 Maybe we start with the first round of three, then we see how we are going. Alan, I'll start with you. Thank you, Chairman. Alan Rowe from the University of Warwick and UNWIDE. Question for Lawrence. Lawrence, you hang a lot of the sort of difficulties of sub-Saharan Africa currently on the impact of the 2009 crisis. Your data showed that a drop in one year and then a very quick recovery. But it seems to me a much simpler sort of explanation is to do with the commodity price movements, which again your own data show because there was a blip in commodity prices in 2009, quickly reversed, but a much bigger fall after 2011, both in the oil price and in other commodities of relevance to Africa, such as copper in countries like Zambia. And that fall has persisted. This wasn't a one-year blip that was reversed. It has persisted almost until now. And of course it's Andrew McKay's point that the impacts of this are differential across different parts of sub-Saharan Africa. If you're Nigeria or Angola and you're exporting oil as your major, almost your only export, a fall from $120 a barrel to $40 a barrel does disastrous things to you really quickly. And the figures you put up on the growth performance are averages. So you've got countries like Nigeria and Angola that have been hit really badly in the last three or four years. But equally, you've got a lot of sub-Saharan countries that import oil who've had terms of trade benefit from this. And you can say there's similar things I think about the metals prices. Copper prices fallen very badly, which has done a lot of damage to Zambia, from which it's finding very difficult to recover. But these are effects which are differentiated. And I would argue that the Malaysian sub-Saharan Africa now, if there is one, is really very little to do with the 2009 global crisis. There's much more to do with what has happened to the global commodity prices linked to perhaps the decline in growth in China and other factors instead. Can I see others? Yes, please pass the mic. I'm going to something that Grasena El-Katisha from City University of New York. Lawrence, you talk about the coupling and it was very interesting because in Latin America, the coupling was always associated to the stronger fiscal situation. And that would decouple us from what was going on in the world. So I thought it was very interesting that you looked only in terms of the banking sector. And the fact that most of the quantization took place through trade flows, that was the same in Latin America. Now, the other thing that I found surprising is that you talk about the shocks that affected the African and South Saharan economies. But you didn't mention the domestic policies. I don't know much about Africa, but I've worked in Nigeria and in Liberia. And those countries, it's the bad economic policies that make them so vulnerable to the shocks. So I was surprised. And I mentioned in Latin America some of the important fiscal, political domestic policies that made the continent more resilient to shocks. But you didn't mention domestic policies at all. Back there? Yes. Oh, thanks. Yes, thank you very much. My name is Ibiya Jai. I'm from the University of Ibada. I listen very carefully to the very excellent papers presented today. And I want to ask one or two questions about two of them. Let me start first with the paper by Lawrence. I am very interested in the paper because in 2009, the African Economic Society put up some seminar workshop together in Nairobi and happened to be the coordinator of that conference on the global financial crisis. And I think since then, this is the first time I'm seeing a paper that tries to address this issue, which Lawrence did. And of course, in his answers, he was saying, did they recover? Yes, directly. And knowing directly and trying to give reasons why that is so. Now, I was thinking in my mind the whole process all over. Isn't really the problem, one of the global economy, what you call Rumbus, the global economy had not actually settled down ever since. When you look at the transmission mechanisms which we examine that time, some of which have also been examined here by Lawrence, they really have not changed. And therefore, the whole world is in perpetual readjustment and Africa is no exception. In other words, Africa is adjusting to what is happening in the global economy. You could of course say that maybe the institutions and the framework for adjustment for Africa are not solid enough to, at least at the internal level, to say maybe their macro-economic environment is not right or the policies being put in place are not sufficient enough to be able to address all these Rumbus when they happen. So I was wondering whether Lawrence would want to give answer to that kind of assertion. Of course, the pessimism of the intellect is there, no doubt. It is not possible for any country to be all by itself now. It's a global economy. Inevitably then, Africa will have to be perpetually adjusting if the global economy is servicing Rumbus. Secondly, I want to address the issue that the micro-economic perspective which my friend Andy was also trying to address. And he was saying or talking about how to adjust in the future. And he says there is need for good quality education to be able to understand that in the future. And that struck me. And I said, well, if you have very good education as some people have in many countries, you graduate from one of the most important universities and you have no job yourself. How would you, how would then, well, how then would I understand the economic world surrounding me with all the education that I have, the education on paper with the quality, how do I adjust to that? I was wondering whether Andy would be kind enough to try to explain this kind of situation to what is happening to a lot of African countries. Thank you very much Mr. Chair. I think let's take a few more so that I, because I've seen some, I saw you sir and then I'll come to you Madina. Should I start? Okay, you can start then I'll come to you. Okay, thank you Chair. Mine is also a bit easier and straightforward. But what has been the role of the political economy in controlling these economic shocks? I thought Lawrence would either have handled some of these or Andy himself because the politics of handling economic shocks is also in itself something which I thought could come in in terms of addressing these economic shocks. Thank you. I'm Winston Ducour and I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. I wanted to make a small comment on small economies and the ability to respond to shocks. First part of the comment is that small economies, particularly in the Caribbean and to some extent Central American region, faces shock as a permanent phenomenon. It is not a transition. And therefore the size of the recent