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Adair Turner


Adair Turner, a former Chairman of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority, is a member of the UK’s Financial Policy Committee and the House of Lords. He is also Chairman of INET.

Adair Turner

China Vs. The Washington Consensus

Adair Turner 3rd November 2017

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Xinping heartened many Western economists by committing to a “decisive role” for the market within China’s economy. Four years on, expectations of significant market-oriented reform have been dashed, and state influence over the economy has significantly increased. Yet the Chinese economy continues to grow rapidly and will likely continue to […]

Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant?

Adair Turner 24th July 2017

As the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow noted in 1987, computers are “everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Since then, the so-called productivity paradox has become ever more striking. Automation has eliminated many jobs. Robots and artificial intelligence now seem to promise (or threaten) yet more radical change. Yet productivity growth has slowed across the […]

The Skills Delusion

Adair Turner 7th November 2016

Everybody agrees that better education and improved skills, for as many people as possible, is crucial to increasing productivity and living standards and to tackling rising inequality. But what if everybody is wrong? Most economists are certain that human capital is as important to productivity growth as physical capital. And to some degree, that’s obviously […]

Demystifying Monetary Finance

Adair Turner 23rd August 2016

Eight years after the 2008 crisis governments and central banks – despite a plethora of policies and approaches – have failed to stimulate enough demand to produce sustained and strong growth. In Japan, so-called Abenomics promised 2% inflation by 2015; instead, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) expects it to be close to zero in 2016, […]

Greece and Japan: A Tale Of Two Debt Write-Downs

Adair Turner 16th June 2016

At the end of 2015, Greece’s public debt was 176% of GDP, while Japan’s debt ratio was 248%. Neither government will ever repay all they owe. Write-offs and monetization are inevitable, putting both countries in a sort of global vanguard. With total public and private debt worldwide at 215% of world GDP and rising, the tools on which Greece and Japan […]

Helicopters On A Leash

Adair Turner 16th May 2016

Faced with a slowing global economy, a number of observers – including former US Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and Berkeley economist Brad DeLong – have argued that money-financed fiscal expansion should not be excluded from the policy toolkit. But talk of such “helicopter drops” of newly printed money has produced a strong counterattack, including from Michael Heise, the chief […]

Are Central Banks Really Out of Ammunition? What About Helicopter Money?

Adair Turner 10th March 2016

The global economy faces a chronic problem of deficient nominal demand. Japan is suffering near-zero growth and minimal inflation. Eurozone inflation has again turned negative, and British inflation is zero and economic growth is slowing. The US economy is slightly more robust, although even there recovery from the 2008 financial crisis remains disappointingly slow, employment […]

Why We Need More Radical Policies To Kickstart Global Growth

Adair Turner 7th October 2015

For two years, financial markets have repeated the same error – predicting that US interest rates will rise within about six months, only to see the horizon recede. This serial misjudgment is the result not of unforeseeable events, but of a failure to grasp the strength and global nature of the deflationary forces now shaping […]

Is A Shrinking Population Always A Bad Thing?

Adair Turner 27th August 2014

Is a shrinking population always a bad thing? Judging by the lamentations of some economists and policymakers in the advanced economies, where people are living longer and birth rates have fallen below replacement levels, one certainly might think so. In fact, the benefits of demographic stability – or even slight decline – outweigh any adverse […]

Why Global Trade Might Become Less Important

Adair Turner 23rd July 2014

Since 2008, global trade has grown slightly more slowly than global GDP. The Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations ended in failure. Transatlantic and transpacific trade negotiations are progressing slowly, held back by the resistance of special interests. But, though many experts fear that protectionism is undermining globalization, threatening to impede global economic growth, slower growth in global trade may […]

The Great Credit Mistake

Adair Turner 10th June 2014

Before the financial crisis erupted in 2008, private credit in most developed economies grew faster than GDP. Then credit growth collapsed. Whether that fall reflected low demand for credit or constrained supply may seem like a technical issue. But the answer holds important implications for policymaking and prospects for economic growth. And the official answer […]

Rethinking The Monetization Taboo

Adair Turner 19th March 2014

Now that the pace of the US Federal Reserve’s “tapering” of its asset-purchase program has been debated to death, attention will increasingly turn to prospects for interest-rate increases. But another question looms: How will central banks achieve a final “exit” from unconventional monetary policy and return balance sheets swollen by unconventional monetary policy to “normal” […]

In Praise of Capital Market Fragmentation

Adair Turner 19th February 2014

Emerging markets are back in the spotlight. Investors and banks are suddenly unwilling to finance current-account deficits with short-term debt. South Africa, for example, has had to increase interest rates, despite slow economic growth, to attract the funding it needs. Turkey’s rate increase has been dramatic. For these and other emerging countries, 2014 may prove to […]

Inequality By The Click

Adair Turner 15th January 2014

Pope Francis warned in November that “ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace” are driving rapid growth in inequality. Is he right? In one sense, Francis was clearly wrong: in many cases, inequality between countries is decreasing. The average Chinese household, for example, is now catching up with the average American household (though still with a […]

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Spring Issues

The Summer issue of The Progressive Post is out!


It is time to take action and to forge a path towards a Socialist renewal.


European Socialists struggle to balance their responsibilities with the need to take bold positions and actions in the face of many major crises, while far-right political parties are increasingly gaining ground. Against this background, we offer European progressive forces food for thought on projecting themselves into the future.


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss the transformative power of European Social Democracy, examine the far right’s efforts to redesign education systems to serve its own political agenda and highlight the growing threat of anti-gender movements to LGBTIQ+ rights – among other pressing topics.

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