Department of Economics

The first lecture of the Speakers Series in 2022 will be featuring Dr. Klaus F. Zimmermann, the President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and a Professor UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University, Germany. This event is jointly sponsored by Stephen Jarislowsky Chair at Memorial University and the Department of Economics, and supported by the SITA (Scholarship in the Arts) of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

Title: “Global Mobility after the Pandemic”

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4823653197?pwd=MS95VGVHcWZQanM1dSswSjlTTE5Ndz09

 

Time: Friday, February 18, 2:30 NDT (1:00 EST)

Abstract:

Covid-19 has challenged the way humanity is organizing global welfare through cooperation and the division of work. Key causes of the spread of the virus have been the conditions of human mobility and exchange. The ultimate solution had been to restrict such mobility. Among the response mechanisms were home-work and internet collaborations. What are the long-term consequences after the end of the pandemic? Will this end globalization? Or cause a faster transition into the future of work? Are vaccinations essential but not a game changer? And will the pandemic ever come fully to an end or just become endemic? The lecture will deal with those questions. It will work out the importance of migration and mobility for the creation of human welfare and development through the law of the division of work. It will review the experiences with the "Spanish Flu", which early in the 20th century contributed to the end of the largely globalized world existing at the time before World War I. Will history repeat? It will then study the experiences we have so far with the mobility consequences of the pandemic and which innovations are under way dealing with it. The conclusions will speculate about the consequences for the future of migration.

 

Klaus F. Zimmermann

Global Labor Organization (GLO), UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University

 Professor Klaus F. Zimmermann is currently the President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO), and a Professor at UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University. He is also the Founding Director, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and a Past-President, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). He serves as the current Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Population Economics. He has published 53 books, 168 papers in refereed research journals, including American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Human Resources, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Public Economics, International Migration Review, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and China Economic Review. Professor Zimmermann won Distinguished John G. Diefenbaker Award 1998 of the Canada Council for the Arts in 1998, the Outstanding Contribution Award 2013 of the European Investment Bank in 2013, and the Rockefeller Foundation Policy Fellow in 2017.