Economics

Governments need to use their money to develop the future, not recover the past. We have to take this chance, if we don't, we're really going to be in trouble.

Swiss Adventurer & Pilot of Solar-Powered Aircraft Solar Impulse

Even if there was no climate change… even if there was no problem with the environment… we would still need to replace the polluting infrastructure we have because it is too expensive and too outdated compared to modern, efficient, infrastructure.

Swiss Adventurer & Pilot of Solar-Powered Aircraft Solar Impulse

We can only solve our ecological problems by linking ecology and economy. If we can create the right economic environment, change will happen. If it's more profitable to be efficient than wasteful, we will be efficient.

Swiss Adventurer & Pilot of Solar-Powered Aircraft Solar Impulse

We waste 75% of the energy we produce, half the food we produce and half of our natural resources. So much of our waste is waste because people don't understand that it's a resource that can be used!

Swiss Adventurer & Pilot of Solar-Powered Aircraft Solar Impulse

We are literally right now living through one of the biggest revolutions in human history, certainly in medicine, and most people aren't even aware that it's about to happen. Economically, the world is going to be much richer if people live longer. That means more money to spend on urgent challenges such as climate change.

Longevity researcher & Harvard Medical School professor studying aging and lifespan extension

Walls are seductive though… what politician hasn't said, 'I can make it like the old-days again…' Bridges sound harder – how do you build them? What will they cost? Who will pay? In truth, build walls almost always yields a negative result.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

Our economic measures aren't wrong, they're incomplete. Smith noted that a successful economic system is one where everyone who participates can flourish. That's not about equality of outcome, but about the fact that everyone has the ability to flourish, equality of opportunity.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

If Smith were alive today, he'd say that in addition to the openness and competition and all the wealth we are creating, we need a sense of mutual sympathy and empathy. We need to give people the ability to compete.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

The genius of the classical economists was to think of economics and politics as the same. Remember, in Smiths' Day, there was no economics faculty, it was political economy. We may need to go back to that.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

We've had a collective gap of imagination around economic bridges. Lincoln used the government as a battering ram to bring opportunity to those left behind. The country was modernising, industrialising, and Lincoln wanted to empower people. We did that. Franklin Roosevelt did it with the GI Bill. We know how to build bridges; we just don't build them.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

Whether it's in economics, politics, or wider society, there's a debate about capitalism versus socialism; but I don't really think that's what's happening. If you look at the populist undercurrents around the world- it's really about walls & bridges. When there are big changes in the economy – like globalisation or technological change, the simple thing to tell voters is, 'we'll build a wall to protect you against those changes…' what you really need however, is bridges.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

People don't know what it is that they're negotiating over… If you don't, then it's hard to know if you've gotten a bad deal, a fair deal, or a great deal! That's going to lead us to the negotiation pie, and with the negotiation pie comes the extra value that negotiators create by coming together.

Co-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor

My greatest fear is that we have learnt nothing. Individually, we have learnt that the longer your population lives healthy, the better off your economy will be.

The Economics that we operate under is all about the goal of attaining infinite growth, but we know we cannot infinitely grow and live a good life.

We are all headed towards aging populations because we are living longer and measuring GDP growth is not the way to decide whether a society or an economy are flourishing. Population aging is evidence that we've been doing a lot of things right.

It is impossible to have the World Bank type of policy that is saying one policy fits all – educate your population, adopt better institutions, adopt family planning, and this will be the rescue. On the contrary, resources are limited, and we need to target the elements that are creating hurdles in the development of each country.

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development