12th Joint Conference of the IW and MPIfG

On April 24, the German Economic Institute (IW) and the MPIfG convened for their 12th joint conference. Their main topic was social and economic resilience in the context of climate change. Michael Hüther, director at the IW, stressed the need for a more active industrial policy and warned of the inadequacy of simple price mechanisms such as emission certificates. He also pointed to the growing significance of geopolitical risks and called for companies to take a political stance. Jens Beckert, director at the MPIfG, argued in favor of policy for the common good and the ecological embedding of markets in order to guarantee material security and democratic stability. The discussions in the second part of the event revolved around topics including market-based price mechanisms and the resilience of global supply chains. All the participants were in agreement that the state must play a stronger role than in recent decades. The central question was how to achieve the balance between state and market and whether states have the capacity to meet the challenges of climate change.