shock is all that matters. The political history, the economic history has been consistently how to adjust to shocks over the years. And therefore it made it much easier to try and handle some of the issues of shocks. That was done by developing buffers of resilience in the economies. Both from the point of view of, I think my sister talked about domestic policy, endogenous policy or capital mobilization as an ongoing process. And secondly, the establishment of funds, wealth funds in order to face the rainy day. And the third area had to do with the support from the international financial institutions, which invariably looked at shock as a temporary phenomenon, not as a permanent phenomenon. And therefore their whole approach has been based on the fact of providing temporary cash dynamics and cash flow support. And that's always dissipated over time. So once you get into those programs, which are improperly designed for small economies, you never get out of those programs. So those are the three areas of resilience. The other aspect has to do with the flow of funds. And one of the distinguishing features I found was that in these economies, well, you ended up with strong fiscal deficits on the public sector. You had at the same time fiscal surpluses in the banking sector, which were insulated from the global financial world, but they are part of the global system. So the strong regulatory system made them insulated from it. And therefore one of the problems you had was how, therefore, could you not bring about endogenous growth if you have fiscal deficits and fiscal space always falling but you have private surpluses? That's an area that very few governments want to tackle directly. But in fact it's one of the areas for resilience that has to be addressed in terms to provide a capacity to respond. And the first people, all people that represented, I see the value of it, but we're trying to look at beyond tomorrow how do you prevent these shocks, which now is a permanent feature of life, not a temporary feature of life, and how do you face up to that reality in the future? I will mind getting the comments of the learned professors on this. Okay. I think we have about six interventions, and I would leave it to the panelists to pick the ones that are directed to them or the ones that would feel wanted to give more elaboration. Now let me go through the same cycle. We start with you, Lawrence. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you very much for the comments, all our colleagues here. I have to say that I agree with all the comments that were directed towards me and all the perspectives that you've offered. How can I do that? Well, I do that by explaining that when I saw Daniel had given me only one more minute, I thought I had better stop and therefore I was unable to go into all these things in depth. But that is entirely my fault. I should have highlighted them at the beginning. Of course, it's very much the case that the experience of shocks is very much a varied experience across sub-Saharan Africa, just as it is between continents. I'm very grateful to Alan for making that clear, and as Alan says, we've seen good micro-attitude perspective on that from Andy. So I plead simply, I didn't have time to go into all that. And I think I agree entirely with what Alan said about continuing problems in Africa. And I think that's what I was talking about, the continuing problems. But Alan did start out by saying that these are the continuing effects of the global financial crisis. And yes, I agree with that. That's the sense in which I say, yes, the global financial crisis had these indirect effects that are indirect because we're experiencing them in the more recent years, the years after 2011. And I see them as longer term indirect effects. What is their nature? I see their nature as being some of the things that I touched upon. Such as the great shock to trust that occurred as a result of the crisis, the belief in future volatility rather than as a result of the shock and so on. All these things have effects. And indeed, our colleague from City University in New York, I'm sorry I didn't catch your name. Was quite rightly, I think, pointing to the role of domestic policies. What I would say about that is that yes, I take that for granted that there are problems of governance and particularly including economic governance that are endemic or long standing. And I was saying that, well, yeah, and I think the crisis has made those worse by creating the social fracturing and the breakdown of the social contract to the extent that it existed and therefore made it more difficult and made it impossible to see a way in which governments could take a lead now in restructuring their economies to deal with all societies for these shocks. That was the nature of my pessimism. I also was explaining that I didn't talk about the fiscal sector linkage and I agree that that's crucial. I mean, I was picking up on the literature that was around in 2009, 2010 which was focusing upon the question of are there direct banking sector links. The fiscal issues are incredibly important because the upturn that we saw immediately after the sharp downturn was due entirely to fiscal stimulus. Well, I say entirely due to fiscal stimulus, that's not true. As Bepper explained, there was a very significant monetary stimulus as well. But at the same time, there was also a very significant coordinated international fiscal stimulus coordinated through the investing of new powers in the G20 which enabled the G20 countries to coordinate a big fiscal stimulus coming from European countries, North America and China to a very large extent. And those are to be recognized. And the issue then is could that fiscal stimulus be maintained? Well, it should have been, but it was cut short. And that, I think, had a major impact in slowing world growth and slowing the world markets on which sub-Saharan Africa's depend. What happened was the fiscal stimulus was cut short by a consensus developing that governments have to cut back on their borrowing. But it's now recognized. Even by the IMF, which was quite a leading role in that, it's recognized that that stimulus was cut short too quickly. And I'm glad that you've brought that up because it is a very important dimension. As EB was saying, the global economy hasn't really settled down. And that's one aspect of it. But I see that in very general terms too. And as I put up on the board, there are current macroeconomic imbalances across the world. And a better way to put it is that there's just a continual uncertainty about the kinds of policies that any individual nation can, should follow, at the macro level, and their coordination. And that, I'm sorry, I've overrun again. So I see that as being a key thing in restricting the abilities of economists