Prof Chris Adam & Prof Cameron Hepburn in conversation: "After the lockdown: macroeconomic adjustment to the Covid-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa"

Past Event

Date
29 July 2020, 3:00pm - 4:00pm

Location
Online

Event Recording:

When the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, most of sub‑Saharan Africa went into lockdown. What happens next for the pandemic across Africa remains uncertain, but the combination of domestic lockdowns and the spill-over from the global recession means immediate and severe economic hardship.

In this talk, Professor Chris Adam, Professor of Development Economics & Oxford Martin Fellow on the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance, looks beyond the public health aspects of the pandemic to examine the medium-term macroeconomic adjustment challenge confronting domestic policy-makers and international donors.

He will discuss epidemiological and macroeconomic models to calibrate the scale of the combined shock to a representative low-income African economy and to show how alternative policy options for slowing transmission of Covid-19 impact on public revenue, and on GDP in the short run, and hence shape the path to recovery. Noting that the first lockdown, however costly, does not by itself eliminate the likelihood of a re-emergence of the epidemic, he will then lay out the agenda for key macroeconomic and public finance policies to sustain recovery, growth, and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa.

This talk is in partnership with The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.

To register and watch this talk live: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/after-the-lockdown-sub-saharan-africa

The talk will also be streamed via YouTube here, but please note you will not be able to take part in the interactive Q&A session unless you join the talk on CrowdCast.


Adam Christopher April 2016

Prof Christopher Adam
Professor of Development Economics

Christopher Adam's research is on the macroeconomics of low-income countries, in particular those of Africa, with a focus on monetary economics and public finance; and growth and structural change in low-income countries.His work uses methods of quantitative macroeconomics including stochastic and deterministic general equilibrium techniques.

Christopher is Lead Academic for the International Growth Centre (IGC) programme in Tanzania. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as member of the DFID-IMF research program on the macroeconomics of low-income countries. From 2003-05 he served as external Macroeconomic Adviser to the Policy Division at the Department for International Development (DFID) and represented DFID as Vice Chair of the African Economic Research Consortium from 2006 to 2016. In 2011-12 he served as Special Advisor to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee Inquiry into Aid Effectiveness.

He is currently a co-editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy and an associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics and serves as a member of the editorial board of Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford Development Studies and the Tanzania Economic Review.

Cameron Hepburn

Professor Cameron Hepburn
Director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment

Cameron Hepburn is Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford; Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment; and Managing Editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. He also serves as the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme, based at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and Lead Researcher on the Oxford Martin School Post-Carbon Transition Project & Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Plastics.

Cameron has published widely on energy, resources and environmental challenges across disciplines including engineering, biology, philosophy, economics, public policy and law, drawing on degrees in law and engineering (Melbourne University) and masters and doctorate in economics (Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar). He has co-founded three successful businesses and has provided advice on energy and environmental policy to government ministers (e.g. China, India, UK and Australia) and international institutions (e.g. OECD, UN).