Adair Turner

Involvement Social

Lord Turner chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, a global coalition of major power and industrial companies, investors, environmental NGOs and experts working out achievable pathways to limit global warming to well below 2˚C by 2040 while stimulating economic development and social progress.

He was chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking until January 2019, where he remains a Senior Fellow. He is Chairman of Chubb Europe and on the Advisory Board of Envision Energy, a Shanghai-based group focussed on renewable energy, batteries and digital systems.

From 2008-2013, Lord Turner chaired the UK’s Financial Services Authority, and played a leading role in the post crisis redesign of global banking and shadow banking regulation.

Lord Turner has held high profile roles in public policy: he was Director General of the Confederation of British Industry (1995-2000); chairman of the UK Low Pay Commission (2002-2006); chairman of the Pensions Commision (2003-2006); he was the first chairman of the Climate Change Committee (2008-2012) an independent body to advise the UK Government on tackling climate change. The recommendations set out in their first report “Building a low-carbon economy” were adopted in 2009.

He became a cross bench member of the House of Lords in 2006.

Amongst his business roles, Lord Turner was at McKinsey&Co (1982-1995); was Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe (2000-2006) and a Non-Executive Director of a number of companies, including Standard Chartered plc (2006-2008).

He is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Financial Studies (Frankfurt) and a Visiting Fellow at the People’s Bank of China School of Finance, Tsinghua University (Beijing). He writes regularly for Project Syndicate, and has published “Between Debt and the Devil” (Princeton 2015), and Economics after the Crisis (MIT 2012).

He is a Trustee Emeritus of the British Museum, honorary fellow of The Royal Society, and received an Honorary Degree from Cambridge University in 2017.

By this expert

Should You Buy Bitcoin?

Article | Feb 8, 2018

Over the next year, the Bitcoin price could double, soar tenfold, or collapse by 95% or more, and no economic analysis can help predict where in that range it will lie. Like other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin serves no useful economic purpose, though in macroeconomic terms, such currencies probably also do little harm.

China’s Green Opportunity

Article | Jan 12, 2018

China is now the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter, accounting for over 25% of the global total. But the country has also demonstrated a growing understanding that a truly green economy promises to improve quality of life and create enormous opportunities for technological and political leadership.

China vs. the Washington Consensus

Article | Nov 13, 2017

The 2008 financial crisis was a shock to faith in entirely free financial markets. But the neoliberal assumptions underlying the previously dominant “Washington Consensus” continue to inform much Western commentary on China’s economy.

Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant?

Article | Jul 21, 2017

As the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow noted in 1987, computers are “everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Since then, the so-called productivity paradox has become ever more striking. Automation has eliminated many jobs. Robots and artificial intelligence now seem to promise (or threaten) yet more radical change. Yet productivity growth has slowed across the advanced economies; in Britain, labor is no more productive today than it was in 2007.

Featuring this expert

Adair Turner in the New York Times

News Feb 4, 2019

The New York Times quotes INET Senior Fellow Adair Turner on the bifurcated workforce

Adair Turner on Bloomberg TV

News Jan 22, 2019

INET’s Adair Turner talks about the slowdown in the Chinese economy on Bloomberg TV

INET Chair Adair Turner in The Independent

News Nov 26, 2018

The Independent profiles INET Chairman Adair Turner

Adair Turner on Bloomberg TV

News Sep 10, 2018

INET Chairman Adair Turner reflects on the 2008 financial crisis on Bloomberg TV

Offsite links

Instability in a Monetary Economy

May 12, 2016 Chicago Booth School

"There are no riskless ways out"

Jan 24, 2016 Bilanz

Lord Turner on finance and inclusive economic transformation

Nov 24, 2015 Overseas Development Institute

Debt Déjà Vu

Oct 5, 2015 Project Syndicate

The Debt Business

Aug 25, 2015 BBC Radio 4

The Real Demographic Challenge

Aug 14, 2015 Project Syndicate

Greece for Grownups

Jul 12, 2015 Project Syndicate

China’s Real Reform Challenge

Jun 11, 2015 Project Syndicate

The Debt Dilemma

Apr 16, 2015 Project Syndicate

Caught in a Debt Trap

Mar 24, 2015 Cass Business School

Japan’s Accounting Problem

Mar 15, 2015 Project Syndicate

The Global Economy’s Chinese Headwinds

Feb 11, 2015 Project Syndicate

Progress and Monetisation

Feb 3, 2015 Berfrois

Have We Become Too Flexible?

Jan 21, 2015 Project Syndicate

Please Steal Our Fossil Fuels

Dec 22, 2014 Project Syndicate

Germany’s Secret Credit Addiction

Nov 9, 2014 Project Syndicate

China’s Balancing Act

Oct 7, 2014 Project Syndicate

Facing Reality in the Eurozone

Sep 7, 2014 Project Syndicate

When Fewer Is Better

Aug 12, 2014 Project Syndicate

The Trade Delusion

Jul 17, 2014 Project Syndicate

The Great Credit Mistake

Jun 5, 2014 Project Syndicate

The Perils of Financial Freedom

May 8, 2014 Project Syndicate

The High-Tech, High-Touch Economy

Apr 15, 2014 Project Syndicate

Rethinking the Monetization Taboo

Mar 17, 2015 Project Syndicate

In Praise of Fragmentation

Feb 17, 2014 Project Syndicate

Debt and Demand

Jan 9, 2014 Project Syndicate

Inequality by the Click

Jan 7, 2014 Project Syndicate

The Failure of Free-Market Finance

Sep 3, 2013 Project Syndicate

Overt Monetary Finance and Crisis Management

Aug 9, 2013 Project Syndicate

Too Much “Too Big to Fail”?

Sep 1, 2010 Project Syndicate

The Uses and Abuses of Economic Ideology

Jul 14, 2010 Project Syndicate