Bangor Business School academic presents at Ideas Exchange Seminar

A member of Bangor University’s Business School has contributed to an influential policymaking seminar in Cardiff recently.Dr Edward Jones

Dr Edward Jones, a Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol lecturer in Economics at the School, presented at the Ideas Exchange Seminar being held by the National Assembly for Wales Research Service and the Learned Society of Wales. Titled ‘Economic strategy, finance and infrastructure: how ambitious should Welsh policy be?’, the session considered key elements of economic policy in a time where policymaking itself finds itself on a canvas of uncertainty and unknowns and as Wales establishes a new Development Bank.

Speaking after the event, Dr Jones said:

“Over the last three decades, we’ve seen the world’s financial markets accommodate extreme events, the most recent being the 2010 European debt crisis. This had led to a belief that finance itself is becoming more fragile and that we cannot rely on market forces alone to address economic structural difficulties. Market failures occur here in Wales, which relate to the imperfect information between lenders and businesses. This leads to some potentially viable businesses being refused finance, which is sub-optimal for economic growth. With correct and clear governance, the new Development Bank has the potential to address market failures within Wales and support well-defined national and regional economic policies to target faster growth of GDP.”

Publication date: 10 March 2017