The Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) launched its lecture series in April 2005 to bring distinguished academics to the Bank to present and discuss new knowledge on development. The lectures are chaired by Justin Yifu Lin, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Development Economics.
Hard Evidence on Soft Skills: The Effects of Personality on Wages, Employment, Schooling and Health and Policies that Boost Personality Professor James Heckman—December 15, 2011
About Professor Heckman
James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he has served since 1973. In 2000, he shared the Nobel Prize for Economics with Daniel McFadden. Heckman directs the Economics Research Center and the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School for Public Policy, and is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago School of Law. Heckman received his B.A. in mathematics from Colorado College in 1965 and his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 1971. His work has been devoted to the development of a scientific basis for economic policy evaluation, with special emphasis on models of individuals and disaggregated groups, and to the problems and possibilities created by heterogeneity, diversity, and unobserved counterfactual states. He developed a body of new econometric tools that address these issues. His research has given policymakers important new insights into areas such as education, job-training, the importance of accounting for general equilibrium in the analysis of labor markets, anti-discrimination law, and civil rights. More...
The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World Professor Michael Spence—December 5, 2011
About this Lecture
This lecture describes how the recent period of growth in developing countries is leading to a convergence with the advanced countries, or developed world.
He lays out a framework for how the global economy will develop over the next fifty years, and offers much needed wisdom on how to sustain economic growth in advanced and developing countries. He explores the following questions:
Can we learn over time to manage something as complex as the emerging and evolving global economy, with its rising interdependencies and complexity?
What will happen to populations, incomes, natural resources, and the environment?
Is it possible for the fourfold increase in the ranks of the relatively wealthy to continue, or is there a massive multidimensional "adding up" problem in which what was possible for a "few" will not be possible for the "many"?
Is the management and governance of the global economy that was in place for the last quarter century going to work in the future, or is it going to need fundamental change?
The State of the Global Economy: An Agenda for Job Creation Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz—September 26, 2011
About this Lecture
It is not inevitable, Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz has argued, that the parts of the world experiencing weak economic growth are doomed to an extended period of Japanese-style malaise. But to create jobs in countries like the United States, we must dispel with two myths: one, that reducing deficits will restore the economy; and two, that stimulus does not work. In the U.S., with its weak and uneven recovery from recession, smart government support will be crucial. Remarkably low interest rates provide an excellent opportunity for investment in infrastructure, technology, and education—and there are many high-return investments to be made in these areas. Even if deficit fetishism continues to be an obstacle, there is still room to boost GDP by achieving a balanced budget through spending, and in taxes on the wealthiest Americans. In this presentation, Professor Stiglitz discusses strategies available for the United States and countries around the world that are trying to put their people back to work in the wake of the crisis.
The Liquidation of Government Debt Professor Carmen Reinhart—June 15, 2011
About this Lecture
Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of "financial repression." Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive domestic audiences (such as pension funds), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, regulation of cross-border capital movements, and (generally) a tighter connection between government and banks. In the heavily regulated financial markets of the Bretton Woods system, several restrictions facilitated a sharp and rapid reduction in public debt/GDP ratios from the late 1940s to the 1970s. Low nominal interest rates help reduce debt servicing costs while a high incidence of negative real interest rates liquidates or erodes the real value of government debt. Thus, financial repression is most successful in liquidating debts when accompanied by a steady dose of inflation. Inflation need not take market participants entirely by surprise and, in effect, it need not be very high (by historic standards). For the advanced economies in our sample, real interest rates were negative roughly ½ of the time during 1945–1980. For the United States and the United Kingdom our estimates of the annual liquidation of debt via negative real interest rates amounted on average from 3 to 4 percent of GDP a year. For Australia and Italy, which recorded higher inflation rates, the liquidation effect was larger (around 5 percent per annum). We describe some of the regulatory measures and policy actions that characterized the heyday of the financial repression era.
Policies and Politics: Can Evidence Play a Role in the Fight against Poverty? Professor Esther Duflo—May 24, 2011
About this Lecture
Professor Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at MIT and a founder and director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research network specializing in randomized evaluations of social programs. Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behavior, education, access to finance, health and policy evaluation.
Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes including the John Bates Clark Medal (2010), a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the American Economic Association's Elaine Bennett Prize for Research (2003), the "Best French Young Economist Prize" (Le Monde/Cercle des economistes, 2005), the Médaille de Bronze (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 2005), and the Prix Luc Durand-Reville (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 2008).
Structural Change and Economic Growth Professor Dani Rodrik—April 14, 2011
About this Lecture
Since 1990 we have observed widely diverse patterns of broad structural change within developing countries. In several cases—most notably China, India, and some other Asian countries—globalization's promise has been fulfilled: high-productivity employment opportunities have expanded and structural change has contributed to overall growth. But in many other cases—in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa—globalization appears not to have fostered the desirable kind of structural change. Labor has moved in the wrong direction, from more productive to less productive activities, including, most notably, informality. This talk will focus on these developments, provide new evidence, and offer some interpretations.
Professor Rodrik is the Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has published widely in the areas of international economics, economic development, and political economy. His research focuses on what constitutes good economic policy and why some governments are better than others in adopting it. His most recent research is concerned with the determinants of economics growth and the consequences of international economic integration.
Interpreting Grain Price Volatility Professor Brian D. Wright—March 11, 2011
About this Lecture
The recent volatility of prices of major grains has generated a wide array of economic interpretations and policy prescriptions. In this lecture, Professor Wright will review some of these interpretations and the associated empirical evidence.
Professor Wright is Professor and Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include economics of markets for storable commodities, market stabilization, agricultural policy, industrial organization, public finance, invention incentives, intellectual property rights, the economics of research and development, and the economics of conservation and innovation of genetic resources. He has co-authored or co-edited several books, including Storage and Commodity Markets; Reforming Agricultural Commodity Policy; Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Genetic Resources at the CGIAR Centers, and Accessing Biodiversity and Sharing the Benefits: Lessons from Implementing the Convention on Biodiversity and published extensively in the leading journals in Economics and Agricultural Economics.
Developing Countries, Trade Openness and Growth Professor Arvind Panagariya—February 16, 2011
About this Lecture
Debates on development policy are often complex, since they involve multiple objectives, including poverty alleviation, reduction in inequality, improved human development indicators and other social goals. There is virtually no single instrument that can guarantee improvement along every dimension of each of these objectives, so multiple fixes are required.
Regarding poor economies, sustained rapid growth remains perhaps the most important instrument to pursue these objectives. With this in mind, Professor Panagariya focuses on the relationship between trade openness and growth. Contrary to many skeptics, Professor Panagariya argues that economists have now assembled compelling evidence favoring low or declining protection as being more conducive to sustained rapid growth than high or rising protection. The aggregate experience of the developing countries over the past 50 years, cross-country evidence and country case studies all compellingly point in this direction. This is in contrast to near-total absence of any positive evidence provided by free trade critics demonstrating the efficacy of high or rising protection as the key to sustained rapid growth.
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