29 September 2020

In a modern world, we have thriving cities and rural counties, the highly skilled elite and the less educated, wealthy, and developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it. How to save capitalism from itself? And what kind of future we might have?

Paul Collier
Paul Collier | Lecturer
Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He was the Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank between 1998 and 2003. In 2014, Paul Collier received a knighthood for services to promoting research and policy change in Africa. His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war; the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural resources rich societies; urbanization in low-income countries; private investment in African infrastructure. His latest book The Future of Capitalism: Facing The New Anxieties (2018) was included in Bill Gates' Five Books for Summer Reading 2019.
Moderator
Gerhard Toews
Assistant Professor of Economics
Materials