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Found 59 results for "Kate Barker"

Reading Room (28)

Book Review Book reviews

The Price of Money

While a member of the MPC at the Bank of England, considerable time was devoted to thinking about two important concepts; the size of the output gap and the natural rate of interest. In theory these...

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On Natural Capital – The Value of the World Around Us

Dasgupta’s aim is to make the messages and conclusions of his Review* accessible and urgent to the general reader – albeit one who “is prepared to work hard with me”.  In this he is...

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Why We’re Getting Poorer

This book is quite a frustrating read. The author does not mean that we are all getting actually poorer, (although he provides sound accounts of types of inequality and points out that there are...

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The Measure of Progress

Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today's economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers. Only with a new approach to measurement will we be able to achieve the right kind of growth for the benefit of all.

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Industrial Policy for the United States

Orthodox economics notwithstanding, free trade is bad for America, some industries are better than others and government plays an indispensable role in commercialising and developing new technologies

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Growth

A revelatory account of the past, present, and future of economic growth - and how we should rethink it

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Capitalism and Crises

Drawing on history, philosophy, psychology, and biology as well economics, law, and finance, Mayer describes what has gone wrong, what needs to change, and how to fix it.

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Zero Interest Policy and the New Abnormal: a Critique

In the 'New Normal' central banks set their interest rate to zero and print money through massive quantitative easing, while finance ministries run huge fiscal deficits. Yet inflation remains minimal. Zero Interest Policy and the New Abnormal explains why.

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How to be a Successful Economist

Exploring the wealth of career opportunities open to those with an interest in economics, Pryce, Ross, Birdi, and Harwood reflect on how students can become successful economists.

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Investing Amid Low Expected Returns

Investing Amid Low Expected Returns: Making the Most When Markets Offer the Least provides an evidence-based blueprint for successful investing when decades of market tailwinds are turning into headwinds. 

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The Money Minders

In this book, NIESR director Jagjit Chadha unpacks the world of central banking, explaining in accessible language the analytical techniques, policy toolkits or simple story-telling that they use to understand the economy, to implement monetary policy and to communicate their decisions to key decision-makers and the wider public.

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Strategic Risk Management

In Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk, Campbell R. Harvey, Sandy Rattray, and Otto Van Hemert deliver a reimagining of the risk management process.

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The Resilient Society

The Resilient Society, by Princeton University economist Markus Brunnermeier, describes how individuals, institutions, and nations can successfully navigate a dynamic, globalized economy filled with unknown risks.

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How Boards Work:

In How Boards Work prizewinning economist, veteran board director, and bestselling author Dambisa Moyo offers an insider's view of corporate boards as they are buffeted by the turbulence of our times

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The Great Demographic Reversal

This book demonstrates how these demographic trends are on the point of reversing sharply, coinciding with a retreat from globalisation. The result? Ageing can be expected to raise inflation and interest rates, bringing a slew of problems for an over-indebted world economy, but is also anticipated to increase the share of labour, so that inequality falls.

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Understanding Affordability:

Written by two distinguished housing economists, this ambitious book tackles one of the most important socio-economic issues facing households today. Drawing from theoretical and empirical frameworks, the authors challenge conventional wisdoms in housing economics and policy and offer innovative recommendations to improve housing affordability.

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Productivity Perspectives

Productivity Perspectives offers a timely and stimulating social science view on the productivity debate, drawing on the work of the ESRC funded Productivity Insights Network. The book examines the drivers and inhibitors of UK productivity growth in the light of international evidence, and the resulting dramatic slowdown and flatlining of productivity growth in the UK.

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Extreme Economies:

In search of a fresh perspective on the modern economy, Extreme Economies takes the reader off the beaten path, introducing people living at the world’s margins. From disaster zones and displaced societies to failed states and hidden rainforest communities, the lives of people who inhabit these little-known places tend to be ignored by economists and policy makers. Leading economist Richard Davies argues that this is a mistake, and explains why the world’s overlooked extremes offer a glimpse of the forces that underlie human resilience, help markets to function and cause them to fail, and will come to shape our collective future.

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Productivity and Bonus Culture

Living standards in the UK and US are in danger of falling. A decline in growth due to poor productivity and an unfavourable change in demography has weakened the stand of liberal democracy, and voter dissatisfaction is encouraging populist policies that threaten even worse outcomes. Whilst living standards once grew faster than productivity they now grow more slowly, and the working population is no longer growing faster than the population as a whole. To avoid falling living standards the productivity problem must be addressed.

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Are Chief Executives Overpaid?

In this hard-hitting book, Deborah Hargreaves explains why pay for the top 0.1% has sky-rocketed in the past 20 years.

