Equitable Growth’s 2021 policy conference features key speakers and panelists discussing inclusive U.S. economic growth after the coronavirus recession

The coronavirus pandemic and resulting historic economic and societal shock revealed underlying systemic fragility driven by longstanding economic inequalities and structural racism. More expansive, more transformative, and more equitable economic policies have helped power a far more rapid recovery, compared to the years following the Great Recession of 2007–2009. But now, the coronavirus pandemic is surging anew while most of those underlying structural fragilities exacerbated by the coronavirus recession, as well as ongoing consequences of climate change, remain exposed and raw.

These economic policy challenges provide an opportunity for policymakers to rebuild a more resilient and inclusive U.S. economy and society. In a nutshell, this is what is on our agenda at our virtual policy conference, “Equitable Growth 2021: Evidence for a Stronger Economic Future,” on Monday and Tuesday, September 20–21.

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth, over the course of these 2 days, will examine the progress to date in building a resilient and inclusive economy and the needs for the future by bringing together policymakers, academics, advocates, and thought leaders. The remarks and sessions at the conference will highlight pathbreaking leadership and cutting-edge scholarship that recognizes how a stronger economic future is built on the linkages between racial justice, climate resilience, access to care and family economic security, financial stability, and rebalancing power, so that all can share in the gains of economic growth.

Headlining the conference in a series of fireside chats and remarks are the new Equitable Growth President and CEO Michelle Holder, U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Michigan State University economist and Equitable Growth Steering Committee member Lisa Cook, University of California, San Diego assistant finance professor Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León, and Marketplace host and correspondent Kimberly Adams. Notable panelists are featured in our four panel sessions, taking place in two concurrent blocks on the second day of the conference, focused on the key economic questions of the day.

Below is a preview of the second day of conference and our featured panelists and moderators in the upcoming sessions, as well as their relevant work and experience that will be brought to bear during these discussions. And here is a complete agenda (opens in a new tab) and details about attending the conference (opens in a new tab).

Tuesday, September 21, 2:05 p.m. – 2:50 p.m.

As U.S. communities and the economy recover from the coronavirus recession, there is an opportunity to build a new economic future defined by investment centered on racial equity and climate mitigation and adaptation. This requires re-envisioning industrial, labor, and macroeconomic policies and redefining economic success beyond aggregate statistics. Panelists will discuss how to leverage deficits to invest in a green future and build broadly shared and sustainable economic growth while ensuring Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities can fully benefit from any such investments.

The panelists are:

• Olivier Blanchard, the Robert Solow professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Fred Bergsten senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is a macroeconomist and has worked extensively on issues including monetary and fiscal policy, labor markets, and the recent global financial crisis. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Blanchard, as a leader in the field of macroeconomics, along with Jean Tirole, to chair a commission and write a report (opens in a new tab) on the major structural challenges societies will face in the aftermath of the pandemic, as well as policy solutions to address them. These challenges include climate change, economic inequality and insecurity, and economic disruptions stemming from demographic changes.
• Dania Francis, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She studies the structural causes behind racial and socioeconomic achievement divides. Francis’ work includes analyses (opens in a new tab) and research-based policy recommendations for implementing a reparations program for the descendants of enslaved African Americans, economic inequality and the digital divide (opens in a new tab), school racial segregation (opens in a new tab), and the link (opens in a new tab)between racial, mental health, labor market, and educational disparities. Her work demonstrates how addressing racial divides are core to addressing the structural challenge imposed by economic inequality.
• Brenda Mallory, the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She has worked alongside academics and in a number of senior roles in public office to advance environmental protections for low-income and communities of color. In her current role, Mallory advises President Joe Biden on policies that foster public health, environmental justice, and the resiliency of U.S. communities to the effects of climate change and natural hazards such as floods (opens in a new tab) and sea-level rise and hurricanes (opens in a new tab), as well as the best practices to develop carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (opens in a new tab) projects.

Michelle Holder, president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, will moderate the panel.

Rebalancing Big Tech’s grip on the economy

Tuesday, September 21, 2:05 p.m. – 2:50 p.m.

From digital marketplaces to invasive worker surveillance, tech companies play an outsized role in the everyday lives of U.S. workers and their families while evading sufficient scrutiny and providing few consumer and worker protections. Dominant tech platforms stifle innovation and hinder entrepreneurship opportunities, and ubiquitous and invasive management tools risk exacerbating longstanding inequities for workers. Panelists will discuss how sound policy, coupled with a strong, organized advocacy strategy, are needed to manage technological integration so the gains from these advancements are fairly distributed, spurring competition and broadly shared economic growth.

The panelists are:

• New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is at the forefront of tackling anticompetitive behavior in the technology industry. James will provide opening remarks to the panel. She has led multiple (opens in a new tab) antitrust (opens in a new tab) suits (opens in a new tab) that allege monopolistic behavior by tech giants, including the acquisition of smaller rivals and other activities that limit competition by other players in the ecosystem.
• Antoine Prince Albert III, the government affairs policy counsel at Public Knowledge (opens in a new tab), a tech-focused think tank. He examines (opens in a new tab) what policymakers are doing and can do when it comes to fostering online platform governance and competition, as well as addressing privacy concerns, with a recent detailed piece (opens in a new tab) on how Congress is approaching these issues. Albert has explored questions related to how technology functions within Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities in the United States, which helps illuminate how technology integration and oversight influences different communities and interacts with people’s social and economic lives.
• Ryan Gerety, a senior advisor to United for Respect (opens in a new tab), an advocacy organization for retail workers. She focuses on the economic and political implications of new technology and its impact on structural inequality. Gerety has also explored the issue of workplace technologies (opens in a new tab), such as face recognition, worker surveillance, and just-in-time scheduling, as worker monitoring and discipline tools that disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.
• Fiona Scott Morton, the Theodore Nierenberg professor of economics at the Yale University School of Management. She is renowned for her research on competition in the areas of pricing, entry, and product differentiation. In a piece for Equitable Growth, Scott Morton wrote about the importance of antitrust enforcement for economic redistribution and proposed policies for the U.S. Congress and the Biden administration to adopt that confront market power, including in the technology industry. She also has explored the importance of an interoperability remedy in the technology industry to address entry barriers created by network effects.

Lydia DePillis covers economic policy (opens in a new tab) for ProPublica and will moderate the panel.