Global finance leader Carolyn A. Wilkins delivered the 2025 Berkowitz Lecture on March 20th. Wilkins, a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University’s Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies delivered the lecture, What have we learned from Central Bank responses to COVID? The lecture referred to the first several months of the pandemic response during her term as a deputy governor at the Bank of Canada that ended in December 2020. Wilkins then went on to become an external member of the Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England in June 2021. She is currently a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University’s Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies.

Wilkins’ analysis of lessons learned included re-visiting inflation forecasts and re-thinking trade offs between output and employment. She also emphasized the need to continuously scan for worrisome interactions between monetary policy and financial stability. Where the central bank was most influential, Wilkins suggested, was in raising the bar on the extraordinary use of monetary policy tools. Finally, she recognized that success does not solely rest on the actions of the central bank. [Read more…]