Revolution, Inflation, Inequality and Climate Catastrophe: Who Said the Lockdown Was Boring?

This is the program that will enlighten our understanding of economics and policies related to key issues of inflation, climate change, and wealth and income inequality.

Mark Blyth is the William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He holds a joint appointment in the department of political science.

Blyth’s research spans two main areas. The first focuses on the political power of economic ideas as seen in his books Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002) and Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (New York: Oxford University Press 2015).

The second area of Blyth’s research concerns the political economy of the rich democracies as seen in his 2015 book The Future of the Euro (New York: Oxford University Press 2015), Angrynomics (New York: Columbia University Press 2020), and in his forthcoming book on the politics of economic growth (with Lucio Bacarro and Jonas Pontusson) The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation (Oxford University Press 2022).

He has over 40 published peer-reviewed journal articles in places such as the European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies, The Review of International Political Economy, The Journal of Evolutionary Economics, World Politics, The American Political Science Review, and New Political Economy.

Blyth is a regular contributor to the journal of the Council for Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs and has appeared multiple times on NPR, BBC, and Bloomberg. Blyth contributes to several Podcasts.

Megan Greene is a Global Economist and Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, where she is teaching and writing a book on the drivers of income and wealth inequality and how to address them. She is also the Dame DeAnne Julius Senior Academy Fellow in International Economics at Chatham House in London.

Ms. Greene writes a regular column in the Financial Times on global macroeconomics and appears regularly on TV and radio outlets such as Bloomberg, CNBC, NPR, and BBC. She also serves on the Committee for a Regenerative Response to Covid19 and is a board member of NAEC (New Approaches to Economic Challenges) at the OECD, the National Association for Business Economists (NABE), the Parliamentary Budget Office in Ireland, Rebuilding Macroeconomics and Econofact. In addition, Megan is an Affiliate of the Rhodes Center Brown University, a Non-Resident Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She regularly advises governments and central banks in the US, UK, eurozone, and Japan.

Megan was previously Global Chief Economist at John Hancock/Manulife Asset Management, founder and Chief Economist at Maverick Intelligence, head of European Economics at Roubini Global Economics, and the euro crisis expert at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Peter Coy, the moderator, is an economics writer for the New York Times Opinion section. He moved to the Times in July 2021 after nearly 32 years at BusinessWeek and Bloomberg Businessweek.