About this event 

What, if anything, can decision-makers learn from looking to the North Atlantic's collective long-run experience in dealing with the Great Pandemic of 2020?

In this webinar presented by the William J Clinton Leadership Institute and the Long Run Initiative the Toronto based business historian Dr Laurence B. Mussio hosts a panel of business and economics historians, in a discussion about how a long-run perspective helps them think about how Covid-19 will affect business, the financial system, inequality and globalisation. In particular they will consider what today's leaders can learn from past pandemics, economic depressions and national crises.

The Long Run Initiative (LRI) is a forum for academic experts, business leaders & public policymakers. It provides insights from the analysis of long-run experiences and trends to provide context and deepen understanding of the grand challenges facing businesses and government. LRI analysis focuses on where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going.

We believe that by understanding the past, we can better appreciate the forces that have created the present and how they will shape the trajectory of future of businesses, economies and societies.

Through the organisation of short, high-impact round table events, the LRI creates a dialogue to exchange knowledge and stimulate ideas, giving participants the opportunity to reflect on and discuss parallels from the past, and consider how these lessons apply to their own organisations.

Dr Laurence B. Mussio

Dr Laurence B. Mussio is a senior Canadian business historian, special advisor to senior executives of North American financial institutions. He teaches at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto. Laurence is also CEO of SIERC a Toronto, Canada based consultancy specialising in mobilising context for decision-making. He has published scholarly books on government, political economy and business. In Spring 2020, McGill-Queen's University Press is publishing his landmark two-volume study of Canada's first bank BMO Bank of Montreal, entitled Whom Fortune Favours The Bank of Montreal and the Rise of North American Finance, with a foreward by Niall Ferguson.

Professor John Turner

John is a Professor of Finance and Financial History at Queen’s University Belfast. He is a former Head of Queen’s Business School and is the director of the Queen’s University Centre for Economic History. He has been a Houblon -Norman Fellow at the Bank of England and an Alfred D. Chandler Fellow at Harvard Business School. John has published an award -winning book entitled Banking in Crisis.His next book, which will be published by Cambridge University Press this summer, is entitled Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles.

Dr Chris Colvin

Dr Chris Colvin is Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queen’s University Belfast and Research Associate at the university’s Centre for Economic History. He has written extensively on the interwar economy and specialises in the causes, anatomy and consequences of financial crises. He is also interested in measuring the long-run consequences of health crises and is currently working on quantifying the demographic impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Dr Michael Aldous

Dr Michael Aldous is a business historian with an interest in the ownership and organisation of firms. His recent research has focused on understanding the historical evolution of firms involved in international trade and business, and considered how these developments shaped processes of globalisation. Currently he is working on a Leverhulme Trust grant investigating British CEOs in the 20th century, examining the effect of factors such as personality traits, career progression, and networks, on firm performance. He teaches strategic management and International Business.