Our forthcoming Annual Conference will be delivered live via Zoom Webinar and is free to all members (pre-registration required). Non-members are very welcome to attend for a registration fee of £150 + VAT. To register as a non member please click here. Media passes are available, please contact the office on admin@spe.org.uk

As economies recover from the pandemic (which shows no sign of abating with the emergence of Omicron) and we face new challenges in the post-COVID world, we have an outstanding line-up of speakers to take us through some of the various complex issues that we now face – from how monetary policy should deal with high inflation, to repairing the fiscal damage wrought by COVID-19, and perhaps the most challenging of them all – the economics of sustainability and managing climate change.

• Huw Pill, Chief Economist and Executive Director for Monetary Analysis, Bank of England, will discuss the outlook for UK monetary policy.
• George Magnus, Economist and author, formerly Chief Economist of UBS, will discuss the outlook for China during what is shaping up to be a challenging time for its economy
• Panel discussion on just how persistent global inflation might prove to be with Janet Henry, Global Chief Economist at HSBC; Roger Bootle, Chairman of Capital Economics and Tim Congdon, Institute of International Monetary Research
• Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will address how the public finances can be one again put on an even keel following the damage wrought by the pandemic.
• Panel discussion on what has become the most defining issue of our time – climate change and sustainability. To discuss this mighty topic we have Michele Della Vigna from Goldman Sachs’ Carbonomics research programme, Mallika Ishwaran, Shell’s Chief Economist, Bridget Rosewell of the National Infrastructure Commission and Dimitri Zenghelis from the London School of Economics.

Chaired by Stephanie Flanders, Head of Bloomberg Economics, this online event brings together policymakers and economists from across the spectrum, for what promises to be a lively and highly engaging debate on some of the most pressing issues facing the UK and global economies today.

Programme:

1300    Opening Address
             George Buckley, Society of Professional Economists

1305    Chair’s Introduction
             Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg Economics

1310    UK Monetary Policy Outlook
             Huw Pill, Bank of England

1350    Challenges for China
             George Magnus, Economist and Author           

1430    Panel: Global Inflation - Transitory or Persistent?
             Chair: Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg
             Janet Henry, HSBC
             Roger Bootle, Capital Economics
             Tim Congdon, Institute of International Monetary Research

1520    Break

1525    Repairing the Fiscal Damage
             Paul Johnson, Institute for Fiscal Studies      

1605    Panel: Climate Change and Sustainability - the Economics of Saving the Planet
             Chair: Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg
             Michele Della Vigna, Goldman Sachs
             Mallika Ishwaran, Shell International
             Bridget Rosewell, National Infrastructure Commission
             Dimitri Zenghelis, London School of Economics

1645   Chair’s closing remarks and close of conference

Meet our speakers

Stephanie Flanders has been Senior Executive Editor for Economics at Bloomberg News and head of Bloomberg Economics since October 2017. She was previously Chief Market Strategist for Europe at J P Morgan Asset Management in London (2013-17) and BBC Economics Editor (2008-13).  She served in the second Clinton Administration as speech writer and senior advisor to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers (1997-2001). She has also been a reporter at the New York Times, editorial-writer and economics columnist at the FT and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School.  In 2016 she was appointed Chair of the Inclusive Growth Commission for the Royal Society of Arts, which delivered its final report in March 2017.

Huw Pill is the Bank of England’s Chief Economist and Executive Director for Monetary Analysis and Research. He is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee. Huw is responsible for the analysis the Bank use to make their monetary policy decisions. He also leads the research that supports all of their other functions. Previously, Huw was Chief European Economist at Goldman Sachs (2011-18). Before that, he worked at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. He served as its Deputy Director of Research (2009-11) and Head of its Monetary Policy Stance Division (2004-09). And he worked in its Strategic Policy Issues unit (1998-2001).

George Magnus had a long and distinguished career in the City of London, becoming Chief Economist of UBS, and now works as an independent economist, author and speaker, specialising in China. He has written several books including “The Age of Aging” which considered one of society’s major challenges, and “Uprising: will emerging markets shape or shake the world economy?”, and most recently “Red Flags: why Xi Jinping’s China is in Jeopardy”.  He is currently an Associate at Oxford University’s China Centre and a Research Associate at SOAS in London.

