Ozlem Onaran - 'A policy mix of equality-led development and public investment'

Date: Wednesday 9 March 2016 
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Ozlem Onaran
Talk Title: 'A policy mix of equality-led development and public investment’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine's College

Speaker
Ozlem Onaranis is Professor of Workforce and Economic Development Policy at the University of Greenwich and the director of the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre. She has done extensive research on issues of inequality, wage-led growth, employment, globalization, gender, and crises. She has directed research projects for the International Labour Organisation, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Foundation of European Progressive Studies, the Vienna Chamber of Labour, the Austrian Science Foundation, and Unions21. She is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of  Hans Boeckler Foundation, member of the Coordinating Committee of the Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies, member of the Policy Advisory Group of the Women’s Budget Group, and a research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has more than seventy articles in books and peer reviewed journals such as Cambridge Journal of Economics, World Development, Environment and Planning A, Public Choice, Economic Inquiry, European Journal of Industrial Relations, International Review of Applied Economics, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Eastern European Economics, and Review of Political Economy.

Talk Overview
Ozlem Onaran will discuss the current state of the global economy in the era of secular stagnation, and present empirical evidence about the impact of financialization and the simultaneous race to the bottom in labour’s share on investment and growth in the global economy. 

Next, she will present an alternative scenario based on a policy mix of wage increases and public investment. A coordinated mix of polices in the G20 targeted to increase the share of wages in GDP by 1%-5% in the next 5 years and to raise public investment in social and physical infrastructure by 1% of GDP in each country can create up to 5.84% more growth in G20 countries. The final section of the talk will addresses policy alternatives for achieving an equitable and sustainable development path.

Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.