Shock-proof: Building Resilient Systems in the 21st Century

NAEC/Open Markets Institute Roundtable

Paul Romer, Nobel Prize winning economist

Rana Foroohar, Associate Editor of the Financial Times

Congressman David Cicilline, Head of the Anti-Trust Sub-Committee in the US House of Representatives

The Covid-19 pandemic has reminded us bluntly of the fragility of some of our most basic human-made systems (production networks, value chains, financial markets, health systems). What sort of policies and strategies are required to make such systems more resilient? To answer this question, the New Approaches to Economic Challenges initiative of the OECD and the Open Markets Institute (OMI) are convening some of the world’s leading political economic thinkers to discuss what went wrong, and how do we learn the lessons from this crisis to build more resilient systems. Both institutions have long warned of the sorts of collapse we are now witnessing. The immediate goal is to ask how is global production organised? What happened to supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic? What role does competition policy play in determining industrial structures? How does regulation of competition affect the stability and resilience of production systems? OMI and NAEC firmly believe this discussion can lead to important policy recommendations on how to shock-proof all vital human-made systems that create a more stable and resilient global production system.