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Prosperity and Justice

The Final Report of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice The UK economy is broken. It no longer provides rising living standards for the majority. Young people face an increasingly insecure future. The gap between rich and poor areas is widening. Meanwhile the rise of giant digital companies, the advance of automation, and catastrophic environmental degradation challenge the very foundations of our economic model. This important book analyses these profound challenges and sets out a bold vision for change.

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Populism and Economics

Populism and Economics, Charles Dumas' latest book, examines the reasons for the rise in populism - Brexit and the election of Trump among other events - and how this discontent with the status quo has affected economics, both perceptions and reality.

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Central Banks into the Breach

Central banks play an important role in the course of national economies and the global economy. Their leaders are regularly feted or vilified, their policy pronouncements highly anticipated and routinely scrutinized. This is all the more so since the global financial crisis. The past fifteen years in monetary policy is essentially the story of two mistakes and one triumph, argues Pierre L. Siklos, a professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. One mistake was that central bankers underestimated the connection between finance and the real economy. The other was a failure to realize how inter-connected the world's financial system had become. The triumph, in turn, was the recognition that price stability is a desirable objective.

Book Review Book reviews

Unequal Democracy

The first edition of Unequal Democracy was an instant classic, shattering illusions about American democracy and spurring scholarly and popular interest in the political causes and consequences of escalating economic inequality. This revised and expanded edition includes two new chapters on the political economy of the Obama era.Larry Bartels offers a sobering account of the barriers to change posed by partisan ideologies and the political power of the wealthy. He also provides new analyses of tax policy, partisan differences in economic performance, the struggle to raise the minimum wage, and inequalities in congressional representation. President Obama identified inequality as "the defining challenge of our time." Unequal Democracy is the definitive account of how and why our political system has failed to rise to that challenge. Now more than ever, this is a book every American needs to read.

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Dynamic Economic Decision Making

Financial decision-making requires one to anticipate how their decision will not only affect their business, but also the economic environment. Unfortunately, all too often, both private and public sector decision-makers view their decisions as one-off responses and fail to see their decisions within the context of an evolving decision-making framework. In Decision-Making in a Dynamic Economic Setting, John Silvia, Chief Economist of Wells Fargo and one of the top 5 economic forecasters according to Bloomberg News and USA Today, skillfully puts this discipline in perspective.

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Phishing for Phools: the economics of manipulation and deception

Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception. Rather than being essentially benign and always creating the greater good, markets are inherently filled with tricks and traps and will "phish" us as "phools."

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Inequality: What can be done?

Inequality is one of our most urgent social problems. Curbed in the decades after World War II, it has recently returned with a vengeance. Anthony Atkinson has long been at the forefront of research on inequality, and brings his theoretical and practical experience to bear on its diverse problems. In this book, he presents a comprehensive set of policies that could bring about a genuine shift in the distribution of income in developed countries.

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Lost Causes

Lost Causes is Professsor Lal's collected thoughts on the state of the United Kingdom today, taken from pamphlets compiled for various UK think tanks from the late 1980s.

News (12)

Article News

Join the SPE today and get 18 months membership for the price of 12!

January is an excellent time for new members to join as we have a special wrap around offer whereby anyone joining now does not need to renew again until end June 2026 (thus gaining 18 month...

Article News

Join today and get 18 months membership for the price of 12!

January is an excellent time for new members to join as we have a special wrap around offer whereby anyone joining now does not need to renew again until end June 2025 (thus gaining 18 month...

Article News

Join today and get up to 18 months membership for the price of 12!

January is an excellent time for new members to join as we have a special wrap around offer whereby anyone joining now does not need to renew again until end June 2024 (thus gaining 18 month...

Article News

SPE Inaugural Summer Drinks!

Our inaugural Summer Drinks Reception for SPE members is being held in partnership with King’s College London, and will be held on Thursday 21 July 2022, 6.00-8.00pm, at Bush House, 30 Aldwych,...

Article News

Join the SPE today and get 6 months extra membership for free!

January is an excellent time for new members to join as we have a special wrap around offer whereby anyone joining now does not need to renew again until end June 2023 (thus gaining 18 month...

Article News

Join in the Spring 2021 and gain free months membership!

Members joining in the Spring do not need to renew their membership until end June 2022 - thus gaining extra months membership for the price of 12. With more than 1,400 members, the SPE is the...

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Catch up on this year's virtual Annual Conference

Miss this year's event? Then watch a recording of the event which took place on Wednesday 21 October via live Webinar. Although we were sorry not to be able to hold the event in person, going...

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Visit our Podcast page for the latest in the series of interviews

Although we are not able to hold physical meetings during the lockdown period, we have responded to the change in circumstances by producing a series of podcasts with leading economists. We hope that...

