The past year has brought us new challenges even as the old ones persist. If anything, the ongoing pandemic has taught us to think differently about tackling the challenges and questions we currently face when it comes to big issues like climate change, gender equality, inflation and economic measurement.
In this editor’s pick of 10 podcasts from the past year, we present (in no particular order) conversations with top thinkers on a range of topics and issues that we will continue to confront in 2022 and beyond.
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- Jayati Ghosh on Unpaid Care Work: In this installment in our Women in Economics series, Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, discusses how our whole notion of productivity is skewed because unpaid care work of children, elderly and other populations, primarily by women, is not captured in GDP.
- Miles Kimball on Measuring National Well-Being: For all its strengths in measuring a country's economy, GDP falls short when it comes to gauging the well-being of its residents. Miles Kimball, a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, describes his work in developing the principles for a national well-being index. The podcast is also subject of a recent article in Finance & Development.
- Divya Kirti on the Economics of Climate Change: Most economists would agree that a carbon tax is an effective way to reduce emissions. But what about private-sector efforts such as sustainable investing? Dviya Kirti, an economist in the IMF’s Research Department, talks about how such market forces could help make meaningful progress in addressing climate change.
- Gita Gopinath and Raghuram Rajan Talk Inflation: Efforts by central banks to control rising inflation will continue into 2022. IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath discusses that issue and more with Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF chief economist now professor at the University of Chicago.
- Ruchir Agarwal with a Proposal to End the Pandemic: There will be no durable end to the economic crisis until enough people around the world are vaccinated against Covid-19. Economist Ruchir Agarwal and IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath have joined forces to come up with a plan that would make that happen.
- James Stock on Making it Cheaper to be Green: Harvard’s James Stock discusses how policymakers will need to take a nuanced approach to carbon taxes. As green energy costs drop, the emphasis should shift from economy-wide carbon pricing to sectoral policies. Read more in his recent article for Finance & Development.
- Rana Foroohar on the Economic and Social Force of Big Tech: Rana Foroohar is the Global Business Columnist and Associate Editor at the Financial Times. In this podcast, Foroohar discusses what the exponential growth of Big Tech firms might mean for the global economy.
- Janet Yellen on Womenomics: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva celebrate International Women’s Day with a conversation about the advancement of women in the field of economics.
- Nikita Aggarwal on the New Morality of Debt: Nikita Aggarwal is a research associate at the Digital Ethics Lab at Oxford University’s Internet Institute. In this podcast, Aggarwal says our increasingly online lives prove a valuable source of data for lenders and add new dimensions to debt’s morality. Read her article on the subject in our March 2021 issue of Finance & Development.
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