David McWilliams

Economist, Broadcaster, Author

David McWilliams is an economist, author, journalist, documentary-maker and broadcaster. He is Adjunct Professor of Global Economics at the School of Business Trinity College Dublin. and is ranked 10th most influential economist in the world. He produces a weekly economics podcast which has repeatedly topped the Irish and English podcast charts.

David is co-founder of the world’s only economics and stand-up comedy festival Kilkenomics – described by the FT as “simply, the best economics conference in the world”. He also founded Ireland’s leading literary and ideas shindig, the Dalkey Book Festival. The WEF at Davos debased their currency profoundly by making him a Young Global Leader a few years back.

With the objective to make economics digestible and engaging for all, David draws on his unique sense of humour when he travels the globe speaking on growth trends, geo-politics, currencies, financial markets and the link between economics and the individual and cultural psyche

Consistently accurate in his forecasts, David McWilliams was the only economist in Ireland who accurately forecast a strong UK Brexit vote, the Trump victory and the 2008 global crash. David is ranked the 10th most influential economist in the world and as such is a regular on the international speaking circuit.

David has written five bestsellers and one of these The Pope’s Children is the best selling nonfiction ever published in Ireland. His writing style is described by Bloomberg’s head of economics Stephanie Flanders, as having “a great knack for bringing a complex economics story to life. He is also funny. In economics, that’s a rare and persuasive combination. He is very active on social media and is the third most widely followed economist in the world with 238,000 Twitter followers. He writes a weekly economics column for The Irish Times and is a regular international contributor to the Financial Times.

Once upon a time he had a real job working as an economist first in the Irish Central Bank and later as Chief European Economist at UBS and Head of Emerging Markets Research at Banque Nationale de Paris. He studied economics at Trinity College Dublin and the College of Europe in Bruges. David has recently launched his new online economics course – "International Trade and Money". Additionally, his series of animated economics videos – Punk Economics – have been viewed by over 2,000,000 people so far.

In all his speeches, David reaches beyond the conventional, challenging his audiences to think differently about the world, because it is in thinking differently that innovation and progress are bred.