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Chairman's Report 2015-16

I am pleased to report that 2015-16 has been a year of significant progress for the Society of Business Economists. The Society’s membership has recovered to levels last seen before the Global...

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Kevin Daly takes over as Chairman of SBE

Kevin Daly, an economist at Goldman Sachs and previously Vice Chairman of the Society took over as Chairman at the SBE's Annual Dinner.  The outgoing Chairman, Dame Kate Barker said 'It has been a...

Article News

Improving the UK's Economic Statistics

In the wake of Sir Charles Bean’s “Independent Review of UK Economic Statistics”, published in March, the Office for National Statistics has recently launched a fresh and wide-ranging...

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Queen's Birthday Honours List

Congratulations to our Chairman, Kate Barker, who has been made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. She is one of the UK's most eminent economists and it is wonderful to see it being recognised in this way.

Podcasts & Speakers (6)

Conference Report Conference reports

2020 Conference Report

On Wednesday 21 October, the SPE's annual conference was delivered online to discuss the policy challenges facing the UK and global economies both during and in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic....

Conference Report Conference reports

2019 Annual Conference Report

The 2019 SPE conference was once again hosted by Bloomberg and moderated expertly by their Head of Economics Stephanie Flanders, who began by noting that economists might now be making greater...

Dinner Review Annual Dinner reviews

Annual Dinner 2018

220 members and guests gathered on 24th May for the Society's Annual Dinner, which was held in the Nash Room at the Institute of Directors. In the Society’s 65th year, it was a great honour to...

Dinner Review Annual Dinner reviews

Annual Dinner 2016

Around 140 members and guests gathered on 30 June for the Society's Annual Dinner in the Nash Room at the Institute of Directors. Our guest this year was Dr James Bullard, St Louis Fed President, and...

Dinner Review Annual Dinner reviews

Annual Dinner 2015

Members and their guests sat down to the Society’s Annual Dinner this year in the unaccustomedly exotic surroundings of the Conservatory at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel, which some likened to an...

Dinner Review Annual Dinner reviews

Annual Dinner 2014

Around 150 members and guests gathered on 27 March for the Society's Annual Dinner in Plaisterers' Hall at One London Wall. Our guest speaker this year was Christian Noyer, Governor of the Banque de...

What's on (11)

Event Past events

SPE Summer Drinks

Following the success of last year's inaugural Society of Professional Economists Summer Drinks Reception, in partnership with King's College London, we are delighted that this is being held again...

Event Past events

SPE Summer Drinks

Our inaugural Summer Drinks Reception for SPE members is being held in partnership with King's College London, and will be held on Thursday 21 July 2022, 6.00-8.00pm, at Bush House, 30 Aldwych,...

Event Past events

Online Careers evening with a difference!

Ever wondered what it’s like to work in one of the world’s largest investment banks? How it feels to be a member of the Monetary Policy Committee? Or what a Chief Analyst does in government? ...

Event Past events

SPE Online Conference 2020

Archive note: Registration for this past event is closed. View current SPE events. This year's Annual Conference will be delivered live via Zoom Webinar and is free to all members (pre-registration...

Event Past events

Webinar: Levelling up is hard to do: Analysing and supporting the 'left-behind'

On Thursday 2 July, the SPE will discuss analysing and supporting the 'left-behind'. Chaired by Dame Kate Barker, speakers include: Chris Giles is Economics Editor at the Financial Times, a position...

Event Past events

The UK and Global Outlook - Weak Growth, Policy Challenges

*This event is now closed for booking* To discuss the UK and global outlook and potential policy responses to the challenges that we face, we have an exceptional line-up of speakers at this year’s...

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Inflation Measurement

Chaired by Dame Kate Barker, our panel of speakers will discuss the future of RPI in light of the recent announcement from the Chancellor and the UKSA.   The speakers will also discuss the...

Event Past events

The future of central banks

Our panel of speakers will consider issues ranging from how monetary policy can be adapted at the zero lower bound to how central banksmight evolve more generally. Dame Kate Barker is presently an...

Event Past events

Integenerational Fairness

The idea that each generation should enjoy substantially higher living standards than the one before them lies at the core of Britain’s postwar economy. But this story of generational progress has...

Event Past events

UK Housing Debate: Housing for All?

Jeffrey Matsu, Senior Economist, RICS and Neal Hudson, Director, Residential Analysts, will debate the state of the UK housing market in what promises to be a lively and interesting session. Jeffrey...

Event Past events

AGM & UK Housing Debate: Does home-ownership matter?

The SBE's Annual General Meeting will be held at 5.15pm, and followed at 6pm by a debate on UK housing. Ian Mulheirn will describe a new model of house prices and home ownership and the factors...