24 March 2022, 17:00 - 18:00
Blavatnik School of Government and Zoom
Open to the public
This event is free to attend

This event in the Blavatnik School's series exploring the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine brings together Beata Javorick, Dan Baer, Vera Songwe and Stefan Dercon to examine the economic consequences of the war. The panel is moderated by Professor Ngaire Woods.

This event will also be streamed on Zoom and on our YouTube channel.

About the speakers

Beata JavorcikBeata Javorcik is the Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) Chief Economist. There, she is responsible for advising the president and other senior members of the Bank’s management team on economic issues of strategic or operational relevance to the EBRD regions. The Chief Economist provides thought leadership inside and outside of the EBRD on economic issues related to the Bank’s work. Javorcik is on leave from the University of Oxford, where she holds a Statutory Professorship in Economics (the first woman in this position) and is a Fellow of All Souls College. She is a Director of the International Trade Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. She holds a PhD in Economics from Yale and a BA in Economics (Summa cum Laude) from the University of Rochester.

Dan BaerDan Baer is acting director of the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was a diplomatic fellow at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies from 2017 to 2019. He served in Governor John Hickenlooper’s cabinet as executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education from 2018 to 2019. Under President Obama, he was U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from 2013 to 2017.  Previously, he was a deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2009 to 2013. Before his government service, Baer was an assistant professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, a faculty fellow at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, and a project leader at the Boston Consulting Group.

Vera SongweVera Songwe is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and the 9th serving Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Africa’s premier thought leadership institution focused on generating knowledge and applying policy research in support of accelerated economic diversification and structural transformation. Following her appointment, she became the first woman to lead the institution in the organisation’s 60-year history and the highest-ranking United Nations regional official.

As a leading figure on macroeconomic and debt issues, Songwe’s organisation reforms, focusing on “ideas for a prosperous Africa”, have brought to the fore critical issues of macroeconomic stability; development finance, growth and private sector; poverty and inequality; the digital transformation and data; and trade and competitiveness. With a determined leadership on trade, she is pushing for a new approach to trade deliberation, developing macroeconomic frameworks for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and refocusing the narrative on debt and fiscal sustainability. As Executive Secretary, Songwe has created a private sector platform for the first time at ECA with a strong focus on climate change, energy, business environment and improve sustainable financing of the SDGs.

Stefan DerconStefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department, and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is also Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies.

He combines his academic career with work as a policy advisor, providing strategic economic and development advice, and promoting the use of evidence in decision making. Between 2011 and 2017, he was Chief Economist of the Department of International Development (DFID), the government department in charge with the UK’s aid policy and spending. Since 2020, he has been the Development Policy Advisor to successive Foreign Secretaries at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. 

His research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to achieve change. 

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