Bank of England, London

3^rd & 4^th October 2017

Call for Papers

The global macroeconomic environment has been characterized by several key trends over the past few decades, from falling real interest rates, investment rates and productivity growth, to rising inequality and wage stagnation. Many potential drivers of these trends have been proposed, from structural or technological changes, such as globalization, ageing population, the rise of the service sector or falling price of investment goods, to institutional factors such as competition, financial markets, central bank policy or tax policy. While all of these explanations can play a part in the overall trends that we observe, there is little consensus on their relative importance, their interactions with one another, or the expected future path of the global economy. Importantly, these different explanations can point to different potential policies for tackling low growth and rising inequality.

This workshop, taking place on the 3^rd and 4^th October 2017, at the Bank of England, will bring together top researchers to discuss recent work on these different drivers and the relationship between them.  Our hope is to foster dialogue between the different approaches, and also shed light on the policy debate.

We would particularly welcome submissions on the following topics:

• Productivity trends and drivers
• Market power, the evolution of market structure and its implication on inequality
• Corporate governance and the determinants of corporate investment
• Implications of demographic trends
• Globalization and the increasingly global role of emerging markets
• Policies addressing inequality, secular stagnation and low growth

Keynote Speakers: Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Ayşegül Şahin (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Organizers: Ignacio González (Columbia University and American University D.C.), Rana Sajedi and Gregory Thwaites (Bank of England)

Please submit papers via email to:

Deadline: June 30^th, 2017. The list of accepted papers will be announced by August 1^st, 2017, and authors will be expected to send the final version of papers to discussants by September 5^th, 2017. Travel and accommodation reimbursements will be considered on a case-by-case basis for presenters. Please send any queries to .