The COVID-19 pandemic presented a huge challenge to the world’s various governments: not only did they have to invest in medical supplies and vaccine shots, but they also had to ensure that their populations were catered for in an environment where work was not possible due to the virus and associated lockdown provisions.

This was hard enough for even the most advanced economies, but emerging markets fared worse given their relatively more restricted access to debt. Indeed, this dynamic was a problem for emerging markets well before the pandemic.

Now, post-pandemic, the world’s economies are slowly working to address the debt burden and the massive changes to the dynamics of the world of work and consumer demand.

The underlying risk is that servicing debts – perhaps by policies of austerity – poses risks to the stability of governments and positive sentiment among the populations that they govern. As has been seen before, populations that feel unjustly taxed or poorly governed can easily break out into protest, or worse.

This webinar – a collaboration between Oxford Analytica and global broker WTW – will convene an expert panel to address the question of the politics of debt. Major questions will include what the current state of global debt is, especially in emerging markets, and what effect this debt will have on governments and populations, and the interplay between the two.