IfW Press Release September 9, 2009

Grand Opening of the Global Economic Symposium 2009

On Wednesday evening the second Global Economic Symposium (GES) was inaugurated with an opening ceremony at the Fielmann Akademie Plön Castle. More than 350 high-ranking representatives of business, political and academic background from five continents and more than 30 countries have registered for the GES 2009. Under the patronage of the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, they will work on solutions for the world’s most pressing issues, until Friday September 11th. 3 Nobel laureates, 33 professors and 16 CEOs of significant multinational companies are among the participants.

At the opening of the GES, Schleswig-Holstein’s Premier Peter Harry Carstensen argued in support of a worldwide social market economy. “The model of the social market economy has guaranteed favorable long-term perspectives. In our globalized world, good governance does not expire at national borders. Responsible policymaking requires thinking beyond national borders,” he said. He characterized the main task of politics, science, the economy, and the media as being to provide people with orientation. “People are in search of stability, confidence, and perspectives,” he said. Further, he invited all the participants at the GES to find solutions to severe global problems.

IfW President Dennis Snower highlighted that the Global Economic Symposium is an attempt to make a humble but unique contribution to the challenge of responding to global problems as a global society. He continued that to “think and act as a global society is to enable people from different cultures, countries and professions to work together to tackle the global problems they all share”.

Joint organizer Ekkehart Seusing, deputy director of the German National Library for Economics, said “sustained strategies and solutions cannot be developed without procuring the relevant information beforehand. Securing efficient and high-quality information is no easy endeavour in view of information overload or information under-supply. In the 21st century we are at a watershed in the information society. The roles of the central players such as publishing houses and libraries in the scientific landscape are changing. In the 21st century, the libraries have left behind the mere storage of books to become filters for quality in the ocean of information.”

The Symposium is very popular and of interest for the media – about 90 journalists from 13 countries will report on the event and constructive solutions to global problems, on which 27 working groups will work during the 10th and 11th September. For a few weeks the working groups’ participants have been debating and discussing in the “Virtual GES” – the online platform of the Symposium. Thus, it is to be expected, that the high-ranking specialists of the various working groups will agree on extensive and sometimes controversial solutions. Since these approaches will challenge the openness for compromises of responsible political decision makers and business leaders, they will most probably cater for further discussions.

The working group Balancing Risk Taking and Financial Regulation for instance, discusses a simple but very promising suggestion to the prevention of future crises: All new financial products should undergo a detailed on-road test, similar to tests which are required for new pharmaceuticals. In combination with an encompassing regulation of the financial market and anti-cyclical capital requirements for banks, future trouble spots can immediately be observed and eliminated.

In the working group Fighting Against Poverty in the Crisis Aftermath, two approaches on the reduction and elimination of poverty in developing countries caused a stir. In these countries, poverty if often caused by crop failures – farmers can not pay for harvest insurances during bad years and thus lose the insurances protection. This problem could be solved by introducing a new insurance system based on “good weather premiums”. These insurances only require the premium to be paid when weather and consequently harvests are good. In addition to that, the direct and large-scale distribution of food stamps would reduce poverty of a larger group of needy people than the preferential treatment of certain regions.

One idea concerning overfishing, which was posited in the working group “Managing Marine Resources”, will definitely fuel discussions during the symposium. Since subsidies in this sector ultimately emphasis the overfishing problem and thus lead to the unemployment of many fishermen, these should be abolished completely. The money, which is no longer needed to pay for the subsidies, should then be invested into the re-training of fishermen, which are unable to run their business without subsidies.

A (men) provoking solution is circulating in the working group “Overcoming Inequality through Education”: Politicians concerned with education should clearly give the education of women a preferential treatment. The reason for this is simple: Despite the efforts on equal opportunities, women are still carrying the major responsibility when it comes to the education of children. As shown by PISA-studies, the education level of educators has a significant influence on the educational development of children. Improving the education of women could thus highly improve the chances of future generations.

The Global Economic Symposium takes place once a year with the support of the Fielmann AG, the Wintershall AG and the Fielmann Academy Plön Castle and is jointly organized by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), the Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of Science, Economics, and Transportation, and the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

Further information about the GES can be found at:
www.global-economic-symposium.org

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