Seminar: "What would Degrowth mean for the Global South?" by Suryadeepto Nag

The REAL-Postgrowth project (Post-growth – REAL – A Post-Growth Deal) is excited to announce the online seminar "What would Degrowth mean for the Global South? Evidence from a Real Demand Contraction in the Global North" with Suryadeepto Nag.

Title: "What would Degrowth mean for the Global South? Evidence from a Real Demand Contraction in the Global North"  

Speaker: Suryadeepto Nag, Doctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne (UNIL)

• Date: Tuesday, December 1st, 2026
• Time: 15.00-16.00
• Venue: Online https://zoom.us/j/94300176845?pwd=BQco2pUfnER0WhoeXoA0ym1YubyEKe.1

While proponents of degrowth have argued that reduced demand in the Global North would cede development space to the Global South, critics have expressed concern that the contraction in demand would hurt employment and well-being in the Global South. Although a recession is not degrowth, the Global Financial Crisis-induced Great Recession of 2008-09 is a useful reference point for understanding how Southern economies respond to lower Northern demand. Our findings are inconsistent with the proposition that a short-term Northern demand contraction and consequent Southern export contraction necessarily harm the Global South. On average, the export contraction in the Global South was associated with higher household consumption and greater domestic consumption of labor and land, while associations with unemployment and undernourishment are less robust to weighting and pre-period diagnostics. We observe that between 2007 and 2009, South-South trade and consumption growth in the South could quantitatively offset the contraction of South-North trade, while ecological imbalances in South-North trade reduced.

Suryadeepto (Suryo) Nag is an interdisciplinary economist working at the intersection of ecological economics, development economics, and macroeconomics. Specifically, Suryo studies the economics of how international trade allocates production and consumption globally, with an emphasis on labor, and whether degrowth can serve as a reallocatory mechanism. He also works on post-growth and delinking policies that could ensure decent living standards across the world, reduce inequalities--intranational and international, reduce unequal exchange, and enable economic sovereignty in the Global South.