In this episode, listen back to the launch of the EBRD’s Transition Report 2025-26: Brave Old World. Moderated by Richard Porter, EBRD Managing Director of Communications, the discussion brings together a distinguished panel:
Professor Sarah Harper CBE – Clore Professor of Gerontology, University of Oxford; Director, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing
Eghosa Omoigui – Founder and Managing General Partner, EchoVC Partners
Dr Nicholas Eberstadt – Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute
Beata Javorcik – EBRD Chief Economist

Brave Old World explores how demographic shifts are reshaping economies—from rapidly ageing societies to countries with youthful, fast-growing populations. The report examines declining fertility rates, the economic consequences of ageing, and the policy tools that can help countries adapt. These include extending productive working lives, accelerating automation, and enabling labour mobility.
The discussion also delves into how artificial intelligence, migration policy, and evolving societal values interact with demographic change across the EBRD regions and beyond.

This discussion examined whether and how emerging markets can use industrial policy to drive sustainable economic growth, diversify economies and enhance competitiveness while navigating global geopolitical uncertainty and avoiding the mistakes of the past. It explored how these economies can manage the delicate balance between national competitiveness and international cooperation.

Speakers: Richard Porter, MD, Communications, EBRD Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist, EBRD Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Director, Bruegel Bernardo Sestini, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SIAD Group Leslie Maasdorp, CEO of British International Investment

The discussion covered the latest economic forecasts for the regions where the EBRD invests. The EBRD’s Chief Economist, Beata Javorcik, and leading regional experts discussed the challenges confronting policymakers amidst rising geo-political tensions and intensifying pressures on government finances.

Speakers: Jonathan Charles, Strategy Advisor Sergey Guriev, Dean, Professor of Economics, London Business School Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist, EBRD Lord Jim O'Neill of Gatley

Read it here: https://2024.tr-ebrd.com

The discussion featured

• Charlotta Källbäck, Head of Internal Audit, Volvo Cars
• Sandra Bates, specialist on mining and clean energy with Executive and non-Executive Director experience
• Mark Keese, Head of the Skills and Employment Division, OECD
• Professor Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist, EBRD

Moderated by Jonathan Charles

The report entitled “Transitions big and small” discusses the ways in which the deep structural transformation of the global economy is impacting the lives, livelihoods and living conditions of people across the EBRD regions. It focuses on important “big transitions” such as the shift towards a sustainable economy, the reconfiguration of global supply chains, and the scramble for the raw materials required by the digital and green economies.

The report uses unique data from the fourth round of the Life in Transition Survey, a household survey conducted in 2022 and 2023, to see how these macro-level trends translate into “small transitions”: career moves, changes in physical and mental health, the refurbishment of housing and – ultimately – changes in people’s satisfaction with life.

• Jonathan Charles, Strategic Communications Consultant and Broadcaster

Speakers

• Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist, EBRD
• Fiona Hill, Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, The Brookings Institution
• Harold James, Professor of History, Princeton University
• Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Guido Goldman Distinguished Scholar for Geostrategy, GMF
• Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History, Oxford University

Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist, EBRD
Moderator

Jonathan Charles, Strategic Communications Consultant and Broadcaster
Speakers

Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics, Institut d'Études Politiques
Heike Harmgart, Managing Director, Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, EBRD

Macroeconomic and financial sector stability are essential for the continued functioning of the economy and maintaining the war effort. Supporting and stimulating the real economy are the key elements of its economic sustainability.

Participants:

• Odile Renaud-Basso,  President,  EBRD
• Tymofiy Mylovanov, President, Kyiv School of Economics
• Torbjörn Becker, Professor of economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics – SITE and CEPR
• Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist, EBRD (moderator)

A global pandemic, lockdowns, supply-chain disruption, war in Europe, rocketing gas prices, forced mass migration, high inflation, growing debt burdens, reshoring, friendshoring … This non-exhaustive – yet quite exhausting – list would be enough of a challenge for governments and businesses to manage over a decade or more. And yet, all of this has happened over the past three years, with the prospect of more turbulence to come. 

It is clear that there is no going back to the pre-pandemic “business as usual”. Our approach to work has been revolutionised, while the war and the energy crisis are transforming our views on energy and food security, prompting a major rethink of how economies and businesses obtain critical raw materials and complex parts and components.

The title of this year’s Transition Report – “Business Unusual” – encapsulates the tectonic changes that policymakers and businesses have been dealing with and will continue to face for some time to come. The report focuses on how these developments have played out in the EBRD regions. Based on recent surveys providing a plethora of new data and on other newly compiled information, the report presents a wealth of analysis that can inform public policy and business decision-making.

