CEPII, Recherche et Expertise sur l'economie mondiale
Thursday October 18, 2012
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Economiques, Université d’Etat


International Cooperation in Times of Global Crisis: Views from G20 countries

Highlights from the conference   
 Welcoming Comments

Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, President-délégué, CAE
Sergei Guriev, Rector, New Economic School
Marina Larionova, Head, International Organizations Research Institute, Higher School of Economics
Jean Pisani-Ferry, Director, Bruegel
 
Opening remarks
Ksenia Yudaeva, Head of the Expert Department of President of Russia, G20 Sherpa for Russia                 

18 October

SESSION 1.
A lost decade?

The global economy is facing more difficult challenges than what was earlier contemplated. A new pattern of current accounts is emerging, with the US deficit stabilizing while the Chinese surplus is declining and new surpluses are being accumulated by oil producers. At the same time advanced countries are experiencing protracted public and private sector deleveraging while emerging economies are having difficulties compensating the loss of external demand. What can G20 members do to steer economy towards balanced recovery?

Chair  
Jean Pisani-Ferry, Director, Bruegel

Speakers  
Jörg Decressin, Deputy Director, Research Department, IMF 
Alexei Moiseev, Deputy Finance Minister, Russia 
Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva, Deputy Governor, Banco Central do Brazil 
Jun Saito, Special Advisor, Cabinet Office, Japan 


SESSION 2.
How many international lenders of last resort?

The Asian crisis of 1997, the global crisis of 2008 and the Eurozone crisis of 2010 have all revived the question of the adequate schemes for international liquidity provision. Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has played a crucial role in providing liquidity in dollars. In the case of the Eurozone, it was clear from the onset that the IMF resources were not large enough and could only supplement a regional scheme. Whether the resulting combination of the regional and the multilateral level will be resilient to shocks and surprises is still uncertain. Thus the questions remain: is there a need to ex-ante combine the different tools of international liquidity provision in times of crisis, and if so, how to efficiently proceed? How the G20 can help build the process?
 
Chair                                    
Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, President-délégué, CAE
 
Speakers               
Eduardo Fernández-Arias, Senior Advisor, Inter-American Development Bank 
Barry Ickes, Acting Head, Department of Economics, Pennsylvania State University
Oleg Vyugin, Chairman, Board of Directors, MDM Bank
Francesco Papadia, Non Resident Scholar, Bruegel 
Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Professor, Johannes-Gutenberg-University of Mainz 
               
                                         
SESSION 3.
From debt to equity - The changing patterns of international financing

The theoretical neutrality of the financing mode (equity or debt) has repeatedly been put into question by the financial crisis of the past 20 years. Debt crises are indeed considered as more harmful than crashes in stock prices, although the two can easily be combined. In parallel, new needs for equity financing arise, in particular those related to climate change, while new capital requirements are disincentivizing banks and insurance funds to hold equity.
 
Chair                     
David Vines, Professor, Oxford University
 
Speakers               
Martin Gilman, Director, Centre for Advanced Studies, Higher School of Economics
Eduardo Levy-Yeyati, Professor, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution 
Andres Sutt, Senior Adviser to the CEO, European Financial Stability Facility 
Lúcio Vinhas de Souza, Managing Director and Sovereign Chief Economist, Moody's Investors Service
Chang-Hyun Yun, President, Korea Institute of Finance 

 
19 October
 
Opening remarks               
Arkady Dvorkovich, Deputy Prime Minister, Russia
 
SESSION 4.
Energy and natural resources in a globalised economy
Oil and natural gas production in non-OECD countries has reached a new record in 2011 and the Brent oil price is constantly above $100. Consequently, fossil fuel bills of OECD countries and fossil fuel rents of non-OECD countries remain huge causing significant financial flows and current account imbalances. At the same time, major importers such as the European Union, the US and China have started to diversity their consumption towards renewable energy sources and/or domestic natural gas. This has the potential to strongly affect some exporter countries external position over the medium to long term - and might even affect their investment decisions today. Against the background of these politically induced changes in the global energy supply structure some form of energy policy coordination might be necessary. Otherwise, discretionary national energy policy decisions might put at risk business investment decisions in other countries, ultimately harming global energy supply. We want to discuss how the G20 could contribute to the proper outline of such a framework? In the end, is it a matter of cooperation or competition between countries?
 
Chair                     
Sergei Guriev, Rector, New Economic School
 
Speakers               
Rabah Arezki
, Economist, IMF
Vladimir Drebentsov, Vice-President and Chief Economist, BP Russia 
Louis Skyner, Leading Legal Counsel, Statoil Russia
Christof van Agt, Senior Researcher, Clingendael International Energy Programme 


SESSION 5.
Can the G-20 escape diminishing returns?
The G20 had a very strong start but its effectiveness has been constantly declining since the 2009 London summit. Considerable effort was invested in macroeconomic discussion but little was delivered in the end. Ambitious plans for reforming global financial safety nets or the international monetary system did not result in meaningful achievements. More was done in the field of financial regulation though this was actually more the result of work done at the FSB than the effect of G-20 decisions. At the same time, problems that emerged in G20 governance have not been solved and this hinders both its legitimacy and its effectiveness.
 
