Henry Curr Keynote Speaker

Henry Curr is the Economics Editor for The Economist, overseeing their economics coverage and writing many of their world-renowned leaders, briefings and special reports

Henry has written or contributed to some 30 cover stories at The Economist, including stories on labour markets, public debt and the future of global commerce. He has written extensively about the effect of tensions between the US and China and the trouble with “homeland economics” and green protectionism.

He led the magazine’s economics coverage through the pandemic, the return of inflation, the energy crisis and the US banking crisis of 2023.   He is the author of memorable cover stories such as “The Fed that Failed” (which accurately warned that US interest rates would need to rise above 5%) and “Are Free Markets History?” (on the rise of industrial policy).

Another special report, published in Autumn 2022, presciently warned that the combination of ageing societies, rising defence spending, the green transition and debt-interest costs would lead to a loose-fiscal, tight-money regime.

Henry joined The Economist as Britain economics correspondent in 2014 and was the magazine’s main writer on the American economy from 2015-18, a period that included the first monetary tightening since the global financial crisis and the Trump tax cuts. He often appears on television and radio and he moderates and speaks at events. His experience includes on-stage discussions with Nobel-prizewinners and former prime ministers, appearing as a panelist at the International Monetary Fund and Brookings Institution, chairing conferences and giving presentations to asset managers and private-equity firms on the state of the global economy.

Henry is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. In 2021 he was awarded the Society of Professional Economists’ Rybczynski Prize for his essay on quantitative easing.  He was highly commended in the “Journalism of the Year” category at the prestigious Wincott Awards for business, economic and financial journalism. The Wincott Foundation commented that Henry ‘ asked the big questions about the global economy and answered them in a thoughtful and thought-provoking manner’.