Princeton professors Markus Brunnermeier and historian Harold James discuss how much new debt governments will pile up in reaction to the Covid-19 economic fallout. Is the pandemic really similar to a world war? “Wartime analogies underestimate that it is the first time that we see a coordinated effect of many governments to shut down large parts of their economies,” James argues.
On Friday, April 24, Harold James joined the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance for a webinar on the history of war financing and lessons for Covid-19. James is a Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University.
The event began with a brief discussion by Markus Brunnermeier, Director of the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance.
Harold James is the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies at the Department of History, Princeton University. He studies economic and financial history and modern European history.
He was a Fellow of Peterhouse for eight years before joining Princeton University in 1986.
In 2004 he was awarded the Helmut Schmidt Prize for Economic History and in 2005 the Ludwig Erhard Prize for writing about economics.
His most recent books include Family Capitalism, Harvard University Press, 2006; The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Harvard University Press, 2009; Making the European Monetary Union, Harvard University Press, 2012; The Euro and the Battle of Economic Ideas (with Markus K. Brunnermeier and Jean-Pierre Landau), Princeton University Press, 2016.
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