Janet Henry was appointed as HSBC’s Global Chief Economist in August 2015. She was previously HSBC’s Chief European Economist and is a member of Handelsblatt’s Shadow ECB Council. Much of her research has focused on globalisation – including the global determinants of local inflation – and the political and economic challenges of the post global financial crisis era.  Since the COVID-19 outbreak her work has focused on the labour market implications, evolving inflation dynamics and policy challenges of the unprecedented recession and the recovery. Janet is a Governor of the UK’s National Institute of Economic and Social Research and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Chief Economists Community. She has given evidence to financial committees of the EU Parliament on China and UK House of Lords on Europe.

Roger Bootle is one of the City of London’s best-known economists. He is Chairman of Capital Economics, which he founded in 1999, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. From 1998 to 2017 Roger was a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee. He was formerly Group Chief Economist of HSBC and, under the previous Conservative government, he was appointed one of the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the so-called ‘Wise Men’. In 2012, Roger and a team from Capital Economics won the Wolfson Prize, the second biggest prize in Economics after the Nobel.  He is the author of seven books, including his latest “The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age.” He is perhaps best known for his book “The Death of Inflation”, published in 1996.”

Professor Tim Congdon CBE is an economist and businessman, who has for over 40 years argued in the UK policy debate that banking and money can have powerful influences on macroeconomic outcomes. He is currently chairman of the Institute of International Monetary Research, which he founded in 2014. The Institute is based at the University of Buckingham, where he is a professor of economics. His most influential position was as a member of the Treasury Panel of Independent Forecasters (the so-called “wise persons”) between 1992 and 1997, which advised the Chancellor of the Exchequer on economic policy in a successful period for the UK economy. In June 2017 a collection of papers Money in the Great Recession, edited by Professor Congdon, was published by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

Michele Della Vigna is the Commodity Equity business unit leader in EMEA, Goldman Sachs, coordinating strategy and content across the Global Equity Energy and Natural Resources teams in Global Investment Research (GIR).He is a member of the GIR Client and Business Standards Committee and European Investment Review Committee. Michele also manages Carbonomics, a research series he started in 2019 that leads GIR’s efforts to model the cost curve and investment requirements to achieve net zero carbon, engaging with corporates, investors and policymakers across the globe on climate transition.

Mallika Ishwaran is Shell’s Chief Economist. She advises on macroeconomic issues, economic trends, and related policy matters to shape Shell’s long-term scenario outlooks. She leads strategic engagements on energy transitions with national and city governments across the world, notably a multi-year collaboration with the Chinese government. Mallika also advises on Shell’s strategic policy and advocacy approach to support the company’s energy transition strategy. She sits on a range of external advisory boards. Prior to joining Shell, she was Deputy Director at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs responsible for evidence and analysis across the environment, food, and green economy portfolio. She has held senior positions across the UK government, including at the Cabinet Office as Head of Policy Analysis for the 2009 G20 London Summit. Before that, Mallika worked in senior economics and policy roles in the USA.  

Bridget Rosewell CBE is an experienced director, policy maker and economist, with a track record in advising public and private sector clients on key strategic issues. She is a Commissioner for the National Infrastructure Commission in the UK, Chair of Atom Bank and of the M6 Toll Company and a non-executive for Northumbrian Water Group, as well as founder and Senior Adviser of Volterra Partners.   She has been Senior Independent Director for Network Rail, Chair of Risk for Ulster Bank and Chief Economic Adviser to the Greater London Authority.  Her book, ‘Reinventing London’ was published in 2014.  She has worked on HS1, Crossrail, Crossrail2 and HS2.

Dimitri Zenghelis is Special Advisor for the Wealth Economy Project, which he previously led, at the Bennett Institute, University of Cambridge and is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. He is a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and is Chair of the Responsible Wealth Committee at Capital Generation Partners. He was until recently Head of Policy at the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE and Acting Chief Economist for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Previously, he headed the Stern Review Team at the Office of Climate Change, London, and was a lead author on the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, commissioned by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown.

Entry is FREE for all members but pre-registration is required. Click here to register as an SPE member.

For non-members, the conference costs £150 + VAT. To register as a non member please click here.

Join the SPE now to obtain free access to the conference.

Non-members can also attend for free if they join as a member of the Society (£100). For more details on SPE membership please visit the membership pages of this website or contact the office on admin@spe.org.uk or +44 (0) 1264 737552. We look forward to hearing from you.