Social & Institutional Capital

Intangible factors such as the quality of institutions, the rule of law, and other forms of social capital that enable goods and services to be produced.

Video

Citizens’ Wealth

Angela Cummine, political theorist at Oxford University and Director of the Wealth Project, discusses the history and thought behind modern day sovereign wealth funds, asking the question: What measures are needed to ensure that the management of sovereign funds truly reflects, promotes and protects the interests and values of their citizen-owners? For the full podcast, click here.


Video

Michael Woolcock on Social Capital in Wealth

The welfare returns to investing in trust could be substantial. Michael Woolcock discusses research (conducted together with Kirk Hamilton and John Helliwell) that uses social trust data from 132 nations covered by the Gallup World Poll, presenting a range of estimates of social trust’s wealth-equivalent values.


Video

Dimitri Zenghelis on Cities and Wealth

Over the next fifty years, most new wealth will be accumulated in cities; this includes physical infrastructure (road, rail, electricity, telecommunications and sanitation), productive capital (houses, offices and factories) and knowledge capital (skills, knowhow and ideas). The development of cities will also determine humanity’s ability to preserve natural capital. Consequently, urbanisation deserves urgent attention from policymakers, academics and businesses worldwide. Dimitri Zenghelis discusses how well-governed, connected, clean cities are likely to attract productive capital, talent, and creativity; while bad governance and inaction over planning can erode progress for decades to centuries.



Video

Rolando Ossowski and Håvard Halland on the Economics of Sovereign Wealth Funds

Many countries have set up sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) as vehicles for public saving and wealth management. The majority of SWFs are in resource-exporting countries; frequent objectives are macroeconomic and fiscal stabilisation, inter-temporal transfer of wealth, and national development. Some resource funds hold assets equivalent to several multiples of GDP, but many funds are relatively small. The evidence shows that the design and operation of a SWF can help or encumber economic management and wealth preservation.


Video

Mariana Mazzucato on Wealth Creation and the State

The state is often seen as facilitating the process of wealth creation, rather than being a key driver of the process itself. A better understanding of the role that the state has and can play in the wealth creation process is the starting point for policy solutions that can increase the rate of wealth creation, while reducing rent-seeking and ensuring a fairer distribution of that co-created wealth.



Video

Economic policy: from market fixing to market creating and shaping

Mariana Mazzucato speaks about the importance of the public sector in wealth creation


Video

Cities and the new climate economy

Cities are central to knowledge growth but also resource efficiency, with infrastructural lock-in playing a key role in determining resource use