'The inequality of wealth' with Rt Hon Liam Byrne, Prof Barbara Petrongolo & Prof Brian Nolan

Past Event

Date
 19 February 2024, 5:00pm - 6:15pm

Location
 Oxford Martin School & Online
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Event Recording:

Wealth inequality has been rising for the last forty years and today the richest 10% of household hold 43% of the country’s wealth and the bottom 50% under a tenth.

There is evidence that high inequality has multiple negative consequences for individuals and societies, and possibly undermines democracy itself.

Does it have to be like this? Join the Rt. Hon Liam Byrne, author of the recent book The Inequality of Wealth: Why it Matters and How to Fix it; Professor Barbara Petrongolo, Director of the CEPR Labour Economics Programme; and Professor Brian Nolan, Director of INET's Employment, Equality and Growth Programme, as they discuss with Professor Sir Charles Godfray, Director of the Oxford Martin School, different models of how wealth could be shared within society and what wealth inequality means for our wellbeing, economy, and politics.

Byrne Liam

Rt. Hon. Liam Byrne
Chair, House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee

The Rt. Hon. Liam Byrne MP chairs the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee and the Global Parliamentary Network on the World Bank & International Monetary Fund. He served in the Cabinet in 10 Downing Street and Her Majesty’s Treasury.

An Honorary Professor of Social Science at the University of Birmingham, Liam was a Fulbright scholar at the Harvard Business School and Gwilym Gibbon Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He has represented Birmingham Hodge Hill, the most income-deprived community in Britain, for the last 19 years and is the author of a major history of British capitalism Dragons: Ten Entrepreneurs Who Built Britain.

Nolan Brian

Professor Brian Nolan
Director, Employment, Equality and Growth Programme, INET

Brian Nolan is Director of INET’s Employment, Equity and Growth Programme and Professor of Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention. He was previously Principal of the College of Human Sciences and Professor of Public Policy at University College Dublin.

He is an economist by training, with a doctorate from the London School of Economics, and his main areas of research are income inequality, poverty, and the economics of social policy.

He has been centrally involved in a range of collaborative cross-country research networks and projects, including the Growing Inequalities’ Impacts (GINI) multi-country research project on inequalities and their impacts.

He led the Oxford Martin Programme on Inequality and Prosperity established in 2016 as part of the Oxford Martin School’s research partnership with Citi, looking at the drivers of inequality and how best to address it and promote inclusive growth. He is also principal investigator on a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation on the intergenerational transmission of family wealth.

Barbara petrongolo

Professor Barbara Petrongolo
Professor of Economics

Barbara Petrongolo is a Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College. She is Director of the CEPR Labour Economics Programme and Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics.

She previously held positions at Queen Mary University of London, the London School of Economics, the Paris School of Economics and the University of Carlos III (Madrid). She is currently managing co-editor of the Economic Journal.

Her primary research interests are in labour economics. She has worked extensively on the performance of labour markets with job search frictions, with applications to unemployment dynamics, welfare policy and interdependencies across local labour markets. Her work also researches the causes of gender inequalities in labour market outcomes, in a historical perspective and across countries, with emphasis on the role of employment selection mechanisms, structural transformation, and interactions within the household.

Charles Godfray

Professor Sir Charles Godfray
Director, Oxford Martin School

Professor Charles Godfray was appointed Director of the Oxford Martin School on 1 February 2018.

He is a population biologist with broad interests in the environmental sciences and has published in fundamental and applied areas of ecology, evolution and epidemiology.

He is interested in how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular in the concept of sustainable intensification, and the relationship between food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity.

In 2017 he was knighted for services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.