to grow and more trade to grow. Thank you. Let me take this question about the shops and small economies. Small economies, because that has aspects that I would like to comment on. The important distinction, of course, here is that, obviously, the suggestions about resilience, rainy day funds for economists to build are very welcome. If managed well, they will certainly help and give an opportunity. And if available, they will help. They will be of great help when a recession hits. That is definitely important. And also the fact that international organizations can, if they can provide this kind of assistance, the question, I think, which is a harder question, is the question about the temporary versus long-term. If you, you know, this kind of buffers and assistance and rainy day funds, they will obviously be most useful for against relatively temporary shocks. If there's a permanent change or semi-permanent change in the circumstances, then I think the answer is that the economy has to adapt. You have to start the process of adjusting to those circumstances, which are going to prevail foreseeably long time. But obviously, this is easy to say, of course, in practice. It's more difficult to consider this. I mean, we probably did not expect, for example, the aftermath of the global crisis to continue so long and seems to be continuing even into the future. And so these things are, you know, things which perhaps look at short term may turn out to be longer term, but then obviously you have to make adjustments. Policymaking is not going to be easy on this, but I think still the distinction between temporary shocks and longer-term problems is crucial because it is important for the natural policies you take and the buffers are important, various buffers are important, but they are more for the temporary shocks. Thank you, Sebo. Andres, two minutes. Well, I think one of the questions or the remarks were about the political economy or social dimensions of adjusting to shocks. And I think this is a very important topic. And for example, I have been doing some research on the impact of austerity in Spain and Portugal and Greece in the aftermath of the 2008 and 2009 and looking at the effects of those policies, adjusting to a shock, basically. And you see that most of the cost is bear by labor and low-income groups, in part the middle class. You see, for example, Spain has been operating with unemployment rates between 20 and 25 percent over six, seven years or even more. And youth unemployment, the same people between 18 years old and 28 years old, the rate of unemployment has climbed to near 50 percent. In Greece, which is one of the most recent cases of protected depression in the sense that the country is experiencing negative growth for its eighth year in a row, which is probably unheard of in the history of depressions or recessions, you see that, again, the average rate of unemployment in Greece is 25 percent. And unemployment has climbed up to 60 percent. It's slowly declining now, but a little bit. As part of the adjustment process, pensions have been cut and the middle class has been hit. So it's very regressive. And also use some database on wealth distribution that was available for the three countries. And you see an increase in the share of the top 1 percent in total wealth in Greece on the order of 35 percent and in Spain on the order of 20 percent. So this is a very asymmetric adjustment to external shocks, I wouldn't say external, sorry, part internal, part external. So I think this is a very important topic. And to what extent you are putting a lot of stress and fatigue on democracies when you have this protected adjustment falling on the middle class and the poor and the labor is an open question that we see now happening in Europe. I mean, the rise of nationalism, populism, et cetera, probably is not uncorrelated with these shocks. Two words on the sovereign wealth funds. Yes, these were created thinking that or are created, it's not easy to manage them. Two issues are important. First, for low income countries, you have to cut consumption in the government to save resources to create the funds. That's one thing. And then you have to maintain the funds. And so there is, again, an opportunity cost of spending in social needs or in infrastructure and keeping money in these funds. The other issue that in Chile is part of the discussion where there is over insurance. You are saving too much and you don't use it. And they are not clear. You have clear rules for accumulating resources, but you don't have clear rules for using the resources in the wake of an external shock. It depends completely on the judgment of the ministry of finance, basically in Chile. And so these are two issues that I would like to comment on. And the other is, well, again, we are living in a world of more frequent financial crises and frequent cycles. Therefore, what is permanent and what is transitory is not that clear right now. Thank you. Okay, that's fine. Okay, quickly first in response to EB about education. I mean, also on that list that had employment and financial increased access to finance because I think it's got to be a package of these things. Of course, we're educating more people across Africa, not particularly good quality, but more people are being educated, but there's no jobs. So what are they going to do? And the potential political risks of that, of course, are quite substantial. So there's no doubt that the education has to go along with other things to create economic opportunities. Briefly on the political economy, that issue also arises at a micro level as well. So for example, the response of Vietnam in response to the balancing the interests of producers and consumers, that's a political economy interest. Do you favor the interests of the consumers? Do you favor the interests of the producers? Do you try and balance it? That is an important political economy issue. Another important political economy issue is attitudes towards migration because their big political economy issues come in as well. So that's also an important issue. And just briefly, as Andres was commenting on Spain and Greece, I was thinking those youth employment figures would be even bigger if there hadn't been a lot of migration as well from those countries and number of people have left. And of course, these are the more educated people leaving. But that's part of the response. But even with that migration, you have youth employment figures, unemployment figures of the size that he's talking about. Thank you. Thank you very much, Andy and the panellists. We have come to an end of this session. I would like to thank all the panellists and all the participants for their active participation and their attention. I will ask all of us to make a round of applause to our panellists.