Speakers

• Philip Bennett is a former First Vice President and Head of the Client Services Group at the EBRD.
• Ivan Krastev is a political scientist, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna.
• Sabine Weyand is Director General for Trade at the European Commission. 
• Beata Javorcik is EBRD Chief Economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford.
• Jonathan Charles is a former Managing Director of the Communications Department at the EBRD. 

Participants: 
Beata Javorcik - Chief Economist, EBRD
Sergei Guriev – Professor, Sciences Po Provost

Heike Harmgart – EBRD Managing Director, SEMED
Jonathan Charles (Moderator) - former EBRD Managing Director, Communications

At a time when we’re living through the highest inflation in decades, a cost of living crisis and dramatically falling rates of growth, the new Fearonomics episode looks at the cost of discrimination to the global economy.

Despite the recent advancement in the equality of rights and inclusion, 45 per cent of American workers have experienced discrimination in the past year, according to Gallup.

The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2022 report states that around 2.4 billion women of working age lack equal economic opportunities and 178 countries maintain legal barriers that prevent their full economic participation.

In early 2022,the LGBTQ+ advocacy group HRC Foundation published a study showing that LGBTQ+ workers in the US earn about 90 cents for every dollar earned by a typical heterosexual worker.

Join Jonathan Charles, the EBRD’s Managing Director of Communications, Sergei Guriev, former EBRD Chief Economist and currently Professor of Economics at Science Po, and Beata Javorcik, the EBRD’s Chief Economist who is also Professor of Economics at Oxford University, to discuss how to protect the world economy’s most vulnerable groups.

Listen to the latest episode of Fearonomics on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts.

Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #Fearonomics

 You can rate, review and subscribe to Fearonomics on iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud.

The new episode of the EBRD’s  Fearonomics podcast looks at the most common fears around migration.

The rate of growth of displaced people in the world is alarming. A 100 million is the latest UNHCR estimate -which equals to 1 per cent of the global population.

This stark anti-record reflects the precarious state of the world we are in.

The War on Ukraine, other conflicts, human rights violations, persecutions and violence are behind the unprecedented movement of people.

At the same, as the Covid-19 restrictions are being lifted across the world, the economic migration is expected to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels.

For centuries, the world has been living with the idea that migration has to hurt us and bring the world down. But why? Why are we so afraid of migrants?

Listen to Jonathan Charles, the EBRD’s Managing Director of Communications, in discussion with Sergei Guriev, former EBRD Chief Economist and currently Professor of Economics at Science Po, and Beata Javorcik, the EBRD’s Chief Economist who is also Professor of Economics at Oxford University.

Listen to the first episode of Fearonomics on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts.

Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #Fearonomics

 You can rate, review and subscribe to Fearonomics on iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud.

The new episode of the EBRD’s  Fearonomics podcast explores the risks of future pandemics.

With new cases of monkeypox globally detected, the looming risks of growing anti-microbial resistance and the impact of climate crisis, is the next pandemic just around the corner?

The IMF has recently forecasted the global cost of the Covid-19 pandemic will rise beyond $12,5 trillion through 2024, fuelled by vast gaps in vaccination rates, widening divergence between rich and poor and disproportionate gender impacts.

But we have yet to suffer many of the hidden costs of the pandemic.

Such as the impact of education missed, the toll taken on mental health, the eroding of trust in governments.

Listen to Jonathan Charles, the EBRD’s Managing Director of Communications, in discussion with Sergei Guriev, former EBRD Chief Economist and currently Professor of Economics at Science Po, and Beata Javorcik, the EBRD’s Chief Economist who is also Professor of Economics at Oxford University.

Are we ready for the next pandemic?

Listen to the first episode of Fearonomics on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts.

Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #Fearonomics

 You can rate, review and subscribe to Fearonomics on iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud.

In the new episode of the EBRD’s  Fearonomics podcast Jonathan Charles, the EBRD’s Managing Director of Communications,  Sergei Guriev, former EBRD Chief Economist and now Professor of Economics at Science Po, and Beata Javorcik, the EBRD’s current Chief Economist, examine the threat to our economies from inflation and whether we risk an era of stagflation.

