The NDC schemes introduced in Italy and Sweden in the mid-1990s and subsequently in Latvia and Poland successfully weathered the economic and financial crisis. Other countries are now considering the adoption of a similar system, since it would provide a benchmark for the correct planning of life cycles in societies with aging populations. But some adjustments are necessary.

Why do we have a tendency to postpone tasks such as saving for our retirement or for our children’s education? Evolutionary psychology and the study of birds’ and human behaviour can help us explain these phenomena.

Workers now nearing retirement face greater risks than any previous generations. We outline the three phases of retirement – accumulation, investment, and decumulation – and identify ways to better mitigate and manage the risks in each phase. Topics include financial literacy, a pension overview, and decumulation products.

Economic growth is assumed to be good for human wellbeing; and the case made for free markets is often that they will maximize growth. But recent research into determinants of human happiness questions whether growth should be the objective; and free markets in finance have clearly not delivered even the growth benefits promised. Adair Turner’s lecture will explore what economics can tell us both about desirable social objectives and about the means by which we pursue them. It will argue that while growth itself is not the primary objective, it is a likely result of other desirable aims, such as economic freedom. That alternative justification has, however, profound implications for important aspects of public policy.

Some people claim that the invisible hand is qualified as such simply because it doesn’t exist. In any event, it is evident that with the increasing globalization of markets poverty has certainly not been reduced. On the contrary, inequalities are on the rise, both between states and within national confines. A biting critique of contemporary capitalism paves the way for an alternative and more equal vision of the economy, but also of society.

Pre-crisis received wisdom assumed financial stability would follow from price stability; the crisis proved otherwise. This presentation will argue that price, financial and fiscal stabilities are intertwined due to financial frictions. In downturns, optimal monetary policy should identify and unblock balance-sheet impairments that obstruct the flow of funds to productive parts of the economy. In upturns, diligence is required to avoid the emergence of similar imbalances. Closer cooperation between central banks, fiscal authorities and financial regulators on an international scale is needed to overcome current challenges.

Like the man falling from the Empire State Building who, after 50 floors, says “So far, so good”, civil servants and bankers periodically insist that the crisis is under control. In this lecture, it is argued instead that we cannot continue on this path, and a minimum (and realistic) institutional reform and change in policies are necessary for the euro project to return to being a positive component in the lives of European citizens.

Strong growth in emerging-market economies and developing countries has lifted millions out of poverty, reducing the gap between rich and poor for the world as a whole. However, in many OECD countries, income inequality has actually increased over time. This poses a challenge for policymakers worldwide: how to achieve strong growth and ensure that its dividends are shared equitably. Investing in education and skills, guaranteeing access to quality public services and making the most of tax-benefit systems will be part of the answer.

A number of economists, such as Robert Gordon, have predicted that the world is entering a long period of low or no growth – that the Great Wave of growth since the Industrial Revolution was a one-off surge which is now abating. Others argue that too little is being invested in R&D to fuel future innovation and growth. What are the drivers of this gloomy prognosis? And how, through public policy, can these drivers be re-directed?

Policy makers have been encouraging capital to flow across borders. The benefits have to do with increased risk diversification and more efficient investment. The costs may have been inflated asset markets, bubbles and large current account deficits. Should we be in favour of more financial integration or stop the process?

Nemat Shafik will offer her unique perspective from the top management of the International Monetary Fund to discuss the current and future challenges facing the interconnected global economy.

Globalization and technological innovation are “atomizing”, breaking up productive cycles into a multitude of small distinct units. This is leading to the disappearance of routine work in the advanced countries and new forms of poverty. Job creation in these countries is concentrated in non-tradable services only, and is infrequently associated with growth in wages and productivity. How and at what level can these processes be governed and the social costs reduced?

Accountability induces a public official to work harder for citizens, and allows them to remove her from office if she performs poorly. On the other, it may cause the official to pander to public opinion and put too little weight on the well-being of minorities. In my lecture, I will consider the implications of these considerations for how accountable public officials ought to be.

Capitalism is increasingly damaging the capacity for democracy to exist in anything more than a superficial manner. In this time of endless crisis, citizens need to think in terms of moving toward a post-capitalist democracy, where the needs of energizing egalitarian politics have a much higher priority over the needs of investors and corporations.

I offer a conceptual and empirical overview of the evolving relationship between computer capability and human skill demands. I begin by sketching the historical thinking about machine displacement of human labor, and then consider the contemporary incarnation of this displacement—labor market polarization, meaning the simultaneous growth of high-education, high-wage and low-education, low-wages jobs—a manifestation of "Polanyi’s Paradox." I discuss both the explanatory power of the polarization phenomenon and some key puzzles that confront it. I finally reflect on how recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics should shape our thinking about the likely trajectory of occupational change and employment growth.

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth? In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. In this lecture, he will return to some of debates and discussions that followed the publication of his best-selling book in Europe, Asia and America.

The ratio of wealth over income is back to the levels at the end of the 19th century. It is however actually due to the rise in housing, itself due to better access to property after WWII and rising housing prices over the last 25 years. Worries about diverging wealth inequality have therefore been quite exaggerated.

In 2008 and 2009, the US economy experienced its deepest recession since the 1930s and the recovery, from what is now called the “Great Recession,” has been disappointing. Growth has been slow; the employed share of the working age population remains much below its level before the recession even though interest rates have been kept unusually low in an attempt to bolster the recovery. Moreover, a central feature of the US economy in recent decades has been a historic rise of income inequality.

In this talk, Professor Fazzari will link these two salient aspects of the US economy. He will summarize research that associates the large run-up of household debt prior to the Great Recession with the falling share of income earned by the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution. He will show that the end of this borrowing boom coincided with the onset of the Great Recession, and that the unusually large decline in spending was concentrated in the group of households whose income share had fallen. Finally, he will present evidence to support the view that that the decline in the share of income earned by the bottom 95 percent now constrains US household spending and therefore helps to explain the slow recovery from the Great Recession.

There is enduring policy interest in what is happening to social mobility. I summarise recent headline findings that policy-makers have referred to regarding trends and cross-national differences. I ask how we should interpret these findings, referring to measurement "basics" (concepts and measures, and data issues), and suggest topics about which we need to know more.

Around the world, the absence of political and economic rights for the poor majority is one of the biggest barriers to their upward mobility. In the absence of such rights, the political elite and the economic elite merge into a combined elite that preserves their grip on their highly unequal incomes indefinitely. Modern foreign aid programs can unintentionally make this problem worse by supporting such elites in poor countries. The presentation will illustrate these points with examples from Ethiopia, Uganda, and Colombia, as well as historical examples from New York City and Italy, and will also discuss the application to the U.S. and Europe today.

Inequality is high on the political agenda, but there have been few concrete proposals as to how it can be realistically reduced. In my talk I will outline ambitious new policies in five areas: technology, employment, the sharing of capital, taxation and social security. These provide new ideas as to how we can make serious inroads into reducing poverty and bringing about a fairer distribution of national income.

The paradox of our times is that global equality seems to be in tension with domestic equality: as the distribution of income in advanced societies has become more unequal, global income equality has actually fallen, thanks to rapid growth in low-income Asian countries (China in particular). In this talk, I will examine the links between these two processes and offer some ideas on how the tension can be eased.

Today Europe is experiencing a flow of refugees without precedent. What are the possible political and economic consequences of this migration? Many answers may come from analysis of previous movement by refugees. Retracing these episodes is also useful to avoid repeating the same mistakes made in the past.