Per Jacobsson Foundation Lecture — An Era of Possibility: Renewing Economic Order and Shared Purpose
IMF SEMINAR EVENT
DATE: October 15, 2025
DAY: Wednesday
02:30 PM - 03:45 PM
LOCATION: IMF HQ1 Atrium
Per Jacobsson Foundation Lecture — An Era of Possibility: Renewing Economic Order and Shared Purpose
A KEYNOTE LECTURE DELIVERED BY Tharman Shanmugaratnam, President of the republic of singapore
Economic nationalism is resurgent. Yet as history shows, efforts to weaken interdependence with the world are unlikely to improve national wellbeing, or repair a fraying social fabric. Nor can we do without global cooperation to tackle the threats of climate change and future pandemics that spare no nation, or to enable AI to unleash gains across societies while averting its greatest dangers.
The rules-based economic order has to be reformed to remain alive, and help avoid a self reinforcing slide into global disorder. We must modernize the rules and decision-making conventions at the WTO and key UN bodies to avoid stasis; build open coalitions from around the globe, including among middle powers and smaller nations, to provide new scaffoldings for free and fair trade and cooperation on emerging challenges like AI and digital governance; and use innovative tools to mobilize vastly greater development finance for the regions with the world’s largest young populations. An open world economy will also depend on the US and China building a new understanding around each of their concerns, and stepping off a trajectory of ever-increasing conflict that will leave no winners. However, it must also rest, ultimately, on more coherent and robust domestic strategies, to revive communities displaced by technology and competition, and meet the desire of ordinary citizens everywhere to be included in prosperity.
Discussants:
Dr. Moritz Schularick, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Dr. Lael Brainard, Distinguished Fellow, Georgetown Psaros Center
There will be a panel discussion after the lecture and the discussions, moderated by Dr. Raghuram Rajan.
Speakers
Nigel Clarke assumed the role of Deputy Managing Director at the IMF on October 31, 2024.
Before joining the IMF, Mr. Clarke served as Jamaica’s Minister of Finance and the Public Service, and a Member of Parliament, since March 2018. Prior to this, he served as Ambassador of Economic Affairs from 2016. During this period, he stewarded his country’s economy to a stronger and more sustainable position. He spearheaded ambitious national reforms, including central bank independence, creation of an independent fiscal commission, as well as other tax policy, public body governance, public procurement, public sector compensation, and public investment management reforms.
Mr. Clarke holds a PhD in Numerical Analysis from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Master of Science Degree in Applied Statistics, also from Oxford, while he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He also holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of the West Indies where he was a Jamaica Independence Scholar.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam was elected as Singapore’s President in September 2023. He had served as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister for several years, and as Education Minister earlier. He also served as Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the nation’s central bank and financial regulator.
Tharman led the IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee from 2011-2014. He currently co-chairs the High-Level Advisory Council on Jobs established by the World Bank Group, and chairs the board of the Group of Thirty.
He also chaired the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance in 2017-2018, and co-chaired the G20 High-Level Panel on financing pandemic preparedness and responses in 2021. He recently co-chaired the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, which released its report in October 2024.
Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School. He was the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between 2013 and 2016, Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Bank for International Settlements (2015-16) and Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (2003-2006).
Dr. Rajan was the President of the American Finance Association (AFA). He received the AFA’s inaugural Fischer Black Prize in 2003, the Deutsche Bank Prize for financial economics in 2013, Euromoney magazine’s Central Banker of the Year award in 2014, and The Banker magazine's Global Central Banker award in 2016.
Dr. Rajan is Chairman of the Group of Thirty and the Per Jacobsson Foundation.
Lael Brainard is Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown University Psaros Center and Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Mossavar-Rahmani Center. Brainard previously served as Director of the National Economic Council, Vice Chair and Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, Undersecretary of the Treasury, and G7 Sherpa. Brainard also served as Chair of the Financial Stability Board Standing Committee on Assessing Vulnerabilities and of OECD Working Party 3. Brainard was Assistant and Associate Professor of Applied Economics at MIT Sloan School, and she founded the Brookings Global Economy and Development program.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam was elected as Singapore’s President in September 2023. He had served as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister for several years, and as Education Minister earlier. He also served as Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the nation’s central bank and financial regulator.
Tharman led the IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee from 2011-2014. He currently co-chairs the High-Level Advisory Council on Jobs established by the World Bank Group, and chairs the board of the Group of Thirty.
He also chaired the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance in 2017-2018, and co-chaired the G20 High-Level Panel on financing pandemic preparedness and responses in 2021. He recently co-chaired the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, which released its report in October 2024.
Moritz Schularick is president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy since June 2023 and Professor of Economics at Sciences Po (Paris). His research includes financial markets and asset prices, issues in monetary macroeconomics, and the causes of financial crises and economic inequality.
Prior to his appointment in Kiel, Moritz Schularick was Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Bonn, Director of the MacroFinance Lab there. He is also a Fellow of the DFG-Excellence Cluster ECONtribute and a full member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Academia Europea. Previously, he conducted research at New York University, the University of Cambridge, Freie Universität Berlin, and in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among others.
He is a recipient of the 2022 Leibniz Prize, Germany's most prestigious research prize, awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2018, he received the Gossen Prize of the Verein für Socialpolitik, the most prestigious award given to German economists. He is editor of the most important European journal for economic policy, "Economic Policy."
He regularly advises central banks, ministries of finance, investors, and international organizations.
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