Convener: Professor David Doyle
Speaker: Andrew Powell, Principal Advisor, Inter-American Development Bank
After studying at Oxford University (BA, MPhil. DPhil.), Andrew Powell taught in the UK (at Queen Mary’s College, London and Warwick University), joined the Central Bank of Argentina in 1995 and then returned to academia in May 2001 to the University Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires. He moved to the Inter-American Development Bank in 2005 as Lead Economist in the Research Department (RES), worked as Regional Economic Advisor for the Caribbean, and returned to RES as the Principal Advisor. Recently he edited the 2020 IDB flagship report on infrastructure and has coordinated the Latin American and Caribbean Macroeconomic Report for several years. He is currently working on the IDB’s 2022 flagship report focusing on sovereign and corporate debt. He has published articles in academic journals on commodity markets, on regulating utility companies, on capital flows, on inflation and monetary regimes, on sovereign debt markets, on regulating bank capital, and on the role of the IMF and multilateral development banks (MDB’s). Recent papers focus on the role of preferred creditors, such as the IMF and MDBs, on risk transfer (reducing risk by purchasing guarantees, insurance or securitization so MDB’s can lend more), on shock transmission through the syndicated lending network, and on the implications of corporate debt and risk after the pandemic. Recent blogs and columns include “From pandemic to inflation and war”, “Another year of living dangerously” and “Monetary policy in Latin America and the Caribbean during Covid-19”