Chair                     
Ignazio Angeloni, Director General, Financial Stability, ECB and coordinator and contributor, G20 monitor
 
Speakers               
Thomas Bernes, Distinguished Fellow, CIGI
Sergei Karaganov, Dean, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, Higher School of Economics
Homi Kharas, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Global Economy and Development Program, Brooking Institution
John Kirton, Co-founder and Director of G8 Research Group, University of Toronto.
présentation :  ; written remarks : Written Remarks

Keynote speech
Pier Carlo Padoan, Chief Economist and Deputy, Secretary-General, OECD Written Remarks
 

SESSION 6.
Closing panel - 
A global level playing field?
While trade liberalisation on a multilateral scale has been in a standstill for more than ten years, the process of global integration has continued thanks to bilateral and regional initiatives and the gradual approximation of regulations. Product standards, financial reporting standards, competition rules are today much more harmonised de facto than they were ten years ago. Yet important differences remain, which occasionally create tensions, and there is no strong multilateral framework to ensure that commitments taken on at national level are lasting. What has been achieved? Can the world economy continue with this loose framework?


Chair                     
Natalya Volchkova, Policy Director at the Center for Economic and Financial Research, New Economic School
 
Speakers   
Martyn Davies, Chief Executive Officer, Frontier Advisory, Johannesburg
Lionel Fontagné, Professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Paris School of Economics 
Arancha González Laya, Chief of Staff, Office of the Director-General, WTO and G20 Sherpa, WTO
Matthew Goodman, William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Onur Sazak, Research and Academic Affairs Manager, Istanbul Policy Center 
 

Bruegel, Brussels
Bruegel is a European think tank working in the field of international economics. Established in 2005, Bruegel is independent and non-doctrinal. It seeks to contribute to European and global economic policy-making through open, fact-based and policy-relevant research, analysis and debate. Bruegel‘s governance and funding model is unique. Its membership includes EU governments and leading international corporations. Its day-to-day work is carried out at arm‘s length from members‘ interests. Bruegel’s 11-member board appoints the Director and senior staff and has decision-making powers on strategy, research programme, partnerships and budget but no responsibility for research conclusions and publications.
 
http://www.bruegel.org/
 
 

CEPII, Paris
The Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII) is France’s main centre for the study of international economics. CEPII takes particular care to provide expert advice, based on its research, to actors in both the public and private sectors. It has regular contacts with the main European and international organisations, with public administrations and bodies, with companies and with social partners. CEPII is a member of the GTAP consortium and belongs to various research networks. CEPII is specialised in international trade, macroeconomics and finance. It has a long tradition of structural and medium-term analyses as well as economic policy appraisal. Typical issues studied are international financial architecture, the international monetary system, trade policies, competitiveness, migration, growth, policy inter - dependence and foreign direct investment.
 
http://www.cepii.fr


Higher School of Economics, Moscow
The National Research University – Higher School of Economics (HSE) was founded in 1992 on the initiative of renowned Russian economists and reformers. Today National Research University - Higher School of Economics is the largest higher education and research institution of social sciences in Eastern Europe. The HSE mission is to promote economic and social reforms in Russia through the education of a new generation of researchers and practitioners, the production and dissemination of modern economic knowledge to the Russian business and government communities. The HSE's International Organizations Research Institute actively participates in research-based policy analysis of international organizations as well as of G8/G20 agendas and their implications to Russia.  Both schools actively advice Russia's government agencies including Ministries of Economy and Finance, Central bank, Federal Financial Markets Service, Administration of the President, Open Government etc.
 
http://www.hse.ru/en/


New Economic School, Moscow
The New Economic School (NES) is a privately funded graduate school in economics established in 1992. The mission of the New Economic School is to benefit Russia’s private and public sectors through excellence in economics education and research. NES offers two-year masters programs in economics and finance. Since 2011, NES jointly with the Higher School of Economics also offers an undergraduate program. NES is a unique example of reversing the brain drain: most of the faculty are Russians who after receiving their PhD abroad came back to Russia for teaching at NES. In the ranking of economic departments by the Social Science Research Network, NES is ranked a top 100 economics department in the world and the top economics department outside OECD.  NES is active in the studies of international trade and capital flows, as well as of G20 and global governance, since 2005 organizing an annual China-India-Russia economic policy series and participating in the Think Tank 20 initiative led by the Brookings Institution.
 
http://www.nes.ru/en/home/

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