Global issues around the flow of people, money, goods and services were at the forefront of the school's agenda last week as the Bank of England's Chief Economist paid us a visit.
Andrew Haldane, Honorary Professor, School of Economics, gave a public lecture entitled 'Four Freedoms', with staff, students and other visitors turning out in force to hear him speak.
Organised by the Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics, the talk looked at the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions after 1945, which heralded an increasingly integrated and cooperative international monetary and financial system.
Over the period since, global flows of goods and services, money and capital and people and ideas have risen rapidly to reach new high-water marks. Now there are concerns, the most serious in several generations, about the intellectual and practical pillars of this vision.
Local measures have contributed to global flows starting to ebb, and some of the areas of greatest concern today – flows of people and goods and services – would have been the least contentious as recently as a decade ago.
In his lecture, Andrew debated what evidence exists on the aggregate and distributional consequences of these various flows, and what the future might hold for them.
Professor Kevin Lee, Head of the School of Economics, said: "We are fortunate to have Andy as an Honorary Professor within the School of Economics. As always the lecture was insightful and well delivered, with important points of great relevance to students of economics."
The centre's next public lecture will be given by Sir Andrew Dilnot, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority.
Posted on Thursday 12th October 2017