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

The Failure of Free-Market Finance

Article | Sep 16, 2013

Five years after the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, the world has still not addressed the fundamental cause of the subsequent financial crisis – an excess of debt. And that is why economic recovery has progressed much more slowly than anyone expected (in some countries, it has not come at all).

Helicopter money as a policy option

Article | May 29, 2013

‘Helicopter money’ may in some circumstances be the only certain way to stimulate nominal demand

Monetary and Financial Stability: Lessons from the Crisis and from classic economics texts

Paper Conference paper | | Apr 2013

My remarks today will be focused primarily on features of the developed world’s financial system which led to the crisis of 2008 and to the Great Recession that followed, from which we are only slowly and painfully emerging.

Adair Turner: How Do We Get Out of This Mess?

News Feb 5, 2013

Turner’s speech at the UK Financial Services Authority

Featuring this expert

Global Finance, Debt and Sustainability

Video | Oct 3, 2016

CEP Lecture by Adair Turner co-hosted with the IMF. 

Turner: Why Macroeconomic Policies are Failing

Article | Sep 29, 2016

In a Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit Debate, Institute board chairman Adair Turner explains why extraordinary monetary policy isn’t working

Adair Turner Oxford Book Launch

News Nov 30, 2015

Lord Adair Turner visited the Oxford Martin Lecture Theatre on Tuesday 24 November for a well-attended INET Oxford event launching his latest book ‘Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance’ (Princeton University Press).

Printing Money

Article | Nov 16, 2015

A radical solution to the current economic malaise.

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