Development

Discussions on the key conceptual and policy themes for sovereign debt sustainability with a view to proposing possible policy reforms.

Inclusive development especially the role of employment opportunities in a changing world of work and the environment in envisioning inclusiveness

Vera Songwe, Chair of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, and former Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, on the multiple crises facing African countries.

A model that captures key vulnerabilities and structural weaknesses of developing countries’ trade and production structures.

A Balance-of-Payments Constrained Growth Perspective

Honorary Vice President at IMANI Center for policy and education, Bright Simons, on the challenges Ghana is facing

How can we quantify the wage share implied by varying degrees and types of participation to Global Value Chains?

If primary commodities and mid-to-high-tech manufacturing products are produced by industries with different wage shares, there are distributive implications of deepening trade integration with certain regions with respect to others.

As 2022 comes to a close, panelists discuss the immediate prospects for the global economy, the dangers of a lost decade for developing countries and what needs to be done to put the SDGs back on track.

Entretien avec Gilles Yabi, directeur exécutif du Think Tank ouest-africain WATHI, sur la sécurité alimentaire en Afrique

An interview with Gilles Yabi, executive director of the West African Think Tank WATHI, on food security in Africa

“We risk a global decoupling in which East and West face off in a cold war, and Africans are caught in the middle,” says Professor Carlos Lopes in an interview with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin

Quels sont les problèmes à long terme qui doivent être résolus et quelles sont les solutions disponibles?

What are the long-term problems that need to be addressed and what solutions are out there?

Why to Be Wary of Another Volcker-Type Monetary Tightening

Fears of ‘stagflation’ have come back to haunt macroeconomic policy makers all over the globe

China’s successful technological development path stands in contrast to the corporate financialization model in the United States

China’s successful technological development path stands in contrast to the corporate financialization model in the United States

The 5th UNCTAD YSI Summer School provides an opportunity to explore the Challenges and Opportunities of a New International Economic Order. The school will bring together UNCTAD experts, academics, diplomats, and young scholars from across the globe for lively and stimulating intellectual debates.

Besides the crucial COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver, far more is at stake at this ministerial than is generally known.

Distinguished Public Lecture on “Making India a Prosperous and Happy Nation @100”, by Dr. Ajay Chhibber, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University on Tuesday, 22 March 2022.

Fragility and Resilience in Green Development in Africa: Intersections and Trade-offs

An overview of the current digital access landscape in Africa

Ajay Chhibber, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Economic Policy, George Washington University, and India’s first Director General of Independent Evaluation with the status of Minister of State in 2013-14, discusses his co-authored book, Unshackling India, about what needs to happen for India’s economy to take off.

Governments and civil society organizations must work together with UNCTAD to provide developing countries the tools — and the transformed governance regimes — they need to “build back better” through these challenging and difficult times.

The 4th UNCTAD YSI Summer School celebrates the approach and legacy of UNCTAD’s annual Trade and Development Report (TDR). The school will bring together UNCTAD experts, academics, diplomats, and young scholars from across the globe for lively and stimulating intellectual debates.

The world won’t emerge from the pandemic until the pandemic is controlled everywhere, and this is a special concern because of the new mutations that are likely to arise where the disease is running its course. So too, the world won’t have a robust economic recovery until at least most of the world is on the course to prosperity. Global growth is far more muted now than then, and inward-looking policies in some of the nations where growth has been restored have resulted in an increase in their trade surplus, attenuating the global impact of their recovery.

Our world is full of fault lines—growing inequality in income and opportunity; systemic racism; health and economic crises from a global pandemic; mistrust of experts; the existential threat of climate change; deep threats to employment in a digital economy with robotics on the rise. These fundamental problems and others like them stem from a common crisis in values.

An interview with young migrants living in Mali’s capital city of Bamako

The discussants will illuminate the findings and wisdom in Montek S. Ahluwalia’s book BackStage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years (2019) and then explore the challenges for the developing world and Asian geopolitics.

While Africa’s “premature deindustrialization” appears to be the dominant global narrative, recent analysis of the data suggests that de-industrialization is not the common experience for the majority of African countries

In this interview, Camilla Toulmin and Folashadé Soulé speak with Carlos Lopes, Professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town, Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Paris and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, London

What are the 100 most pertinent economic questions facing our global societ?