Policymakers had to step up support for businesses and the population at large when Covid-19 was at its worse. The strain on public budgets was palpable – even before Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The latest IMF forecast sees “war-induced commodity price increases and broadening price pressures” pushing inflation in 2022 to 5.7 per cent in advanced economies and 8.7 per cent in emerging market and developing economies.

So what’s next? Destabilised financial markets? Stagflation? Is this what the future of poverty looks like?

Listen to Fearonomics on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Review our podcast or tweet us @EBRD #Fearonomics

 You can rate, review and subscribe to Fearonomics on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud.

The new episode of the EBRD’s  Fearonomics podcast explores the risks of rolling back globalisation.

Globalisation connected the world’s economies as never before. Cross-border trade in goods and services became a routine.

The financial crisis of 15 years ago highlighted how fast contagion can spread around the globe.

The Covid pandemic exposed how fragile supply chains can be. And now Russia’s war on Ukraine suggests that economic links can be a source of weakness, not strength.

Listen to Jonathan Charles, the EBRD’s Managing Director of Communications, in discussion with Sergei Guriev, former EBRD Chief Economist and currently Professor of Economics at Science Po, and Beata Javorcik, the EBRD’s Chief Economist who is also Professor of Economics at Oxford University.

Will the war on Ukraine – and the sanctions imposed on Russia as a result - deliver a fatal blow to the concept which has underpinned our understanding of the world economy for decades?

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In its second episode the EBRD’s new Fearonomics podcast is exploring what are the risks and solutions to the global energy crisis.

Listen to Jonathan Charles, EBRD’s Managing Director, Communications, Sergei Guriev, EBRD former Chief Economist and professor of economics at Science Po and Beata Javorcik, EBRD’s Chief Economist (current) and also professor of Economics at Oxford University discussing  

As Europe scrambles to find alternatives to Russian gas, some countries face the prospect of rationing and even fuel poverty.

Energy security, which had slipped down the priority lists of western policymakers, has made a big come back. 

Even before the outbreak of the war on Ukraine, the hike in energy prices had brought coal use globally to record levels over last winter, whilst clean energy use decreased- a worrying tendency.

Meanwhile, the latest UN International Panel for Climate Change report warning  that even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.

The next few years are critical, say the researchers, because if emissions aren't curbed by 2030, it will make it become impossible to limit warming up of climate.

Is there any way to avoid the climate catastrophy?

Listen to the first episode of the Fearonomics on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Review us podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #Fearonomics

 You can rate, review and subscribe to Fearonomics on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud.

EBRD’s new podcast confronts biggest economic fears

Listen to a new EBRD podcast called “Fearonomics”, which aims to help confront – and overcome - fears about the global economy by looking at the latest economic data, debunking myths and defining the risks to watch out for.

Jonathan Charles, EBRD’s Managing Director, Communications, will be discussing the most pressing issues with Sergei Guriev, EBRD former Chief Economist and professor of economics at Science Po and Beata Javorcik, EBRD’s Chief Economist (current) and also professor of Economics at Oxford University.

They will explore a wide range of economic fears from global famine to energy security and the death of globalisation.

In its first episode Fearonomics will be exploring whether the looming food crises is avoidable.

Even before the war on Ukraine and the pandemic according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, 690 million people or 9% of the world’s population, were already facing food insecurity and hunger.

Now with Food Price Index reaching highest levels of all time, the consequences could be stark: from price hikes to social riots.

Is there any way to avoid the catastrophe?

Listen to the first episode of the Fearonomics on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Review us podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #Fearonomics

 You can rate, review and subscribe to Fearonomics on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud.

Our EBRD First Vice-President Jurgen Rigterink is in conversation with Mohamed El-Erian, an Egyptian-American, born in New York, with wide experience as an academic, investor and advisor. He graduated in Economics from Queens College, Cambridge, and took his PhD at Oxford, before starting a hugely successful career which has taken him from the IMF to the investment firm PIMCO, where he became CEO and Co-CIO, and then into a portfolio of academic, public service and other roles. Foreign Policy magazine named him as a Top 100 Global Thinker four years in a row.

He is currently President of Queen’s College, and chief economic advisor at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO.  He is a professor of practice at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), a columnist at Bloomberg News, a Financial Times contributing editor, on the board of several non-profits and one corporate board, and has advised governments and industrial and financial companies.  He has served as chair of President Obama's Global Development Council and was President of Harvard Management Company.  You can find out more about him here.

COP26, or the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, will bring international stakeholders together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It takes place next month in Glasgow. 

The stake are very high, as the climate emergency, highlighted in the IPCC report from earlier this year, requires urgent and decisive action from the world’s governments. 

