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The Challenges of International Collective Action in a Changed Environment.

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At a seminar jointly hosted by the Global Development Network and the National Council of Applied  Economic Research (NCAER) in India, Jean Pisani-Ferry, Senior Fellow Bruegel, spoke on "The Challenges of International Collective Action in a Changed Environment."  Harsha Vardhana Singh, Chairman, IKDHVAJ Advisers, and former Deputy Director-General at WTO, will be the discussant.  The event was held on 8 January 2019, at the NCAER premises, and was by invitation. Additional outreach events were organized at the Delhi School of Economics and the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS).

Pisani-Ferry shared his view that the world has become too sovereignty-conscious, too heterogeneous, too multipolar, too multi-agent, too deregulated, and too technology-driven for the simple restoration of the late 20th century order. In an increasingly interdependent world replete with policy externalities, however, global public goods cannot be left unattended. To name just a few of the major challenges we are facing, climate preservation, biodiversity, financial stability and Internet security will not emerge from the uncoordinated action of national governments. Nor will they be engineered by a benevolent hegemon. And they cannot be left to simply be the outcome of market interaction. The task ahead is to define principles and procedures for international collective action in a post-Trumpian world. While problems pertaining to international collective action are not all alike, in his presentation, Jean Pisani-Ferry discussed a few precedents to draw on for this task, and whether global governance is, in fact, passé. Read more.

Jean Pisani-Ferry is the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Chair Professor at the European University Institute in Florence and a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank. He is also a Professor of Economics with Sciences Po (Paris) and the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin). Prior to that, he was the Director for Programme and Ideas of Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign. Earlier, he has also served as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie, the ideas lab of the French Government, Founding Director of Bruegel, Executive President of the French Prime Minister’s Council of Economic Analysis, Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance, and Economic Adviser with the European Commission. He has also taught at Université Paris-Dauphine, École Polytechnique, École Centrale, and the Free University of Brussels. His recently published book, Economic Policy: Theory and Practice, has been co-authored, among others, with Pierre Jacquet, President of GDN.  Pisani-Ferry has an advanced degree in Economics from the Centre d'études des programmes économiques, Paris, and two Masters degrees: in Mathematics from the University of Paris, and in Engineering from CentraleSupélec, Rennes, France.