The Forum New Economy – About us
The Forum New Economy is a non-partisan platform founded in Berlin in 2019 with the aim of seeking new solutions and a new overarching paradigm for the major challenges of climate change, growing inequality and globalisation, as well as redefining the role of the state. It supports innovative researchers and brings together renowned experts with practitioners and the wider public.
What does the Forum New Economy do?
Experts around the world are working to develop better answers to the great challenges of our time – with the aim of achieving sustainable prosperity for all. Supporting these ideas and confronting them with real-world scenarios is one of the main tasks of this Forum.
Modern democracies today are confronted with a deep crisis of confidence that three decades of poorly managed globalization and exaggerated faith in the efficiency of markets have contributed to. While markets may produce huge benefits, an all too orthodox belief in their merits has left behind a raft of challenges that now threaten to overwhelm our societies. To solve this crisis and prevent populists from filling the vacuum, governments need more than just answers to specific policy challenges. If we are to restore the credibility of our democracies, a new narrative and policy framework is required that recognizes the limitations of markets, lays out a more innovative role for the state and broadens our view of what comprises economic success. To regain confidence in the future, people must believe that policy-makers are driven by a vision of society in which the fruits of economic activity are shared broadly and where people exercise real control.
To accelerate the emergence of such a new guiding principle in economic policy is one of the main goals of this Forum. As a critical part of a growing international network, the Forum generates and supports new overarching responses to the major challenges of our time – be it climate change, inequality or financial market instability.
The Forum is supported by major organisations such as the OECD, the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Paris Institute OFCE, as well as foundations such as the Hewlett Foundation, the Mercator Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, the Bennemann, the Canopus Foundation and the Macronome. In addition, the initiative cooperates with DIW Berlin through a research project. The Forum is also supported by a few dozen renowned experts from Germany and abroad, including Mariana Mazzucato, Branko Milanovic, Joe Stiglitz, Michael Spence, Moritz Schularick, Marcel Fratzscher, Martin Hellwig, Jakob von Weizsäcker, Jens Südekum, Tom Krebs, Anatole Kaletsky, Ottmar Edenhofer, Barry Eichengreen, Adair Turner, Laurence Tubiana, Pascal Lamy, Hélène Rey, Katharina Pistor and others.
The team
In a highly dynamic team, six employees and three fellows work at the frontier between new economic thinking and policy making.
Isabella Wedl
Senior Advisor on Climate Policy
Fellows
Who supports the Forum
New Economy?
Since its inception, the Forum New Economy has built up a network of national and international partner organisations and has collaborated with numerous renowned economists and academics from other disciplines.
Our academic partners
The Forum is supported by a group of high-level academic partners, among them Nobel laureates and leading international and German economists.
Jens Südekum
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Tom Krebs
Professor of Economics, University of Mannheim; Senior Fellow Forum New Economy
Mariana Mazzucato
Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London
Dani Rodrik
Harvard University
Isabella Weber
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Adam Tooze
Columbia University
Xavier Ragot
Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE), Paris
Michael Jacobs
University of Sheffield
Mark Blyth
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Our partner organisations
The Forum collaborates with a network of leading institutions, including the OECD, DIW Berlin, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the European Climate Foundation, the Jacques Delors Institute, the Global Solutions Initiative, the World Inequality Lab, and OFCE in Paris.
OUR MAIN TOPICS
New Paradigm
NEW PARADIGM
After decades of overly naive market belief, we urgently need new answers to the great challenges of our time. More so, we need a whole new paradigm to guide us. We collect everything about the people and the community who are dealing with the question of a new paradigm and who analyze the historical and present impact of paradigms and narratives – whether in new contributions, performances, books and events.
Redefining
the role of
the state
REDEFINING
THE ROLE OF
THE STATE
For decades, there was a consensus that reducing the role of the state and cutting public debt would generate wealth. This contributed to a chronic underinvestment in education and public infrastructure. New research focuses on establishing when and how governments need to intervene to better contribute to long-term prosperity and to stabilize rather than aggravate economic fluctuations.
Remaking
finance
REMAKING
FINANCE
More than a decade after the financial crisis there still seems to be something seriously wrong with the financial system. Financial markets still tend to periodically misprice risk and contribute to boom and bust cycles. A better financial system needs to discourage short-termism and speculative activity, curtail systemic risk and distribute wealth more broadly.
Greening
prosperity
GREENING
PROSPERITY
During the high point of market orthodoxy, economists argued that the most 'efficient' way to combat climate change was to simply let markets determine the price of carbon emissions. Today, there is a growing consensus that prices need to be regulated and that a carbon price on its own might not be enough.
Reducing
inequality
REDUCING
INEQUALITY
The rising gap between rich and poor has become a threat to social cohesion in most rich countries. To reverse this trend it will be crucial to better understand the importance of different drivers of income and wealth inequality.
Innovation Lab
INNOVATION LAB
Do we need a whole new understanding of economic growth? What would be a real alternative? How viable are alternatives to GDP when it comes to measuring prosperity? These and other more fundamental challenges are what this section is about.
Globalization
for all
GLOBALIZATION
FOR ALL
After three decades of poorly managed integration, globalization is threatened by social discontent and the rise of populist forces. A new paradigm will need better ways not only to compensate the groups that have lost, but to distribute the gains more broadly from the start.
Europe
beyond markets
EUROPE
BEYOND MARKETS
The euro was planned during a period in which economic policy making was driven by a deep belief in market liberalism and the near impossibility of systemic financial crises. This belief has been brought into question since the euro crisis, which showed that panics do happen. New thinking needs to focus on developing mechanisms to protect eurozone countries from such panics and to foster economic convergence between members.
Corona Crisis
CORONA CRISIS
The current Corona crisis is probably the worst economic crisis of the post-World War 2 era. Economists are working hard on mitigating the economic effects caused by COVID-19 to prevent a second Great Depression, the break-up of the Eurozone and the end of globalisation. We collect the most important contributions.