The climate emergency cannot remain an abstract notion but must become a strong driver of macroeconomic policy if we are to avoid the “hell of earth,” the report concluded.

Our COP 26 special EconTalk gathered experts in the field to discuss climate action, the obstacles to achieving net-zero, and the social and economic implications of a Just Transition. 

Join Jonathan Charles, EBRD Managing Director for Communications, in conversation with:

Professor Mike Spence, a Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences (2001). He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Jean Pisani-Ferry, a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.  He holds the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Chair of the European University Institute in Florence and is a senior fellow at Bruegel.

Beata Javorcik, EBRD Chief Economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford.

The discussion was opened by a special address from Odile Renaud-Basso, EBRD President.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks.

“Telecommuting”, “quaranteams”, “doomscrolling”, “upperwear” and curating one’s Zoom background have all become a part of our new remote working reality. If we were unnerved by the way digital technology was transforming our world before the pandemic, Covid-19 has only made the speed of change even faster,

It is estimated that in the next five years close to 85 million jobs may be displaced by algorithms, artificial intelligence and robotics.

According to the World Economic Forum Jobs Report 2020, “automation, in tandem with the COVID-19 recession, is creating a ‘double-disruption’ scenario for workers. Technological adoption by companies will transform tasks, jobs and skills by 2025. Time spent on current tasks at work by humans and machines will become equal.”

The report also estimate that 97 million new roles may emerge as the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms emerges.

Our presenters Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law discuss what the Covid-19 transformation means to the future of work in the latest episode of our podcast Pocket Dilemmas. They are joined by: 

Jason Furman, the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics,

Beata Javorcik, our Chief Economist and Professor of Economics, University of Oxford.

Is the future of work already here? What is a bigger threat to our future: Covid-19 or robots? All of this and more in our latest podcast.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

With the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) scheduled for  November, governments are under growing pressure to meet their national commitments to decarbonise.

Green transition at scale will require a lot of collaboration and, in a global economy still in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, finance will have a key role to play in ‘building back better’ and ‘building back greener’.

For instance, one proposal as to how to fund a green recovery from Covid-19 is through carbon taxation. It can change the status quo by encouraging investments in innovation and climate friendly technologies. But without inclusive policies addressing existing inequalities it risks making the poor poorer.

The Governor of the Banque de France, François Villeroy de Galhau, recently called for a decarbonisation of trillions of euros worth of corporate bonds.

But how realistic it is for already struggling firms and industries to survive new heftier taxes?

This and many other questions are discussed in our latest episode of Pocket Dilemmas podcast, where Kerrie Law and Jonathan Charles are joined by:

* EBRD’s Director of Research Ralph de Haas

* Associate Professor of Economics at Imperial College London, Ralf Martin

Can finance reduce pollution during the Covid-19 crisis? Listen to our latest episode.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the 15April 1991, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development opened its doors for business for the first time.

It was conceived by its founders as ‘a new and unique structure of co‑operation’ for a continent still recovering from the shock of the collapse of communism.

Its mission then, as now, was to further progress towards market-oriented economies and promote private and entrepreneurial initiative.

So, at the age of 30, how is the EBRD doing? What are the challenges for its future? What has the EBRD taught some of its former staff?

This special discussion brought together four EBRD Chief Economists, past and present, who shared their insights into the Bank and its influence on the countries where it works, global development and the world of international financial institutions.

The inaugural Chief Economist of Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank, Erik Berglof, talked about the technical banking skills which are unique to the EBRD as well as its knowledge of its regions. These are  particularly important  as the Bank helps them overcome the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.

“Technical skills, structuring projects, infrastructure or financial… All those skills we assume in the models, but when you live with them on a daily basis…, it is both humbling and reassuring,” he said.

“At this point most economies are still on life support. Nobody knows what the real state of the economy is… Then we will see the first firms fighting for survival. And the true test will be: will the firms close to the governing elites be bailed out?,” said the current EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik in a stark warning of the challenges ahead.

Lord Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment stressed some positives that the coronavirus pandemic has brought about, such as people being less averse to change and a unified willingness to build back better.

Sergei Guriev, now Professor of Economics at Science Po  in Paris, highlighted the importance of digitalisation for inclusive recovery, especially when some of the EBRD regions enjoy only partial internet coverage.

The discussion was joined by EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso and chaired by EBRD Communications Managing Director Jonathan Charles.

 Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks.

