Globalization Before and After the Covid-Pandemic: Should There Be a New Normality?

AUSTRIAN ACADEMY  2021

Prof. Philip Booth (Vinson Centre, University of Buckingham

Speaking on the topic of globalization before and after the Coronavirus pandemic was Philip Booth, long-time research director of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, senior fellow of the same and now director of the Vinson Centre for the Public Understanding of Economics at the University of Buckingham, and professor of public finance, public policy and ethics at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham (London).

Philip Booth’s presentation in English showed that after Coronavirus we do not need a new normal because the “old normal,” as a result of an increasingly globalized economy, has continuously and almost dramatically improved the world, especially the situation in the less developed countries. It is not globalization, nor the market economy, nor capitalism that is a danger and should be reformed; it is the policies that might provide the wrong, anti-market response to the pandemic that are the real danger precisely to the growth of prosperity in the world’s poorest countries.

In a slide of his presentation entitled “An alternative reading of the crisis,” Booth summarized his position as follows: “COVID has demonstrated that those who are poor are vulnerable to economic, health and ecological shocks because they lack the savings to ensure their resilience and because they live in countries where governments have limited institutional capacity to deal with the difficulties resulting from such events. As such, we need to ensure that we have the most rapid economic development possible in poorer countries.” And this is only possible with progressive globalization, capitalism and a market economy based on the protection of private property.

This lecture was given at the AUSTRIAN ACADEMY 2021 “Market economy and entrepreneurship – their contribution to a free and humane society”. Participants of the multi-day event were 23 students and young professionals who were selected on the basis of an application process and received a full scholarship from the Austrian Institute, the organizer of the event. The event was kindly supported by the Friedrich August von Hayek Foundation for a Free Society and the Federation of Austrian Industries (IV).

Here you can find the program and all presentations, which are available as video or in written form. And here is the main page of the Austrian Academy (all in German).