More and more the realisation that markets are not self-contained systems but need other social spheres to function well, has sunk in. Such spheres can be found in the government, but also in civil society and local, national or global communities. The risk is that markets undermine or invade either the state or the community-spheres. Why is a balance needed and how can this be achieved? What does it require from the various spheres, as ‘pillars’ of a good market society?
About the speakers
Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016. Euromoney magazine named him Central Banker of the Year in 2014. Between 2003 and 2006, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. He co-authored Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists with Luigi Zingales in 2003 and recently his book The Third Pillar; How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind was published.
Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. From 1998–2003 he took a five-year Public Service leave during which he was Director of the Research Development Department of the World Bank. He is currently a Professeur invité at Sciences Po and a Director of the International Growth Centre. Collier has written for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. His most recent work The Future of Capitalism; Facing New Anxieties was published in 2018.
About the series
How did we get here? From income stagnation to inequality and social dislocation: there are plenty of culprits for the increase in populism across the developed world. But for economists Paul Collier and John Kay, there is a deeper cause: the rise of an extreme individualism at the expense of community, of which narcissistic politicians such as Donald Trump are simply the “apotheosis”.
In The Third Pillar Raghuram Rajan offers up a magnificent big-picture framework for understanding how these three forces--the state, markets, and our communities--interact, why things begin to break down, and how we can find our way back to a more secure and stable plane.
The Future of Capitalism is a passionate and polemical book, in which economist Paul Collier gives a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism - economic, social and cultural - and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it.
Towards a new market economy in Europe for future generations.