The Multilateral development banks were set up after the Second World War to be the original impact investors, fighting poverty, inequality or more currently climate change. 

 “To demonstrate our impact is crucial at a time where multilateralism is often challenged, when there is a tendency to think that, we are more effective when we work at a country level than at the global level. And I think that the ability to show that and acting in this mutual framework is helpful to deliver some impacts on values because we are building on a very good experience,” said EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso during the opening of the digital discussion.

Now more than ever, the MDBs have a very important role to play. The Covid-19 recovery will not be easy. The climate emergency is here. Furthermore, the national governments are dealing with growing mountains of debt.

How can we ensure that multilateral lending is effective to help the world emerge from this crisis? What is “iwashing” and the difficulty of attribution were all discussed by:

Dean Karlan is the Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University and President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action

Pavan Sukhdev is an environmental economist, banker, former Special Adviser and Head of UNEP's Green Economy Initiative, currently CEO of GIST Advisory, and President of WWF International;

Beata Javorcik- EBRD’s Chief Economist and Professor of Economics at Oxford University.

The discussion was chaired by EBRD Communications Managing Director Jonathan Charles.

 Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks.

Inequality is emerging as the “biggest policy challenge” during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, with the World Bank estimating that extreme global poverty is to rise for the first time in over 20 years. 

“The coronavirus pandemic is possibly the first so-called ‘global event’”, said Professor Branko Milanovic in the latest EBRD Economics Talk.

 Sir Angus Deaton, Nobel Prize laureate, also took part in the discussion on the nature of inequality and how it will be aggravated by the pandemic.

EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik sounded the alarm about coronavirus’s impact on emerging markets across the EBRD regions.

What’s next? How can our societies be made more equal? What are the roles of the state and the private sector in combatting inequality?

Professor Angus Deaton is a Nobel Prize laureate in Economics and Senior Scholar at the School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.  His latest book “Deaths of Despair” is co-written with Anne Case and is a ground-breaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America’s working class.

Professor Branko Milanovic is a Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a senior fellow at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality.

Beata Javorcik is the EBRD Chief Economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford.

The discussion was joined by EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso and chaired by EBRD Communications Managing Director Jonathan Charles.

 Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks

EBRD's Anthony Williams was join by a great line up of guests:

Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) where she is Founding Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).

Dani Rodrik is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

A special video message from Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, University Professor at Columbia University.

EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik and the new EBRD president Odile Renaud-Basso.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks

It’s been almost a year since reports of a new strain of coronavirus first emerged. Even back then the IMF was sounding the alarm about the high and rising levels of debt in developing economies.

Today, after lockdowns and severe economic contractions, debt is growing almost as fast as the coronavirus pandemic is spreading.

“It’s not the moment to be timid on debt crisis resolution,’ says the World Bank’s Chief Economist, Carmen Reinhart.

“Proposals need to be bold in terms of delivering debt reduction for the debtors. Because, if not, … risks of the lost decade are very big.”

What’s next? How can we manage the debt crisis which appears to be fast approaching?

Listen to Carmen Reinhart, Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times and Beata Javorcik, EBRD Chief Economist discussing the challenges ahead. The discussion was moderated by the EBRD’s Head of External Communications, Anthony Williams.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks

The full cost of the coronavirus pandemic is still unknown. But state spending has skyrocketed as governments try to protect whole sectors and industries which were put into induced comas this spring. 

How will we pay our debts incurred during this crisis? What will be the price of recovery?

In this coronavirus special, EBRD Managing Director of Communications, Jonathan Charles and EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik were joined by:

Willem H. Buiter, the former Citibank Chief Economist and Member of the Monetary Policy committee of the Bank of England (and former EBRD Chief Economist as well). He was awarded the CBE in 2000;

Martin Wolf, Chief economics commentator at the Financial Times;

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDEconTalks

Our Pocket Dilemma podcast presenters, Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law, were joined on Zoom by:

• Peter Pomerantsev-  Senior Fellow, LSE. Author: This is Not Propaganda, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible
• Samuel Woolley- Professor, University of Texas at Austin, Founding Director, Digital Intelligence Lab and the author of “The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth”

They discussed the ethical aspects of technology, including transparency, use of data and trust. Is fact-checking effective? What regulations are necessary to control private sector tech companies?

Peter Pomerantsev stressed that importance lies in trust:

“There is something bigger at stake here that relates to trust and transparency. We still live in the internet that is essentially we don’t really see how materials produced and created. I compare it old school restaurants where you couldn’t see into the kitchen.”

