About the Lecture:
Making Britain Great Again? Revisiting the Thatcher Experiment
The lecture will explore the lessons to be learnt from the Thatcher government’s supply-side reforms. Two questions will be addressed. First, did Thatcherism have a significant impact on UK productivity performance? Second, what does the 1980s tell us about policies to reverse the current productivity slowdown?
Nicholas Crafts CBE FBA is Professor of Economic History at the University of Sussex. He is also Emeritus Professor of Economic History, University of Warwick where he was Director of CAGE, the ESRC Research Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy from 2010 to 2019. He is President of the Royal Economic Society for 2022/23. He has previously held faculty positions at London School of Economics and University of Oxford and visiting appointments at UC Berkeley and Stanford.
His research interests centre on the long-run performance of the British economy. Among his latest publications are the following: “Is the UK Productivity Slowdown Unprecedented?”, National Institute Economic Review (2020) with Terence Mills and “The 15-Hour Week: Keynes’s Prediction Revisited”, Economica (2022).
About the Lecture Series:
The Alan Walters Lecture series was established by the University of Birmingham to recognise alumnus, former lecturer and economist, Sir Alan Walters. This annual series is delivered by preeminent economists exploring the importance of economics in today’s world.