Richard Rhys O'Brien (born 19 November 1950, Banbury, Oxfordshire) is a British economist, futurist, author and co-founder of Outsights, a scenario planning consultancy. [1] Since 2009 he has also been a singer songwriter. [2] and biographer.
After graduating from Oxford University (MA Hons. Philosophy, Politics and Economics) and Edinburgh University (Diploma in African Studies), O'Brien worked at Rothschild Intercontinental Bank and American Express Bank for 21 years. At American Express, he was Chief Economist and Executive Director and Editor of The Amex Bank Review where he did country risk analysis. [3] O'Brien created the economics essay competition, The Amex Bank Review Awards, in memory of EU architect Robert Marjolin. He worked with the Group of Thirty (G30) on regulation and the World Bank. O'Brien worked on several books on the global economy, including "Global Financial Integration: the End of Geography". [4]
In 1998 O'Brien set up Outsights, a scenario planning consultancy, with Tim Bolderson who had worked with him at Global Business Network, where they completed large scale scenario planning projects such as The Future of Japan. [5] O'Brien has led and developed scenarios for business and the UK Government in a wide range of sectors, including "The Future of the International Environment 2010-2020", [6] and directing the Sigma Scan, [7] an online database of future trends to 2050.
Since 2009 he has published six albums of songs, under his full name Richard Rhys O'Brien.
In 2019 he published an online study of the network of Lady Margaret Rhondda, the suffragette, businesswoman and publisher. In October 2022 Ylolfa published his biographical study of the political and other campaigns of Margaret Lloyd George, the wife of Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
O'Brien serves and has served on a number of governing councils, and has chaired several international competitions:
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction that occurs when there is a period of broad decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending. This may be triggered by various events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock, the bursting of an economic bubble, or a large-scale anthropogenic or natural disaster. There is no official definition of a recession, according to the IMF.
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, political activist, and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank. He is also a former member and chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers. He is known for his support for the Georgist public finance theory and for his critical view of the management of globalization, of laissez-faire economists, and of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic action that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment of central banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness of international markets. In the late 1800s, world migration and communication technology facilitated unprecedented growth in international trade and investment. At the onset of World War I, trade contracted as foreign exchange markets became paralyzed by money market illiquidity. Countries sought to defend against external shocks with protectionist policies and trade virtually halted by 1933, worsening the effects of the global Great Depression until a series of reciprocal trade agreements slowly reduced tariffs worldwide. Efforts to revamp the international monetary system after World War II improved exchange rate stability, fostering record growth in global finance.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998–1999 was rapid, and worries of a meltdown quickly subsided.
Nouriel Roubini is a Turkish-born Iranian-American economic consultant, economist, speaker and writer. He is a Professor Emeritus since 2021 at the Stern School of Business of New York University.
Martin Harry Wolf is a British journalist who focuses on economics. He is the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. He also writes a weekly column for the French newspaper Le Monde.
Capital controls are residency-based measures such as transaction taxes, other limits, or outright prohibitions that a nation's government can use to regulate flows from capital markets into and out of the country's capital account. These measures may be economy-wide, sector-specific, or industry specific. They may apply to all flows, or may differentiate by type or duration of the flow.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), established in 1938, is Britain's oldest independent economic research institute. The institute is a London-based independent UK registered charity that carries out academic research of relevance to business and policy makers, both nationally and internationally.
Sir Howard John Davies is a British historian and author, who is the chairman of NatWest Group and the former director of the London School of Economics.
Avinash D. Persaud is emeritus Professor of Gresham College in the UK. He was the Chairman of Intelligence Capital Ltd., a company specializing in analyzing, managing and creating financial liquidity in investment projects and portfolios. He was also the non-Executive Chairman of the London-based Elara Capital, an investment bank. Persaud was a Non-resident Senior Fellow of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, Executive Fellow of London Business School and Senior Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Research Institute and Head of its Barbados office.
Sir Paul Collier, is a British development economist who serves as the Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and co-Director of the International Growth Centre. He is also a Professeur invité at Sciences Po and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.
Financialization is a term sometimes used to describe the development of financial capitalism during the period from 1980 to present, in which debt-to-equity ratios increased and financial services accounted for an increasing share of national income relative to other sectors.
The Great Recession was a period of market decline in economies around the world that occurred in 2007 to 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression.
Following the global 2007–2008 financial crisis, there was a worldwide resurgence of interest in Keynesian economics among prominent economists and policy makers. This included discussions and implementation of economic policies in accordance with the recommendations made by John Maynard Keynes in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, most especially fiscal stimulus and expansionary monetary policy.
Stijn Claessens is a Dutch economist who currently serves as the Head of Financial Stability Policy department of the Bank for International Settlements. He worked for fourteen years at World Bank beginning in 1987 until 2001 where he assumed various positions including that of Lead Economist. Following his tenure at the World Bank he became Professor of International Finance Policy at the University of Amsterdam where he remained for three years and still is on the faculty. Stijn has many distinguished academic publications and his work has been cited in many outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Washington Post and various other publications and he has appeared in several television programs.
Vasiliki "Vicky" Pryce is a Greek-born British economist and a former Joint Head of the United Kingdom's Government Economic Service.
Richard E. Baldwin is a professor of international economics at the IMD Business School. He is Editor-in-Chief of VoxEU, which he founded in June 2007, and was President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) from 2014 to 2018. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and was twice elected as a Member of the Council of the European Economic Association. Baldwin has been called "one of the most important thinkers in this era of global disruption".
The economic effects of Brexit were a major area of debate during and after the referendum on UK membership of the European Union. The majority of economists believe that Brexit has harmed the UK's economy and reduced its real per capita income in the long term, and the referendum itself damaged the economy. It is likely to produce a large decline in immigration from countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) to the UK, and poses challenges for British higher education and academic research.
Suman Bery is an Indian economist, academic, and writer who is the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog. After serving at the World Bank for 28 years, Bery served as the Chief Economist of Oil and Gas supermajor Royal Dutch Shell, based in The Hague, Netherlands. He is a Global Fellow in the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and a Non-resident Fellow of Brussels based think tank Bruegel. He was the former director general of National Council of Applied Economic Research and the former Indian country director of International Growth Centre.
The Department of Economics is an academic department of the University of Oxford within the Social Sciences Division. Relatively recently founded in 1999, the department is located in the Norman Foster-designed Manor Road Building.