Episode
S9 Ep14: What’s next for Ukraine: Investment
- Podcast
- VoxTalks Economics
- Published
- Feb 25, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1245
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://audioboom.com/posts/8865788
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Summary
Ukraine will emerge from this war with enormous debt. The conventional wisdom treats that as an obstacle: investors weigh it before committing capital, and the burden slows the recovery before it starts. Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Maurice Obstfeld of UC Berkeley argue the opposite. A thorough restructuring of Ukraine's war debts – including, for sufficiently large obligations, outright forgiveness – is not just politically defensible but economically essential for attracting private investment. The bill for rebuilding and growing Ukraine, Gorodnichenko estimates, is $40 billion a year: $20 billion to replace destroyed capital, $10 billion to stop Ukraine falling behind its Eastern European peers, and $10 billion to start closing the gap. Put that figure next to what Poland absorbed in FDI during its post-communist transition, or the €200 billion of Russian state assets currently immobilised in Euroclear, or the budgetary support Ukraine has been receiving since 2022 – and it looks achievable. The harder challenge, they argue, is not raising $40 billion. It is directing it: towards investment rather than consumption. Ukraine didn’t grow in the post-Soviet era at the rate that its neighbours achieved. EU accession momentum and secure borders can be a signal to investors that this time the trajectory will be different. The research behind this episode: Gorodnichenko, Yuriy, and Maurice Obstfeld. 2026. "You Only Live Twice: Financial Inflows and Growth in a Westward-Facing Ukraine." Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues , special issue: "What's Next for Ukraine?" To cite this episode: Phillips, Tim. 2025. "You Only Live Twice: Financial Inflows and Growth in a Westward-Facing Ukraine." Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues (podcast). Assign thi…