In the aftermath of the financial crisis and the global downturn, all governments face the challenge of creating widespread, resilient prosperity. Building on the success of our 2011 conference, Challenges of Government: The Innovation Imperative, the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, together with its partners the Brazilian National Development Bank, the Ford Foundation, McKinsey and Company and the World Bank, this year convenes policymakers, academics, and business and non-profit leaders to tackle the key policy barriers to galvanizing growth.

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Theme: Galvanizing growth

Over the 20^th century the world population quadrupled while real GDP increased by a factor of almost 20, making more people better off than ever before. One decade into the 21^st century, governments seem hard pressed to maintain this achievement, much less replicate it for the 10 billion people who will inhabit the planet by the century’s end.

Grim news abounds. In June the U.S. Census Bureau reported that American households lost a third of their real wealth between 2005 and 2010, erasing the previous three decades of growth. In some southern European countries nearly half of young people are without work. And China’s three-decade economic boom is finally slowing, threatening to end the commodity surge that has allowed countries ranging from Brazil to Australia to weather the US and European crises. When respected pundits draw analogies to the 1930s, governments must do better.  How will we drive the next 100 years of growth and wellbeing?

The goal of the conference is to interrogate what works. What are the policies, strategies, and tactics governments can adopt in order to galvanize growth and build resilient prosperity? We focus on three sub-themes that roughly correspond to classic “factors of production”: labour, land, and capital.

Increasing jobs. The increase of the formal labour force was a crucial driver of 20^th century economic growth and, even more importantly, the key mechanism through which large middle classes were created. Today that path to a decent life and a good society looks increasingly narrow, both in the wealthy countries and in industrializing economies like China, where more people still work on farms than in factories. How will we ensure decent work for the labour force of the 21^st century?  Our discussion will focus on three key topics: skills and training, national labour-market policies, and entrepreneurship.

Managing Natural Resources for Growth. For a few countries with strong political institutions, natural resources have been a boon. For most, however, they have just as often led to inequality, conflict, and stunted political development. In the last few years, new technologies have radically altered the distribution of resources like natural gas, putting the question of resource management at the top of policymakers’ agenda’s in places as diverse as Tanzania, Brazil, Argentina, and rural pockets of North America. How can we make this potential windfall work to create lasting economic wellbeing?

Financial regulation, emerging markets and reinventing development banks (3 sessions). Well-operating financial markets should channel investment to the most productive regions and elements of the global economy, but as of late they have failed, and failed catastrophically. How can we regulate financial risk while also ensuring a vibrant flow of capital to those sectors or the economy that need investment for growth.