Emilios Avgouleas gives closing keynote to Political Economy conference celebrating 10th anniversary of the Law School of the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Professor Emilios Avgouleas was invited to give the closing keynote address to the international conference 'The Political Economy of Financial Regulation', held to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Law School of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) one of the oldest and most successful universities in Asia.

The conference featured presentations from academics from Oxford, Columbia University, HKU, NUS and other leading European and Asian Universities.

Professor Avgouleas' keynote entitled, The Importance of Exchange Rate Disparity for Global Economic Relations: A Political Economy Perspective', was chaired by the dean of the CUHK law school.

Emilios' address touched upon the complex issue of predatory currency devaluations and their impact on international trade relations as well as on the financial stability spillovers created by today's extra-ordinary monetary measures such as historically low interest rates and quantitative easing (QE). 

He explained in his address that both forms of currency manipulation amount to expropriation of the wealth of other nations. He stressed that these two phenomena are the most potent threats for the contemporary economic order and if they are not checked the end result will be curbs on global capital flows and trade protectionism. These, in turn, will breed instability in international relations and tension between Asian exporters and Western country importers. Avgouleas suggested that any remedies may only come through a reform of the international economic order which has more or less atrophied since 1972 and the introduction of an objective measure of currency value/parity, which will also enhance the development of the International trade order.

He also expressed the view that the international financial order has reached its outer limits of reform for now as it suffers from inherent normative ambiguities.

Emilios proposed on objective mechanism to measure currency value/parity using a co-efficient that is based on the composite values of global GDP, commodity prices, and global stock exchange indices. In his view this mechanism can replace the Gold standard without having the deflationary consequences and the anomalies that the gold standard presented in the period between 1919 and 1938.

The lecture was very well received by the expert audience and stimulated lots of lively debate as well as acceptance of its key arguments/suggestions by both economists and jurists present.

You can download the conference programme here: http://webapp1.law.cuhk.edu.hk/2016conference/10th/conf/participants.php
 

A conference photo with participants, organizers and the keynote speakers Prof. Avgouleas and Prof. K. Pistor of Columbia Law School.
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Further information
Emilios Avgouleas is the inaugural holder of the International Banking Law and Finance chair and director of the Edinburgh LLM in International Banking Law and Finance. In Spring 2016 he was a senior research scholar at Yale Law School.

Read more about Emilios on his profile page.