IFS annual lectures

The IFS/CPP annual lectures have featured some of the world's top economists (including two Nobel Laureates) discussing policy issues of global importance. You can watch or listen to many of the recent lectures below.

2020

Gus O’Donnell - The Covid Tragedy: following the science or the sciences? 

Read the full speech here.

Previous IFS/CPP annual lectures

2019
Pinelopi (Penny) Goldberg: The unequal effects of globalization

Professor Goldberg is the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and is on public service leave from Yale University, where she is the Elihu Professor of Economics. Professor Goldberg brings decades of experience as an applied microeconomist drawn to policy-relevant questions in trade and development. She has exploited a broad set of methodological approaches to provide insights into such diverse topics as the determinants and effects of trade policies, trade and inequality, intellectual property rights protection in developing countries, exchange rate passthrough, pricing to market, and international price discrimination. 

Download Professor Goldberg's slides

2018
Janet Currie: Life, death, and mental health: How access to care helps children succeed

Professor Janet Currie is Chair of the Department of Economics at Princeton University. Professor Currie’s research focuses on health and wellbeing, especially of children. She has written about early intervention programs, programs to expand health insurance and improve health care, public housing, and food and nutrition programs. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health and access to health care, environmental threats to health, and mental health.

Download Professor Currie's slides

2017
David Autor: Economic and political consequences of China's rise for the United States: lessons from the China shock

Professor David Autor is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a world expert on the effect of trade on the labour market and wages. Much of Professor Autor's research has focused on the impact of technological change and globalisation on inequality. In particular, his work has examined the effects of increased US-China trade on employment, politics and even marriage rates, addressing both the economic benefits and the costs of trade integration.

Download Professor Autor's slides

2016
Angus Deaton: Can the government make us happy? Should it try?

Professor Sir Angus Deaton is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. In October 2015 he was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He chairs the IFS Deaton Review of inequality.

2015
James Banks: Extending working lives: a solution to the challenges of an ageing population?

Drawing on more than 20 years of empirical research Professor James Banks, one of the principal investigators of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a co-director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at IFS, and one of the UK's leading researchers in the economics of ageing, gave the 2015 IFS annual lecture.

Download Professor Banks' slides

2014
Raj Chetty: The determinants of social mobility: New evidence and policy lessons

Professor Raj Chetty is the Bloomberg Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Chetty's research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on tax policy, unemployment insurance, and education has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony.

2013
Stephen Machin: Economics of education research and the making of education policy

Professor Stephen Machin is Professor of Economics at University College London and Research Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. His work focuses on a range of topics including labour market inequality, the economics of education, and the economics of crime.

2012
Andrew Dilnot: Numbers and public policy: the power of official statistics and statistical communication in public policy-making

Sir Andrew Dilnot is Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford and recent chair of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support and the UK Statistics Authority. Andrew was director of IFS between 1991 and 2002.

2011
Esther Duflo: Rethinking policy towards global poverty

Professor Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at MIT and a founder and director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research network specializing in randomized evaluations of social programs, which won the BBVA Foundation "Frontier of Knowledge" award in the development cooperation category. Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behavior, education, access to finance, health and policy evaluation. On 14 October 2019, Esther was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Download Professor Duflo's slides

2008
Vince Cable: Revisiting the framework of economic policy

Sir Vince Cable MP has been the member of Parliament for Twickenham between 1997 and 2015, and from 2017 onwards. He was leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2017 to 2019, and has published several books on economics and the financial crisis. In his IFS Annual Lecture, Sir Vince argued that over a decade of steady growth, low inflation and ever expanding employment were threatened by the consequences of severe asset inflation (and, potentially, deflation) and financial instability and imported inflation.

2007
Tim Besley: The political economy of data

Professor Sir Tim Besley is School Professor of Economics of Political Science and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics in the Department of Economics at LSE. In his IFS Annual Lecture, Professor Sir Tim looked at the production of data and statistics as a purposeful activity by the state and private organizations in both historical and modern settings.

Download Professor Sir Tim's slides

2006
Alan Auerbach: The importance of inheritance tax

Professor Alan Auerbach is Professor of Economics and Law at the University of California at Berkeley. In his IFS Annual Lecture, Professor Auerbach argued that taxing inheritance may be unpopular, but it has an important role to play in the tax system.

Download a summary of Professor Auerbach's talk

IFS events

For conferences, seminars and other events, see the IFS events page.