What have the Romans ever done for us? - Global Europe from a Dutch perspective [Audio]
Speaker(s): Frans Timmermans | Frans Timmermans will address issues of the changing political economy and the role the European Union can play in facing the challenges of today. The soft power of the EU is no longer limited to stabilisation and transformation of societies alone. Europe sets the standard in many fields. Yet, as Frans Timmermans will argue, pursuing the vision of Europe as a model power imposes a growing need for the Union's member states to start thinking and behaving in politica
Fixing Failed States [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Ashraf Ghani, Clare Lockhart | Authors Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart challenge existing concepts of state systems and offer new ways of fostering bonds between states, civil societies and markets. This event marks the launch of Fixing Failed States - A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World (OUP, May 2008). Ashraf Ghani is chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness and former finance minister of Afghanistan. Clare Lockhart is Director of the Institute for State Effect
The War for Wealth: The true story of globalization and how Western society can survive [Audio]
Speaker(s): Gabor Steingart | Globalization is the defining force of our lifetime, but most politicians have not understood the complexity of the process. Thus argues Gabor Steingart, in his controversial and thought-provoking new book The War for Wealth: The True Story of Globalization (McGraw-Hill, June 2008) which he will present for the first time in the UK.
Designing Policies for Growth - 19 January 2009 [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Philippe Aghion | In Monday's lecture Professor Aghion will lay down the framework to think about growth policy design. Philippe Aghion is Robert C Waggoner Professor of Economics, Harvard University.
LSE Literary Weekend - Ben Okri 'showcase' [Audio]
Speaker(s): Ben Okri | Poet in the City and LSE are honoured to be holding a special showcase event with the world famous poet and writer Ben Okri. Born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, he became world famous as a writer in 1991 when he won the Booker prize for his novel The Famished Road. Set in a Nigerian village, this was the first in a trilogy of successful novels about Azaro, a spirit child. In all he has published eight novels, and won countless awards and honours for his writing. His l
The Future of Banking in a Global Economy [Audio]
Speaker(s): Vikram Pandit | Today's financial and economic wreckage will provide the foundations for a system on which a stronger future will be built. This will only happen with a real cooperation and collaboration that is hard to envisage amidst the growing clamour for protectionism, speculation over the possible nationalisation of the banking system, and questions over the right of those at the centre of the industry to be part of the solution. In his lecture, Vikram Pandit will outline his v
The Political Economy of Development [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Tim Besley | It is widely recognised that the interplay of political and economic forces has a major bearing on the path of development. How do the developments in the recent political economy literature bear on the practical problems that some countries face in achieving sustainable development paths? Tim Besley is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics, and served on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from September 200
Optimal Financial Structure and Economic Development [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Justin Yifu Lin | The Optimal Financial Structure of a specific stage of development in an economy is determined by the structures of industries and firm sizes in the economy. These, in turn, are determined by the economy's factor endowments at that stage. This lecture will discuss the existence on an endogenously determined optimal composition of various financial arrangements, that is, optimal financial structure, for an economy at different stages of development.
Building the Centre-right in Europe: impressions from a lifetime's experience [Audio]
Speaker(s): Wilfried Martens | Centre-right parties dominate at national and European levels. To what do they owe their success - even during this so-called 'crisis of capitalism'? Wilfried Martens is president of the European People's Party and former prime minister of Belgium. This lecture marks the release of his memoirs, I Struggle, I Overcome. Damian Chalmers is Professor of European Union Law based in the Law Department and the European Institute, LSE.
Thinking about Evidence and Risk [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor John Worrall | In this lunchtime series of lectures, a selection of LSE's academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.
Too Big to Fail [Audio]
Speaker(s): Andrew Ross Sorkin | Andrew Ross Sorkin will take the audience behind the financial crisis and inside various secret meetings and never-before revealed conversations between regulators in Washington DC and London as well as on Wall Street. Sorkin will describe the reporting process of this painstakingly reported narrative; how he was able to gain access to the key players and how they provided him with hundreds of hundreds of pages of internal documents and notes that were the basis
The Reform of the International Financial System: a proposal with the lessons from the crisis [Audio
Speaker(s): José MarÃa Aznar | A crisis that has impoverished the world has shown the need for an enhanced rules-based framework for the international financial system. More transparency, better regulation, incentives and oversight and a more in depth understanding of the implications of increased financial interdependence in a globalized world are the basis for the reforms needed.
Managing Risk and Behaviour in Financial Markets [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Julia Black; Professor Charles Goodhart; Professor Michael Power; Dr Paul Woolley | The consequences of banks' risk taking behaviour will be felt by the public finances of many countries for at least another generation. Risk taking behaviour is the lifeblood of financial markets. How can, and should, it be managed? Julia Black is professor of law at LSE. Charles Goodhart is professor emeritus of banking and finance at LSE. Michael Power is professor of accounting at LSE. Pa
The Value of Nothing [Audio]
Speaker(s): Raj Patel | "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." Credit has crunched, debt has turned toxic, the gears of the world economy have ground to a halt. It's now clear that the market doesn't only get it wrong about sub-prime mortgages; it gets it wrong about everything. We need to ask again one of the most fundamental questions a society ever addresses: why do things cost what they do?
Uninhibited, Robust and Wide-Open: a free press for a new century [Audio]
Speaker(s): Lee Bollinger | Bollinger explores the meaning of freedom of the press in our globalised, internet-dominated era. Lee C. Bollinger became the nineteenth President of Columbia University on June 1, 2002. A prominent advocate of affirmative action, he played a leading role in the twin Supreme Court cases - Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger - that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education. A leading
Delivering a Low Carbon London [Audio]
Speaker(s): Isabel Dedring | Isabel Dedring will discuss developing and implementing a vision for a low carbon London. Isabel Dedring is environment adviser to the Mayor of London. She has also been director of the policy unit at Transport for London.
Mind-Body Problems: Science, Fiction, and God [Audio]
Speaker(s): Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Professor Steven Pinker | What happens when a novelist and philosopher talks to a cognitive neuroscientist about faith, reason, fiction, and God? Listen in as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and her husband Steven Pinker explore what Spinoza would say about Darwin, what role fiction should play in intellectual life, whether any of the arguments for the existence of God are any good, and other topics at the interface of literature, science, and philosophy.
Atheists On Religion [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Tim Crane, Professor AC Grayling | For the last 150 years or so European philosophers and sociologists have tended to regard religion as just one more pre-scientific myth and superstition that has had its day, and likely to wither on the vine of History. This view, the secularization thesis, seems today to be in poor shape. Not only does there appear to be no sign of withering, still less a clear path of scientific and rational progress, but religion seems to be reviving. C
Dignified Foreign Policy [Audio]
Speaker(s): Alexander Stubb | Alexander Stubb, Finland's Foreign Minister is a graduate of the LSE. He became Minister for Foreign Affairs in April 2008. Before that he served for four years as a member of the European Parliament.
How serious a threat does Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula represent to Yemen and the West? [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Fawaz Gerges | Fawaz A. Gerges is a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He also holds the Emirates Chair of the Contemporary Middle East and is the Director of the Middle East Centre at LSE. Gerges is author of two recently acclaimed books: Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt Press, 2007), and The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge University Press, 2005). T
