"Out of the Ivory Tower: From Academic Economics to Policymaking"
National Research University Higher School of Economics invites you to participate in our online meeting of the Discussion Club on Modern Economic Policy. At this time we will host Professor Alain Paquet (ESG-UQAM) with a presentation
"Out of the Ivory Tower: From Academic Economics to Policymaking"
"Drawing from my experience as an academic economist and as a policymaker (while a member of a government and one of the main advisors to the Quebec Government Premier from 2003 to 2012), I will discuss examples and lessons in the use of theoretical and empirical macroeconomics as they may translate into economic policy. This goes from conceiving the idea from anchor points in economics to the persuasion of elected and non-elected officials (high level civil servants), the formulation of the government prescription, then the efficient communication of the issues and the reasoning underlying a government decision.
The presentation will refer to example such as: the elimination of a former tax on a firm’s value of physical capital and its long-term borrowings; the implementation of an earned-income tax credit for low and low-middle income earners; the creation of the Québec Generation Funds to lower the public debt-to-GDP ratio.
Insights will be discussed from direct interactions with elected officials, civil servants, journalists, constituents, and stakeholders. One of them is to avoid walking from one ivory tower to another one."
Professor Alain Paquet
Professor of economics, School of Management of the University of Quebec at Montreal
About the speaker: Alain Paquet is a full professor of economics at the School of Management of the University of Quebec at Montreal (ESG-UQAM), which he joined in 1988. He is also director of the Research focus axis on business cycles and growth of the Chair in Macroeconomics and Forecasting at ESG-UQAM. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester (N.Y., USA), a M.A. in economics from Queen's University (Ontario, Canada) and a bachelor's degree in economics from Laval University (Quebec, Canada). He specializes in the macroeconomics of economic growth and fluctuations, macroeconometrics, financial economics, as well as questions on monetary policy, fiscal policy and public debt management. He has conducted various research projects in macroeconomics, with a diverse experience as an academic, researcher, a public policy maker and a consultant to several public and private organizations, in Canada and around the world. He has published several articles in scientific journals and has been regularly called upon as a speaker at national and international meetings.
Alain Paquet has a diversified experience with several public and private organizations in Canada and around the world, as well as a policymaker. He has been a consultant and/or visiting scholar at the Bank of Canada, the Federal Department of Finance of Canada, the Quebec Ministry of Finance, the Department of Human Resources Development Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Central Bank of Madagascar, the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, FPI Innovation, ENS-Paris-Saclay, at the Collège de France and at the National Research University Higher School of Economics Moscow. His various research papers have focused on fiscal and monetary policies, macroeconomic public finance (expenditures, taxation and public debt), the determinants of interest rates and exchange rates, economic forecasts and business cycles, as well as on the macroeconomic implications of innovation.
Member of the National Assembly of Quebec for Laval-des-Rapides from 2003 to 2012, during his elective terms, he held the positions of Chairman of the Public Finance Committee, parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance, and to the Quebec Premier for economics, and State Minister for Finance. Within the Quebec government, he was directly involved in the development and implementation of several economic priorities and measures, including the Quebec government budgets, the work-premium earned-income tax credit, the family-and-child assistance tax credit, the reduction and abolition of the tax on capital, the reduction of the tax burden on individuals and families’ personal income, the protection of savers and the supervision of financial markets, the 2nd edition of Québec Strategy for Research and Innovation, as well as the Québec Strategy on Entrepreneurship. His various mandates have led him to assist the Quebec Premier in pursuing the government's economic priorities and to advise him on specific issues, such as productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Please address all inquiries to Organizing Committee via email econpolicy@hse.ru