Samuel Woolley voiced a word of warning on the use of AI:

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning get used for scale. They can be used to massively amplify a particular point of view or to suppress another point of view and that’s kind of frightening.”

As Peter Pomerantsev observed:

“We live in this weird paradox where there is more information than ever before but actually much less information about what stands behind this information.”

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In only a few months, the coronavirus pandemic has seriously shifted the balance of power between the state and the private sector. How is this impacting our politics and economies? 

This Pocket Dilemmas podcast special on capitalism in the post-Covid-19 era was organised by the EBRD and the Athens Democracy Forum (in association with The New York Times).

Joseph Stiglitz, Economist and Professor, Columbia University, Beata Javorcik, EBRD Chief Economist, and Roger Cohen, the Athens Democracy Forum Host and Advisory Board member and New York Times Op-Ed columnist, discussed how and whether capitalism will survive the coronavirus pandemic.

The speakers highlighted the challenges that the capitalist societies will have to address going forward.

“We have greater inequalities, not only in income and wealth, but also huge inequalities in health. This virus is not an ‘equal opportunities’ virus; it goes after people with pre-existing conditions. So the inequalities in our system have been very strongly manifested,” Joseph Stiglitz said. “In a way, the people who are put most at risk are the ones that we’re paying the least too.”

Beata Javorcik highlighted that the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed a “generational conflict”. “The face of capitalism will change depending on what extent the younger generation will be modelised through the pandemic,” she said. 

“We’ve seen in this crisis that capitalism is not working. We knew it before, it’s not working and it’s increasing inequality in our societies to a degree that is simply becoming intolerable,” Roger Cohen commented. “Capitalism at its current form is also impacting the environment”.

This special episode was presented by Jonathan Charles, EBRD Managing Director for Communications, and it was livestreamed on Facebook.

The Future of Capitalism will be one of the discussion themes at the 2020 Athens Democracy Forum, held in Athens and live-streamed from 30 September to 2 October.

The Forum is convened annually by the Democracy and Culture Foundation in partnership with The New York Times, engaging policymakers, politicians and diplomats; corporate (CSR) executives; notable academics and students; NGO, foundation and think tank leaders; youth activists; and media experts/practitioners.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD @ForumAthens  #PocketDilemmas

In this coronavirus special, EBRD Managing Director of Communications, Jonathan Charles and EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik were joined by:

Sir Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His latest book is “The Future of Capitalism: Facing The New Anxieties” (2018). 

Colin Mayer CBE, Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. His latest book on the subject is “Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good”.

EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti also made a special appearance at the event ahead of the discussion.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD  #EBRDEconTalks.

How brittle is this new found faith in those who govern us? Will it outlive the peak of the  

global coronavirus pandemic or will it decline as our societies return to relative normality? Could populism and distrust of ‘elites’ return with a vengeance later on?

Our Pocket Dilemma presenters, Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law, were joined on Zoom by:

Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at UC Berkeley, California, US, author of The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era;

Sergei Guriev, our former Chief Economist, who teaches a course on populism at Sciences Po, Paris, France; He is a co-author of the recent survey “Political Economy of Populism” and the leader of the Research and Policy Network on Populism at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and a moderator of VoxEU’s debate page on populism;

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The coronavirus pandemic has already turned global politics and economics upside down. Are there lessons to be learnt from previous crises? What will happen to the nation state and how will Covid-19 impact the European project? What happens when millions of people are forced to stay at home and have time to imagine a world run differently than in the past?

In this Coronavirus special live event join us for a preview of Ivan Krastev’s new book on the coronavirus pandemic and its implications for Europe. He was also joined by EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik, and Martin Sandbu, the Financial Times columnist and author of the FT’s “Free Lunch”.  

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes or tweet us @EBRD  #EBRDEconTalks

The coronavirus pandemic is changing our attitude to far more than just public health. The ways we work, socialise and travel may not be the same again for some time.

But does the impact of Covid-19 affect men and women differently? Coronavirus seems to have a higher fatality rate in men. At the same time, women may suffer more from the economic fallout from the crisis, be vulnerable to domestic abuse and often have to provide the increased amount of childcare which comes with lockdowns. 

Our presenters Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law were joined on Zoom by Linda Midgley, PwC specialist in Sustainable Strategy and SDGs, Dawn Duhaney, Partnership Manager at Wellcome Trust UK and Sonya Barlow, co-founder of Like Minded Females, to discuss whether the pandemic exacerbates existing gender inequality.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For all the loss of human life and damage to the economy inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, could the disease herald opportunities as well as threats? Could now be the time for socially responsible and impact investing to transform the global economy for the post-Covid-19 era?

