2026-10-13
41 分钟Welcome to the LSE events podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences.
For those who don't know me, my name is Larry Kramer and I am the president and vice chancellor here at LSE.
And it's my privilege and pleasure to welcome you to this special event to mark the official launch
of the Huth Initiative for a New Political Economy.
So for the past half century or so, economic policy across much of the world has been guided
by a broadly shared set of ideas about the respective roles of government
and markets in generating economic growth and addressing people's needs.
Those ideas, nowadays captured in the neologism, neoliberalism, have shaped our economy,
they've shaped our politics and our societies in really profound ways, some foreseen, many unforeseen.
Now, when they took and became influential, it was because of their perceived success
in addressing what were, at that time, seen as the major economic problems of the day.
But they failed to make the challenges that we face today.
Sluggish growth, widening inequality, economic insecurity, the cost of externalities,
including from fossil fuels and other pollutants, and failing trust in our political institutions.
Likewise, the free trade regime that neoliberalism promoted unquestionably helped raise hundreds of millions
of people out of deep poverty, mainly in China but elsewhere as well,
but caused fallout that has now brought us back to a world of destructive trade wars and politics
inside many countries for those who were left behind.
Neoliberalism had great success in bringing us cheaper commodities like phones, TVs, and cars, but it's failed