Hello and welcome.

My name is Sophia Bash and you're listening to the CR podcast.

Hello and welcome to the third episode of the CR podcast series on the economics of populism.

My name is Christian Onda.

I'm the chief economist at the Center for European Reform. And today, I'm in conversation with Marcel Frascher and Ryan Avent. Marselle Fretcher

is president at the DAW Berlinian professor of macroeconomics and finance at Humboldt University.

And Ryan Avent is the economics columnist at the economist. Thanks for being here.

The topic of this episode is inequality behind the rise of populism.

Let me start by asking you just to quickly in 30 to 60 seconds summarize what you said on the panel,

on the rise of whether inequality is behind the rise of populism?

My short answer is yes.

Inequality is a serious problem today.

That's underestimated by many.

But which is behind a lot of the conflicts and populism, but also another other social

conflicts in all over Europe and all over the industrialized

countries behind Brexit, behind the bashing of Europe and the euro and many European countries.

So it is a problem. Government should take it more seriously.

The causes to me are not globalization, but it's really about institutions,

weakening of labor market institutions. It's about lack of equality of opportunity,

and partly also technological change. And the solution therefore will not be more redistribution,

but really focusing on creating equality of opportunity, really creating a level

playing field in the area of taxation, in the area of transfers, in the area of education, of course,

...