Miguel Leon Ledesma delivers the Inaugural lecture of this series of quarterly lectures organised by the Group of Economic Analysis at Reading (GEAR).
Professor Miguel Leon-Ledesma, Head of School and Director of MaGHiC, will deliver the Inaugural GEAR Lecture at the University of Reading. This is the first of a series of quarterly lectures organised by the Group of Economic Analysis at Reading (GEAR).Miguel’s lecture will be entitled “Growth volatility and trade: diversification vs specialisation”. It revisits a long standing debate in the growth and development literature about whether international trade increases or decreases output volatility thus having important consequences for welfare. The traditional view was that trade, by increasing production specialisation in a few sectors, increases vulnerability. Miguel’s paper, written with Adina Ardelean (Santa Clara University) and Laura Puzzello (Monash University), challenges this view. “We show that the way trade affects volatility depends on what are the main sources of shocks in open economies and also on how diversified are your export markets. Actually, even specialisation may reduce risk because most shocks arise at the country rather than the sector level”.
“I’m very grateful to colleagues at the Department of Economics at Reading for inviting me to give this lecture. It’s a real honour.” Leon-Ledesma told us. The lecture will take place on 31st March 2022, 2:00-3:30 pm GMT.