Speaker: Professor Stephany Griffith-Jones, Financial Markets Director, Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University (part-time); Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex; and Research Associate at Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London.
Chair: Victor Murinde, AXA Professor in Global Finance, SOAS University of London
Abstract
Professor Stephany Griffith-Jones will draw from her many years of research and providing policy advice on reforming the international and national financial architecture, with emphasis on domestic financial sector from a development perspective, as well as macro-economic management of capital flows in emerging and low income countries. For example, the seminar will draw from the Oxford University Press 2010 book, co-edited with Joseph Stiglitz and Jose Antonio Ocampo, Time for a Visible Hand, which deals mainly with financial regulation. In the paper for this seminar, available as Working Paper No. 10/2018 on https://www.centreforglobalfinance.org/2018-working-papers, it is argued that capital account liberalization involves significant risks, as well as benefits, for developing countries, and especially low-income ones, which are subject to strongly pro-cyclical capital flows. The financial instability and real macroeconomic instability that capital flows generate is a strong argument of why low-income countries should be cautious in the capital account liberalization process. So, their lag in this regard should be seen as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. If these countries decide to liberalize, they must previously put in place strong domestic financial and capital account regulations, including of a macro-prudential type. This seminar will provoke debate, including generating new research ideas and policy perspectives on innovative financial technologies for financing sustainable economic development in low income countries.
A sandwich lunch will be served.
The seminars are sponsored by grants from DFID and ESRC [ESRC Ref: ES/N013344/2], ESRC and NSFC [ESRC Ref: ES/P005241/1] and AXA Research Fund