Our presenters, Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law, were joined on Zoom by the EBRD’s Alexia Latortue and Stuart Trow to discuss whether we can make investing for good the new norm.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

More and more countries have responded to the coronavirus pandemic by closing themselves off from the rest of the world and shutting their borders, either partially or altogether. Even the European Union’s Schengen zone has reintroduced border checks.

Our presenters, Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law, were joined on Zoom by our Chief Economist, Beata Javorcik, and the Associate Director of the Centre for Global Development, Helen Dempster, to discuss the future of open borders and freedom of movement across them. What happens when the pandemic dies down and, eventually, comes to an end?

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We say goodbye to our former Chief Economist Sergei Guriev and look back at his 3 years at the EBRD.

This special episode, recorded in August, focuses on the main themes of his time with us: reforms, democracy and economic growth.

Join Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law in conversation with Sergei Guriev, now a Professor of Economics at Sciences Po in Paris, to find out what it’s really like to be the Chief Economist of a major multilateral development bank.

Does the uncontrolled growth of large cities endanger smart and sustainable living?

From adaptive traffic lights to wooden skyscrapers, what is the future for our cities? Will they look more like an urban paradise or suburban sprawl stretching as far as the eye can see?

Could algorithms help us adopt the right policies to control and manage the growth of our urban spaces?

Join Jonathan Charles in conversation with Jacques Bughin, Director of the McKinsey Global Institute, and our own Tara Shirvani to discuss what key factors make cities fit for living, working and growing.

Ivan Pazos, a Spanish architect and the lead author of an award-winning study predicting cities’ expansion, also joined us to explain how disruptive technologies can help make them grow in a sustainable way.

Where are the peoples of Germany, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union three decades on?  we ask in this very special episode of our Pocket Dilemmas podcast.

How far have their dreams of freedoms and prosperity been realised?

And what is the future for market economics, democracy and political pluralism in these EBRD regions?

Our special guests, BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg, author of a new documentary on the 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik, help us shed light on these questions and the influence exerted on them by the rise of populism.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

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What are the lessons to be learnt from Chernobyl? How does one decommission a power plant which has been the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident and manage its legacy?

The EBRD has been working on making the Chernobyl nuclear power plant safe for over 25 years, as explained in the latest episode of the Pocket Dilemmas podcast. Taking part are:

• Simon Evans of the EBRD’s Nuclear Safety team
• Irina Velichko, a lead engineer at the site who joins us live from the site  

As usual, the hosts of the Pocket Dilemmas podcast are Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law

Like what you hear? Be sure to click the ‘like’ button and rate us on iTunes

Episode notes:

US Nuclear Energy Institute released a fact sheet

Chernobyl podcast

EBRD YouTube Chernobyl

 Earlier this year Bill Gates tweeted an infographic showing ‘how much life has improved over the last two centuries,’ particularly as measured by an apparent decline in extreme poverty. The graph provoked fierce debate amongst economists across the globe.

In this episode of Pocket Dilemmas our presenters, Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law, were joined by our Chief Economist, Sergei Guriev and the Chief Economist of the UK Department for International Development, Rachel Glennerster to discuss the past, present and future of poverty.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On this week’s episode of Pocket Dilemmas we speak to Kitt Carpenter Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University, and Cevat Aksoy, one of our economists, on the LGBTQI pay gap and were surprised by some of the findings from the research.

For example, on average gay men in the United States earn 11 percent less than heterosexual men, while lesbians earn 9 percent more than heterosexual women.

As usual, the hosts of the Pocket Dilemmas podcast are Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law.

Like what you hear? Be sure to click the ‘like’ button and rate us on iTunes.

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow us on Twitter @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas and email us via dilemmas@ebrd.com.

 We recorded the most recent episode of Pocket Dilemmas in front of a live audience in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital Sarajevo, host of last week’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Business Forum.

Our presenters, Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law, led a discussion of the most pressing challenges of our time - climate change, technology, urbanisation, resource scarcity and global power shifts- inside the country’s Parliament Building. There was also a Q&A session with the audience.

