Economic Service and a seconded member of the Behavioural Insight Team in the Cabinet Office.

Contributor(s): Branko Milanovic | Inequality is a surprisingly slippery issue, involving not just straightforward comparisons of individuals, but also comparisons of price and consumption differences around the world – and over time. In this lecture Branko Milanovic, the lead economist at the World Bank's research division, will approach the issue in a new and innovative way, focusing on inequality in income and wealth in different time periods and contexts: from inequality in Roman times (and how it compared with inequality today), to depictions of wealth inequality in literature (Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina), to inequality across generations of a single family (the three generations of Obamas illustrating this theme). As for global inequality today, the talk will examine its main cause (differences in average incomes between countries), the role China and India might play, and, perhaps most importantly, whether global inequality matters at all, and if does, what can we do to reduce it. Branko Milanovic is one of the world's leading experts on inequality. He is lead economist at the World Bank's research division in Washington DC, a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and the author of The Haves and Have Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality.

Contributor(s): Dr Tom Farrow, Professor Raimond Gaita | What role does forgiveness play in our private lives and in politics? And can neuroscience contribute to a more nuanced understanding of our ability to forgive? Tom Farrow is a senior lecturer in psychiatric neuroimaging in the Medical School at the University of Sheffield and a honorary NHS clinical scientist. Raimond Gaita is professor of moral philosophy at King's College London.

Contributor(s): Harriet Harman MP | The three main political parties have committed to the target of spending 0.7 per cent of Britain's Gross National Income on overseas aid from 2013. But, at a time when the government are embarking on a programme of deficit reduction, that political consensus cannot be allowed to lead to complacency. Harriet Harman MP, Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, will set out the arguments for overseas aid and, in a changing economic and political environment, the political challenge of increasing the aid budget. Harriet Harman QC MP is the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, a position she has held since October 2010. She is also Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, a post she was elected to in 2007, and Shadow Deputy Prime Minister. She has previously served in the Government as Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Equalities, Solicitor General and Minister of Justice. She has been the Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham since 1982.

Contributor(s): Patrick French | Award-winning historian Patrick French looks at the cultural roots of India's transformation: how a stagnant planned economy has become an entrepreneurial powerhouse, who gets super-rich and who remains super-poor - and why. Patrick French is the author of The World Is What It Is, Liberty or Death and Tibet, Tibet. This event marks the publication of his new book, India: A Portrait.

Contributor(s): Zainab Salbi | The talk will focus on the dichotomy of how peace and women's rights in Afghanistan are currently mutually exclusive. Zainab Salbi will address the issue on whether peace and women's rights go together in Afghanistan - is it possible to have both in this country or do they contradict each other and therefore are not attainable simultaneously? Zainab Salbi is founder and CEO of Women for Women International, a grassroots humanitarian and development organization helping women survivors of wars rebuild their lives. Mary Kaldor is professor of Global Governance and Co-Director, Centre for the Study of Global Governance, LSE.