Raghuram Rajan

“THE THIRD PILLAR: HOW THE STATE AND MARKETS ARE LEAVING COMMUNITIES BEHIND FORTHCOMING»

CHIEF ECONOMIST AND DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (2003-06). GOVERNOR, RESERVE BANK OF INDIA (2013–2016).

Raghuram Rajan speaker, keynote

Throughout his three-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India, a central figure in the world’s third-largest economy, Dr. Raghuram Rajan both witnessed and helped shape the transformation of the global financial system. He now discusses the potential risks and rewards that face the major players in the global market—nations and corporations—and where the future of international economic policy is headed.

English

As the youngest chief economist and director of research to serve at the International Monetary Fund, Dr. Raghuram Rajan drew the attention of the world’s greatest bankers and financiers in 2005, when he delivered a prophetic warning to the Federal Reserve, in which he predicted the financial crisis that eventually struck in 2008. A distinguished economist with an intrinsic respect for the many risks that face the global market, Dr. Rajan explains how adopting sound and responsible policies will prevent the next great financial crisis.

In his Financial Times Business Book of the Year, «Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy» (2010), Dr. Rajan offered a prescient diagnosis of the economic and political consequences of growing inequality in industrial countries. He knows that the future need not be dark—opportunities and rewards await those with the patience and discipline to work for a better world. In his most recent book, «The Third Pillar: How the State and Markets are leaving Communities Behind forthcoming», 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.

Raghuram’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development, especially the role finance plays in it. His papers have been published in all the top economics and finance journals, and he has served on the editorial board of the American Economic Review and the Journal of Finance.

He is a senior advisor to BDT Capital, Booz and Co, and is on the international advisory board of Bank Itau-Unibanco. He is a director of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and on the Comptroller General of the United State’s Advisory Council.

Dr. Rajan is a member of the Group of Thirty. He is also President of the American Finance Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, the American Finance Association awarded Raghuram the inaugural Fischer Black Prize, given every two years to the financial economist under age 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the theory and practice of finance.

 

 

The Monetary Dilemma.

Easy money is having diminishing effect after years of accommodative policies. Dr. Raghuram Rajan weighs the significant risks incorporated by doing much more, with the difficulties of exiting from easy money. Not only will the first central bank that moves face significant costs, they could also be accused of failing their domestic mandate of maintaining inflation at reasonable levels. Dr. Rajan discusses possible ways policy could evolve, as well as the consequences to global asset prices, inflation and risk.

The Global Economic Outlook – the Opportunities and Challenge.

Even while overall growth seems tepid, tremendous financial opportunities still exist for both states and corporations. But with those opportunities, challenges are building. Dr. Raghuram Rajan knows this from firsthand experience—as governor of the Reserve Bank of India, he played a central role in the third-largest (and growing) economy in the world. In this discussion, he analyzes the economic impact of specific, targeted “global players”—large countries and common global forces—as opposed to a general overview of the world.

Democracy and Capitalism.

Democracy and capitalism tend to strengthen each other, across countries and over time, but not always. Dr. Raghuram Rajan describes the peculiar confluence of forces that are causing a wedge between democratic forces and markets today and why this is being expressed in the political movements we see. He argues that to preserve what is good in the global system of trade and finance, we need countries, especially large emerging markets, to step up and take leadership to move the dialogue forward. At the same time, industrial countries have to pay attention to domestic political demands to slow, or reverse, globalization and find ways to make angry citizens less anxious about the future. Dr. Rajan will discuss some policy options that could address these wide-ranging and impactful issues.

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists.

The Third Pillar. How Markets And The State Leave.

From one of the most important economic thinkers of our time, a brilliant and far-seeing analysis of the current populist backlash against globalization.

In The Third Pillar he 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 "third pillar" of the title is the community we live in. Economists all too often understand their field as the relationship between markets and the state, and they leave squishy social issues for other people. That's not just myopic, Rajan argues; it's dangerous. All economics is actually socioeconomics - all markets are embedded in a web of human relations, values and norms. As he shows, throughout history, technological phase shifts have ripped the market out of those old webs and led to violent backlashes, and to what we now call populism. Eventually, a new equilibrium is reached, but it can be ugly and messy, especially if done wrong.

Right now, we're doing it wrong. As markets scale up, the state scales up with it, concentrating economic and political power in flourishing central hubs and leaving the periphery to decompose, figuratively and even literally. Instead, Rajan offers a way to rethink the relationship between the market and civil society and argues for a return to strengthening and empowering local communities as an antidote to growing despair and unrest. Rajan is not a doctrinaire conservative, so his ultimate argument that decision-making has to be devolved to the grass roots or our democracy will continue to wither, is sure to be provocative. But even setting aside its solutions, The Third Pillar is a masterpiece of explication, a book that will be a classic of its kind for its offering of a wise, auth

The Third Pillar. How Markets And The State Leave.

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy

Rajan shows how the individual choices that collectively brought about the economic meltdown--made by bankers, government officials, and ordinary homeowners--were rational responses to a flawed global financial order in which the incentives to take on risk are incredibly out of step with the dangers those risks pose. He traces the deepening fault lines in a world overly dependent on the indebted American consumer to power global economic growth and stave off global downturns. He exposes a system where America's growing inequality and thin social safety net create tremendous political pressure to encourage easy credit and keep job creation robust, no matter what the consequences to the economy's long-term health; and where the U.S. financial sector, with its skewed incentives, is the critical but unstable link between an overstimulated America and an underconsuming world.


In Fault Lines, Rajan demonstrates how unequal access to education and health care in the United States puts us all in deeper financial peril, even as the economic choices of countries like Germany, Japan, and China place an undue burden on America to get its policies right. He outlines the hard choices we need to make to ensure a more stable world economy and restore lasting prosperity.

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists is a groundbreaking book that will radically change our understanding of the capitalist system, particularly the role of financial markets. They are the catalyst for inspiring human ingenuity and spreading prosperity. The perception of many, especially in the wake of never-ending corporate scandals, is that financial markets are parasitic institutions that feed off the blood, sweat, and tears of the rest of us. The reality is far different.


This book breaks free of traditional ideological arguments of the Right and Left and points to a new way of understanding and spreading the extraordinary wealth-generating capabilities of capitalism.

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists