Menu
Established in 2001, our Annual Public Lecture provides an opportunity for school students to watch internationally renowned economists present their research. Principally aimed at sixth form students, the APL has become an established part of the senior school calendar.
The 2024 Annual Public Lecture will be hosted by the University of Glasgow on Monday 10 June.
Lecturer and topic to be confirmed shortly.
In 2023 we held the APL at both the University of Reading and the University of Glasgow. This year’s lecture was provided by Professor Wendy Carlin, UCL titled: Capitalism, carbon, and colonies – looking back and looking forward.
Synopsis: The ‘hockey stick’ representing the take-off of the British economy in the 18th and 19th centuries is sometimes explained by a single word: capitalism. But also essential were the carbon that fired the mills, and the colonies including the labour of enslaved people producing cotton, along with the calories (from sugar) that fed the industrial workers. The CCC (capitalism, carbon and colonies) model that propelled the hockey stick of rising living standards in the past is no longer workable. Is there an alternative? Economics today can provide some answers.
A recording of this lecture is available and Wendy’s slides can be download, they include links to key resources.
Wendy Carlin is Professor of Economics in the Economics Department at University College London (UCL), Research Fellow of the CEPR and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her research is on macroeconomics, institutions and economic performance, the economics of transition, and evolution of economic research and education. She is a member of the Expert Advisory Panel of the Office for Budget Responsibility. She leads the CORE project, which is changing economics education around the world www.core-econ.org and is co-director of the Stone Centre on Wealth Concentration, Inequality and the Economy at UCL. In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to economics and public finance and in 2022 elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
