The Great Demographic Reversal with Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan

Are we heading into a future with higher inflation, higher interest rates and less inequality?

That is what Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan propose in their book 'The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival'. Goodhart and Pradhan propose that the underlying forces of demography and globalisation will shortly reverse multi-decade global trends of lower inflation, lower interest rates, and more inequality.

“Whatever the future holds”, the authors argue, “it will be nothing like the past”. Deflationary headwinds over the last three decades have been primarily due to an enormous surge in the world’s available labour supply, owing to very favourable demographic trends and the entry of China and Eastern Europe into the world’s trading system. This book demonstrates how these demographic trends are on the point of reversing sharply, coinciding with a retreat from globalisation. The result? Ageing can be expected to raise inflation and interest rates, bringing a slew of problems for an over-indebted world economy, but is also anticipated to increase the share of labour, so that inequality falls.

This webinar is a conversation with the authors about their book, their claims, and their theory of the price level and inflation.

About the authors:

Charles Goodhart is Emeritus Professor of Banking and Finance at the London School of Economics. Charles previously was a monetary economist at the Bank of England, becoming a Chief Adviser in 1980.

Manoj Pradhan is the founder of Talking Heads Macro, an independent macroeconomic research firm. Manoj was previously Managing Director at Morgan Stanley and led the Global Economics team there.