Human societies have always coevolved with technology, but how can we think of technology? Is it an external force outside our control, or do we have a say in its direction, development and deployment?

Developing countries, many of which appear not to have felt the health effects of COVID to the same extent as Europe and the US, are nonetheless facing severe economic effects as the pandemic pushes the global economy into a recession.

IMPORTANT: Due to growing concerns around the coronavirus, the INET Conference, as well as these workshops will be postponed. Applicants will soon be provided further information.

An event for INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) are pleased to announce the upcoming UNCTAD Summer School 2019.

The implications of rising inequality are massive. Economists need to tackle it together.

John Kenneth Galbraith noted in 1973 that establishment economics had become the “invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public.” If anything, economists’ embrace of that role has grown stronger since then.

For years, governments in India and much of the developing world have followed the advice of a paper arguing that labor regulations actually hurt workers. The problem? The research was wrong.

For years, governments in India and much of the developing world have followed the advice of a paper arguing that labor regulations actually hurt workers. The problem? The research was wrong.

Chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence, INET has assembled a global team of leaders and scholars calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

Microfinance and then financial inclusion have become buzzwords in international development. Such initiatives have mobilised and generated  large amounts of development funding, despite substantial amount of critique. Such critiques call for a more impartial assessment of the effectiveness of financial inclusion on the grounds that funds for microfinance, they argue, displaced development spendings on healthcare, education or infrastructure. In addition, the focus on expansion of financial markets to ‘bank’ and financially ‘include’ the poor may divert attention from more comprehensive and effective poverty reduction strategies. Critiques of this ‘way of doing development’ are often sidelined and labelled as ‘extreme’, ‘sloppy’ or ideology-driven rather than evidence-based. We believe that there is a need for contemporary development scholars from all disciplines to engage in those debates. This half-day workshop would bring in such scholars to discuss what we have learned from a decade of research on the microfinance, and how financial inclusion and the emergence of fintech may offer new opportunities - as well as risks - in for inclusive global development. 

A new report examines the path to global social progress. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers

Clear rules and sound principles for debt restructuring would level the playing field between developing countries and creditors

This small interdisciplinary workshop, is organized by the Azim Premji University, Institute for Policy Dialogue and the Institute for New Economic Thinking. The goal of the workshop is to bring together graduate students studying development studies at a sufficiently advanced stage of their dissertation work to be able to discuss and receive feedback on their research.

The YSI Economic Development Working Group will host a series of panels at the annual conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics, with the goal of developing an innovative research program on productive structures, institutions, distribution, and economic development. 

In a complex world, we’ll experience more “black swans”, and the things that standard economic models assumed away will matter much more.

A change in macroeconomic policies will not be sufficient to set Argentina on a path of inclusive and sustained economic development. But, as last month’s currency scare showed, abandoning the approach adopted by President Mauricio Macri’s administration at the end of 2015 is a necessary step.

The World Bank and IMF say developing economies can’t afford to have strong labor laws. Actually, they can’t afford not to.

Labor market regulation is a controversial area of public policy in both developed and developing countries.

Global public goods, from health to peace to security, crisscross national and social boundaries. We need a new economic theory to understand their pivotal role in the global economy.

For the BRICS countries to not just grow their economies but also raise the standard of living of their people, inclusive growth that prioritizes poverty reduction is a must

But the five countries must still support greater investment in other emerging and developing economies

The BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—play a crucial and growing role in the world economy. Sanjay Reddy kicks off our series exploring shifting social and economic dynamics within these countries, and what they mean for the global economy.    

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

The African Development Bank has laid out a plan for economic prosperity in the continent. But to get there, African countries must first confront jobless growth and underfunded infrastructure projects.

There’s no turning back from humanity’s move to high-density living, says Ed Glaeser. The task of the century will be making cities more liveable.

The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.

The Implications of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative for China and the World Economy

Coping with the dysfunction of advanced economies, and developing strategies for economic development.

A better set of approaches for the 21st century.

Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence and a global team of leading thinkers are calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

“Blindly” Engaging in Global Supply Chains Can Erode Developing Nations’ Economic Power

Robinson explains how natural experiments are done and why they’re useful. He also explains distribution of power and development of state play critical roles in successful economies.

Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) has released a new e-book, “Conversations on Dependency Theory”

The Young Scholars Initiative and the University of the Free State, SA, invite young scholars to attend the first YSI Africa conference. 

A discussion featuring Kenneth Smith, Head of the Trade and NAFTA Office of the Ministry of the Economy of Mexico, and Jay Pelosky, Principal of Pelosky Global Strategies.

A discussion with Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. 

A new book by economist Peter Temin finds that the U.S. is no longer one country, but dividing into two separate economic and political worlds

Along the entire “innovation chain” — from research and development, to production and commercialization — government and private sectors have very different roles to play.

Brazil’s current economic scenario does not resemble the emerging economy that until recently fueled the optimism of analysts and investors.

New findings show that hourly wage-rates in China are higher than in middle-income countries and are approaching the levels of Greece and Portugal

Any effort to replace the Affordable Care Act will be confronted by the same structural imbalances in the health care economy that the legislation’s authors faced

Beijing’s leaders face a critical dilemma over a credit boom that imperils China’s prospects for a smooth transition to a sustainable economic path

Notes from the Institute’s Director of Research on some significant papers and contributions produced in 2016 under the INET rubric 

Campaign promises aside, the policies favored by President-elect Donal Trump are likely to bring more pain than gain to  working-class Americans 

Beneath the heated political rhetoric over U.S.-China economic ties lies an increasingly complex reality

Milwaukee-born short-seller Jim Chanos, founder and managing partner of New York-based Kynikos Associates, teaches University of Wisconsin and Yale business students about corporate fraud. During his life and career, he has witnessed seismic shifts in economic thinking and the relationship between labor and capital. Chanos shares his thoughts on the world emerging from the election of Donald Trump and the tumultuous political events of 2016. 

Nobel laureate argues that the party’s adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy has hurt its prospects

Flows of goods and services, people and capital have overwhelmed the ability of political processes to accommodate them

By suddenly eliminating two widely used bank notes, India’s government risks undermining public confidence in the basic means of exchange

The Advanced Graduate Workshop in Development, led by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is interested in identifying the complex interactions that influence well-being, development and growth.

Mass protests challenging the government to focus on job-creation rather than on market liberalization and trade deals may carry a cautionary message to Western policy makers, too.

We have developed over a number of years and now make publicly available a new and unprecedented data resource for understanding levels of living, poverty, inequality and inclusivity of growth and development around the world.

Exploring inequality, gender, and the North-South divide.

A combination of leeway within the government and constitutional immunity during incumbency enables office holders to abuse their budget at will, which in turn creates a crisis of growth in Africa, relative to other parts of the world.

The World Bank’s global poverty estimates suffer from deep-seated problems arising from a single source, the lack of a standard for identifying who is poor and who is not that is consistent and meaningful.

Economists’ assumptions, even about seemingly “small” matters, make an enormous difference to global poverty estimates but their impact often goes unnoticed, and the choices made have been badly justified. We must stop pretending that the World Bank’s “$1 per day” estimates are at all reliable.

The effect of ethnic violence on electoral results provides useful insights into voter behaviour and the incentives for political parties in democratic societies.

This paper studies the long-run impact of public debt expansion on economic growth and investigates whether the debt-growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness.

Pushing this strand of research brings a certain feeling of trepidation. It comes from recognizing that by openly elaborating on how to catch or deter a criminal, you thereby confer an undue advantage on the criminal through forewarning.

Over the past decades African economies have exhibited two stunning paradoxes: growth acceleration coexisting with stubbornly high poverty rates; increasing capital flight along with widening development financing gaps. There has been no attempt to link the two in the literature.

During the past year, there have been numerous and somber reflections, rather like those during a traditional period of mourning, about the great and tragic events that occurred just 100 years ago – the beginning of the First World War. And in the course of these melancholy reflections about the past, there naturally have arisen anxious concerns about the future.