The line up of guest for this episode included:

• Alexia Latortue, EBRD Managing Director, Corporate Strategy
• Sergei Guriev, EBRD Chief Economist,
• Neil Buckley, Financial Times, Chief Leader writer
• Tim Judah, Economist Correspondent for the Western Balkans, and Fellow at IWM - Institute for Human Sciences
• Hemant Kanoria, Chairman and Managing Director of India’s SREI Group

Also taking part were Leo Johnson, host of BBC Radio 4’s FutureProofing, Petre Shilegov, Mayor of Skopje, and Erion Veliaj, Mayor of Tirana.

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Rate, review and subscribe to our podcast, Pocket Dilemmas

What is the future of money? Are cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin a modern-day miracle or a mirage? We invited our very own Stuart Trow and Zeynep Gurguc from Imperial College London to help us resolve this week’s dilemma on our podcast Pocket Dilemmas.

We also talked to Jelena Madir, Chief Counsel and our main blockchain expert, and Urmas Peiker, the founder of Funderbeam, the world's first primary and secondary marketplace for earlystage investments, secured by the blockchain.

As usual, the hosts of the Pocket Dilemmas podcast are Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• Liberland : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland
• Discussing IBM’s foray into blockchain – based payment systems -- https://www.cnbc.com/bitcoin/
• Funderbeam clip
• Gox faced questions long before crisis: Sources – https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/30/mtgox-faced-questions-long-before-crisis-sources.html
• The US dollar to reign supreme for decades to come -- https://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/24/future-of-money-what-currencies-will-look-like-in-25-years.html

What is the future of work? How will technology, automation and AI change our jobs and will we and our children actually have jobs the way we do now? Will, in fact, the future be a battle between us and the machines?

This week we have Jason Furman from Harvard Kennedy School and our Chief Economist Sergei Guriev as our guests to help us resolve this dilemma on our podcast Pocket Dilemmas.

As usual, the hosts of the Pocket Dilemmas podcast are Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Show notes:

• War of the Worlds (The Eve of the War) – Jeff Wayne (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eCAphdQPck)
• AI isn’t taking our jobs – but it is changing how we recruit – Brian Peccarelli (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/ai-is-changing-the-way-we-recruit)
• Will a robot take your job? – BBC news (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941)
• Our soft skills can keep robots in their place – Ed Conway (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/our-soft-skills-can-keep-robots-in-their-place-hzzp609hl)
• Global unemployment hits lowest point for 4 decades – Steve Johnson (https://www.ft.com/content/1e8f4cf4-f257-11e8-ae55-df4bf40f9d0d)
• 5 things I’m telling my kids to prepare for in the future – Stephane Kasriel (https://www.fastcompany.com/90247298/5-things-im-telling-my-kids-to-prepare-them-for-the-future)
• Work in transition – EBRD Transition Report 2018-2019 ( https://www.ebrd.com/transition-report-201819)
• Are we living in a time of unprecedented migration? Hein de Haas (https://sharingperspectivesfoundation.com/video-lecture/video-1/)

How do governments use them to create legislation? What are the ethical implications of the algorithm use for policy-makers?

We invited Jonnie Penn, Google Technology Policy fellow, and Dawn Duhaney, Partnerships Manager at UK Wellcome Trust to be our guests and help us resolve this dilemma on our podcast Pocket Dilemmas.

As usual, the hosts of the Pocket Dilemmas podcast are Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law

Like what you hear? Review our podcast on iTunes, email us at dilemmas@ebrd.com, or tweet us @EBRD #EBRDdilemmas

You can rate, review and subscribe to Pocket Dilemma on ITunes, Spotify and Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• Measuring the new economy – 2014 OECD report (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/341889/725159/OECD+Manual+Measuring+the+Digital+Economy/6418c566-4074-4461-9186-9ad509bc4a4d)
• Kirk Bansak, the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) at Stanford University, https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/su-i-aaf011218.php
• What is an algorithm? https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/articles/z3whpv4

The Pocket Dilemma hosts, Jonathan Charles and Kerrie Law, welcomed a great line up of guests, including:

Sergei Guriev, EBRD Chief Economist
Elina Ribakova, Deputy Chief Economist, IIF, Visiting Fellow, Bruegel
Michael Kitson, Senior Lecturer in International Macroeconomics, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

Tweet: @EBRD #EBRDdilemma
Email us your dilemma: dilemmas@ebrd.com

Notes:
Mythbusters EU:

blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/

The rise of word Brexit:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37896977

Pocket Dilemmas is presented by a broadcasting legend Jonathan Charles and an amazing Kerrie Law.

They explore the burning issues of today- from algorithms to cryptocurrencies with a great selection of guests.

Join them! Coming soon and subscribe!