Widening income disparities are leading many economists and policymakers to question some foundational elements of our current economic system. Indeed, income inequality has ceased to be purely a problem of resource allocation, to be delegated to academia, and has rapidly emerged as a serious economic problem with the capacity to undermine the stability of our social and political order. The lecture will review some of the problems created by widening income disparities, both for policymakers and, more generally, for social cohesion and sustainable economic development. It will also explore several ways in which inequality could be mitigated over the medium term, all of them within the grasp of governments everywhere, particularly in the developing world, where inequality has especially undesirable consequences.
About the speaker
Augusto Lopez-Claros is Executive Director of the Global Governance Forum. He is an international economist with over 30 years of experience in international organizations, including most recently at the World Bank. For the 2018/2019 academic years, Augusto Lopez-Claros was on leave from the World Bank as a Senior Fellow at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Previously he was chief economist and director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was also the editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication. Before joining the Forum he worked for several years in the financial sector in London, with a special focus on emerging markets. He was the IMF’s Resident Representative in Russia during the 1990s.
