We are delighted to be returning to our annual in-person conference, kindly hosted by Bloomberg LP in their offices at 3 Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4N 4TQ.

Chaired by Stephanie Flanders, Head of Bloomberg Economics, speakers include Silvana Tenreyro, External Member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee; Danny Blanchflower, Dartmouth College, US and Chris Giles, Economics Editor at the FT.

Registration and a light lunch is from 12.00 ahead of conference start at 13.00. Networking drinks will follow the close of conference.

This conference is FREE to attend and tickets will be given on a first-come first-served basis. Non-members wishing to attend can do so if they join the Society, for further info please click here. Media passes may be available, please contact the office on admin@spe.org.uk.

Programme:

INTRODUCTION

12.00   Registration & light lunch

13.00   Opening Address
             George Buckley, Chair, SPE

13.05   Chair’s Introduction
             Stephanie Flanders, Head of Bloomberg Economics

SESSION 1

13.10   Keynote Address
             Silvana Tenreyro, External Member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy
             Committee

13.50   Panel: China’s Economic Challenges
             Freya Beamish, Chief Economist, TS Lombard
             Tom Orlik, Chief Economist, Bloomberg Economics
             Mark Williams, Chief Asia Economist, Capital Economics

14.30   Panel: Making Economics Fit for the Future
             Angus Armstrong, Director of Rebuilding Macroeconomics, Institute
             For Global Prosperity, University College London
             Wendy Carlin, Professor of Economics, University College London
             Sarah Smith, Professor of Economics, University of Bristol

        
15.15    Tea

SESSION 2

15.35   Panel: Fiscal Policy - How to deal with yet another crisis
             Chris Giles, Economics Editor, Financial Times
             Julian Jessop, Independent Economist
             Gemma Tetlow, Chief Economist, Institute for Government

16.20   Panel: The Inflation Genie
             David G Blanchflower, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College USA
             Stephen King, Senior Economic Adviser, HSBC
             Gerard Lyons, Chief Economic Strategist, Netwealth
             Anna Wong, Chief US Economist, Bloomberg LP

17.10   Chair’s closing remarks and close of conference       

17.15   Post conference drinks

Meet the Speakers:

George Buckley is Chair of the Society of Professional Economists. He joined Nomura in January 2017 as their Chief UK Economist & Co Head of European Economics, having previously been Deutsche Bank’s Chief UK Economist. He has 18 years’ experience in the City, following a PhD at the University of Bristol (housing and mortgage markets).

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).

Silvana Tenreyro has been a external member of the Monetary Policy Committee since 2017 and a Professor in Economics at the London School of Economics. She obtained her MA and PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Before joining the Bank, she was co-Director and Board member of the Review of Economic Studies and Chair of the Women’s Committee of the Royal Economics Society. Since 1 January 2021, she is the President of the European Economic Association.

Freya Beamish rejoined TS Lombard in 2021 as Head of Macro research and became Chief Economist in June 2022. In 2011, she joined Charles Dumas and Diana Choyleva in identifying a loss of competitiveness of Chinese firms, leading to the slowdown in growth, and sharp rise in leverage.

Tom Orlik is Bloomberg’s Chief Economist, based in Washington DC. Previously, Tom was the Chief Asia economist for Bloomberg and China economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based in Beijing. Prior to a decade in China, he worked at the British Treasury, European Commission, and International Monetary Fund. He is the author of Understanding China’s Economic Indicators (FT Press) and China: The Bubble that Never Pops (OUP).

Mark Williams is Chief Asia Economist at Capital Economics.

Angus Armstrong  is Director of the ESRC’s Rebuilding Macroeconomics network, part of the Institute for Global Prosperity at UCL. The grant has supported forty research projects, from mainstream to inter-disciplinary, and published eighty-five Working and Discussion Papers. Angus was a ESRC Senior Fellow during the EU and Scottish referendums, and Special Advisor to Parliamentary Committees while Director of Macroeconomics at NIESR. He was Head of Macroeconomic Analysis at HM Treasury and represented the UK at the Officials meeting at the 2009 G20. He is Chief Economic Adviser to Lloyds Banking Group, has a PhD from Imperial College and is an Honorary Professor at Stirling University.

Wendy Carlin is Professor of Economics in the Economics Department at University College London (UCL), Research Fellow of the CEPR and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is a member of the Expert Advisory Panel of the Office for Budget Responsibility. In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to economics and public finance and in 2022 elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sarah Smith is Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol, where she has been a faculty member since 2005. She was Head of Economics from 2014 – 2021. Previous positions include at the London School of Economics, the Financial Services Authority, HM Treasury and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Chris Giles became economics editor for the Financial Times in 2004, having previously served as a leader writer. His reporting beat covers global and UK economic affairs and he writes a UK economics column fortnightly. Before joining the FT as economics editor, he was an economics reporter for the BBC, worked for Ofcom, the telecommunications regulator and started his career with seven years as an economist for the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Julian Jessop is an independent economist. He has thirty-five years of experience gained in the public sector, the City and consultancy, including stints at HM Treasury, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, and Capital Economics. Julian now works mainly with policy thinktanks, notably the Institute of Economic Affairs, and is a supporter of ‘Trussonomics’.

Gemma Tetlow is Chief Economist at the Institute for Government and leads the Institute’s work on economic issues and public finances and also works across the institute’s other programme areas. Gemma was previously Economics Correspondent at the Financial Times and before that led the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ work on public finances and pensions.

David G Blanchflower is the Bruce V Rauner Professor of Economics at Dartmouth, the University of Glasgow and NBER.  He was an external member of the MPC from 2006-2009..

Stephen King is HSBC’s Senior Economic Adviser and a successful author. Stephen’s forthcoming book, We Need to Talk About Inflation, is due to be published by Yale in April 2023. His last book, Grave New World (Yale) - described by Lawrence Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, as ‘a very important book at a crucial time’ - was published in May 2017 to considerable critical claim: long-listed for the FT-McKinsey Business Book of the Year, it was later picked as a ‘book of the year’ by the Financial Times. His previous book, When the Money Runs Out (Yale) was selected as a ‘book of the year’ by the Financial Times, the Economist and the Times. Since 2018, Stephen has been a regular columnist for the London Evening Standard.  He has written for, among others, the Financial Times, the Times, the Independent and the New York Times. 

Gerard Lyons is chief economic strategist and a shareholder at the wealth manager Netwealth, which he helped establish in 2016. He sits on the Board of Bank of China (UK), and of BGC (Europe), the global inter-dealer brokers. His current roles also include being a member of the advisory board of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment since its inception and being on the advisory board of Warwick Business School. He is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. He has previously been elected to the Council of the Royal Economic Society and served twelve years on the Council of the Society of Business Economists. His website is www.drgerardlyons.com 

Anna Wong Anna Wong is Chief US economist for Bloomberg LP. Prior to that, she was principal economist at Federal Reserve Board, Chief International Economist at White House Council of Economic Advisers, and Deputy Director at US Treasury for Office of International Economic Analysis. She received her PhD in economics from University of Chicago.