VIRTUAL EVENT | 1:00 p.m. (New York) | 6:00 p.m. (Paris)
Recently, calls for implementation of a Universal Basic Income have grown, leading to a renewed debate on how to reduce, and eventually eliminate, poverty. The fourth webinar in the New Utopias Series will bring together experts from the U.S. and E.U to analyze the emerging causes of poverty and explore ways to address the needs of vulnerable populations. How have the causes of poverty, and our understanding of them, developed over time? What have been the results of basic income policies in the U.S. and E.U.? What does current data tell us about the efficacy of a Universal Basic Income? Is poverty eradication a realizable goal?
New Utopias is a series of panel discussions on the world to come presented by Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the Alliance Program, and the European Institute.
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DISCUSSANTS:
François Bourguignon is Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He served as Director of the Paris School of Economics from 2007 to the end of January 2013. His work, both theoretical and empirical, focuses on the distribution and redistribution of income in developing and developed countries. He is the author of several books and numerous articles in international economic journals and has received several scientific awards during his career and has taught in several foreign universities. He has extensive experience in advising several governments and international organizations. From 2003 to 2007, he was the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank in Washington.
Timothy M. Smeeding is the Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was director of the Institute for Research on Poverty from 2008–2014. He was named the John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science, in 2017, and was the founding director of the Luxembourg Income Study from 1983-2006. Professor Smeeding’s recent work has been on social and economic mobility across generations, inequality of income, consumption and wealth, and poverty in national and cross-national contexts.
Minna Ylikännö is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Social Research at the University of Turku, Finland and Senior Specialist in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in Finland. She was a contributor to comprehensive analysis released in 2021 on the nationwide randomized Finnish basic income experiment from 2017 to 2018.
Pierre-André Chiappori (Moderator) is the E. Rowan and Barbara Steinschneider Professor of Economics at Columbia University. His research focuses on household behavior, risk, insurance and contract theory, general equilibrium and mathematical economics. He has been involved in numerous conferences as organizer or keynote speaker and has been editor and co-editor of many international economic publications, including the Journal of Political Economy, published by the University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of the European Economic Association, of the Econometric Society and of the Society of Labor Economists, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics at the University of Chicago.