Former Polish Finance Minister Considers Global Economy’s Future

“I’m not a forecaster,” said Grzegorz W. Kolodko, a professor of economics at Kozminski University in Warsaw and a key architect of economic reforms in Poland during two discrete terms he served as the nation’s deputy prime minister and finance minister.

Kolodko visited the Center on Global Economic Governance on April 21 to discuss his new book, Whither the World: The Political Economy of the Future.

Arguing for a multidisciplinary approach in order to give insight into what the future will be like and what the global economy will look like, Kolodko was joined in discussion by Professors Edmund S. Phelps, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Jan Svejnar.

If globalization is irreversible, Kolodko argued, then regional integration processes are critical and the question of what policymakers should be doing is key. At the same time, he said, integration processes—especially in Central and Eastern Europe—are becoming more disputed. So for Poland it remains critical for economists and policymakers to ask whether the European Union will be good for the nation, and how to make that happen.

While the continuation of the European Union is not assured, Kolodko observed, he said he believes its breakdown is unlikely.

Kolodko also spoke about the lack of political consensus on how to tackle inequality: “This kind of income and wealth distribution… is unsustainable.”

He concluded by arguing that better ways to govern the global economy need to be found including ways to coordinate policies.

Phelps said the global economy doesn’t need to be governed in any particular way, but that some kind of governance on certain points is necessary.

He pointed to the 1980s as the moment inequality began to rise in the United States, and said that it would be a tall order for European nations to revive their former dynamism, citing what he called their deeply classical economics.

Stiglitz suggested that “a fair system is one in which everyone has equal access to justice.”

Stiglitz said globalization has produced many losers and created great inequality, and argued that Europe appears to be heading for a “train wreck.”

Visit the Center on Global Economic Governance for additional coverage, including video, of the Kolodko event.