Clark Center Forum

About the Clark Center Forum

The Forum for the Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets is home to the European, Finance, and US Economic Experts Panels as well as a repository of thoughtful, current, and reliable information regarding topics of the day.
US

Stakeholder Capitalism

Question A:

Having companies run to maximize shareholder value creates significant negative externalities for workers and communities.

Responses

© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
9%
5%
0%
16%
28%
26%
16%
Question B:

Appropriately managed corporations could create significantly greater value than they currently do for a range of stakeholders – including workers, suppliers, customers and community members – with negligible impacts on shareholder value.

Responses

© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
9%
5%
7%
21%
23%
33%
2%
Question C:

Effective mechanisms for boards of directors to ensure that CEOs act in ways that balance the interests of all stakeholders would be straightforward to introduce.

Responses

© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
9%
2%
14%
42%
21%
12%
0%
 
US

Cryptocurrencies

A substantial source of the value of decentralized private cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, arises from their convenience for use in illegal activities.

Responses

© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
14%
5%
0%
0%
28%
42%
12%
 
Europe

European Fiscal and Monetary Policy

With the Eurozone economy weakening, many commentators are calling on the European Central Bank (ECB) to provide fresh stimulus. But what if the diverse monetary policy tools used by the ECB since the financial crisis have reached the limits of their effectiveness in promoting recovery? Could European governments contribute to stimulating the economy by increasing public spending or reducing taxes? And should fiscal policy now be focused more on raising demand by ‘loosening the public purse strings’ than on reducing public debt?

 
Europe

ECB Appointments

Christine Lagarde, currently head of the International Monetary Fund, has been nominated to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank (ECB). The announcement came as part of a package of appointments to other key roles in European institutions: the president of the European Commission; the president of the European Council; and the European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy.

 
US

Teaching Introductory Economics

How should economics be introduced to undergraduate students? Since the crisis and the Great Recession began more then a decade ago, many young people have complained that what is taught in intro courses seems to bear no relation to the pressing issues that they hoped the subject would help them to understand – poverty, inequality, globalization, environmental sustainability, financial instability, robots and the digital economy.

 
Europe

European Infrastructure and Chinese Firms

China’s worldwide investments have expanded dramatically over the past decade, particular in infrastructure projects. In the European Union and elsewhere, this has raised some concerns about security and other geopolitical and economic matters. So we invited our European panel of economic experts to express their views on whether Europe’s governments should consider favoring local firms for public infrastructure projects over potentially lower-cost bidders from elsewhere in the world.

 
Europe

Doom Loops and Europe’s Financial System

This week’s IGM European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Breaking the “doom loop” — a negative spiral that can result when banks hold sovereign bonds and governments bail out banks — would increase the stability of European economies in the event of another financial crisis.

B) Regulators should try to break the doom loop by assigning positive risk weights — in calculating banks’ capital requirements — to banks’ holdings of domestic and other Eurozone sovereign bonds.

C) Breaking the doom loop would impose substantial costs on powerful political constituencies. 

Topics

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