On Friday 18^th May, myself and other students from our Year 12 Economics group travelled to Harrow School to attend a talk by Mark Carney.

At the talk at Harrow school he first introduce himself as being the governor for the Bank of England and went over his personal academic and working career. He also spoke about monetary policy and explained the instruments the Monetary Policy use in order to control inflation rates. It was great to hear his perspective on how effective these tools were and allowed us to apply the theories we have been learning in the classroom this year.  

The talk was surprisingly diverse and covered an array of different topics due to the range of questions asked by the audience. He covered areas such as the volatility of cryptocurrency to how the scale of household debt was partly accountable to the 2009 Financial Crash. He spoke on his personal experience and change from working in the private financial sector at Goldman Saches to becoming Governor of the Bank of Canada and Governor of the Bank of England. What I found most surprising was when he spoke on pay gaps and mentioned that the pay gap in the financial sector was 43%. I appreciated how during the talk when specific economic jargon arose, he made sure to explain these concepts to ensure those who were not economists were not inundated with the technical terminology used. Overall, myself and my peers, found the talk to be highly beneficial and interesting to see how what we learn in Economics is applied to the outside world.

By Sophia Ansari Year 12