Tag: Development

The many forms of poverty: Analyses of deprivation interlinkages in the developing world

Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Past Events

Monday, 24th October, 2022

It is widely acknowledged that for efficient progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) their interlinkages have to be taken into account. The global Multidimensional Poverty Index is based on ten deprivations indicators each of which is aligned with specific SDGs. The overlap of these deprivations already figures prominently in the way poverty is measured, i.e. as multiple deprivation. In this paper we complement previous analyses with a novel account to explore how exactly deprivations are interlinked and how these interconnections vary across the developing world. More specifically, we suggest analyzing deprivation within our measurement framework using profiles, bundles, and co-deprivations which each illuminate particular aspects of the joint distribution of deprivations. Additionally, we also apply latent class analysis to corroborate our findings. We use data for 111 countries representing 6.1 billion people to document key patterns at the global level and selected findings for world regions and countries, which may serve as benchmark for more detailed analyses.We also discuss how our approach may (i) be adopted to different settings and (ii) inform multi-sectoral policy programmes.

Speakers:

​Ricardo Nogales (Universidad Privada de Bolivia and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford)

 

 

 

 

Nicolai Suppa (Centre for Demographic Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford)

 

 

 

 

About The Series:

The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to host a special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions. The global MPI offers a tool to make progress towards this goal.

Bringing together the academic and policy spheres, this series of seminars will highlight topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and caste, the statistical capacity of nations, social protection, the use of geospatial mapping in tracking poverty, poverty and refugees, and evaluating whether we’re on track to meet UN SDG Goal #1. The sessions will also include work that applies the global MPI methodology, the Alkire Foster method, to innovative measures.

The seminars are taking place online on Mondays at 11 a.m. ET. They are open to everyone focused on improving the lived experience of those who are deprived.

Are China and India Likely to Miss the Convergence?

Development Economics, International Trade, Past Events

Wednesday, April 13th, 2022
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. EDT / 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. IST
via Zoom

We were pleased to invite you to the sixth webinar in the 2021-2022 Envisioning India series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. This is a platform for dialogue and debate in a series of important discussions.

This event featured Arvind Subramanian, Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, and Kalpana Kochhar, Director of Development Policy and Finance at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, provided discussant remarks.

The event reflected on the development experiences, similar and different, of China and India, as well as their prospects going forward.

The Envisioning India series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh, Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber.

About the Speaker:

picture_of_Arvind_SubramanianArvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) to the Government of India between 2014 and 2018, is now Senior Fellow, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development. Previously, he was Professor at Ashoka University (2020-21), taught at the Harvard Kennedy School (2018-2020), and was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (2011-2014). Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers in 2011. As CEA, he oversaw the publication of the annual Economic Survey of India, which became a widely read document on Indian economic policy and development. For example, the 2018 Survey had 20 million views from over 190 countries in its first year of publication. Among the major ideas and policies he initiated and helped implement were a simplified goods and services tax (GST), attempts to tackle the Twin Balance Sheet challenge, creating the financial and digital platform for connectivity (the so-called JAM trinity), charting a new fiscal framework, and Universal Basic Income. Announcing his departure as CEA, the former Finance Minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley wrote a Facebook post, Thank You, Arvind. His award-winning book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance was published in September 2011 and had printed 130,000 copies world-wide in four languages. His latest, best-selling book, reflecting on his time in India, “Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Modi-Jaitley Economy,” was published by Penguin Random House in December 2018.

Joshua Felman is currently the head of JH Consulting, providing economic advice to academics and policy practitioners. Before that, he was for many years a senior official at the IMF, where he specialized in Asia and especially India. 

His familiarity with India started in the 1980s, when he first began analyzing the economy, as it started to open up to the outside world. During the boom of the mid-2000s, he moved to Delhi to take charge of the IMF’s India office. And in 2015 he returned to India to work for several years in the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance.

Mr. Felman also has extensive familiarity with crises. During the East Asian crisis, he was posted to the IMF’s Jakarta office, where he worked closely with the authorities as they reconstructed a shattered financial system, following the collapse of more than 200 banks. Then, he led the IMF’s operations in the Philippines, as they sought to overcome the lingering effects of the crisis. And after that he led the IMF’s work in Korea, when that country was suffering from a household debt crisis.

Following the Global Financial Crisis, he was appointed Assistant Director in the IMF’s Research Department, where he worked closely with Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard, analyzing the implications for the global economy — and also for our understanding of economics.

Mr. Felman did his graduate work at Oxford University in England.

About the Discussants:

picture_of_kalpana_kochharDr. Kalpana Kochhar is Director, Development Policy and Finance at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to taking this position, she spent 33 years at the IMF, ending her career there as the Director of the Human Resources Department of the IMF between 2016 and 2021. She has also held positions as Deputy Director in the Asia and Pacific Department of the IMF where she worked on India, China, Korea, Japan and several other Asian countries, and in the Strategy, Policy and Review Department where she launched the IMF’s work on the macroeconomic implications of gender inequality and women’s economic empowerment. Between 2010 and 2012, she was seconded to the World Bank as the Chief Economist for the South Asia Region of the World Bank. Ms. Kochhar’s research interests and publications have been on emerging markets including India and China, and jobs and inclusive growth, gender and inequality issues, structural reforms, and regional integration in South Asia. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Economics from Brown University and an M.A. in Economics from Delhi School of Economics in India. She has a B.A in Economics from Madras University in India.

David Dollarpicture_of_david_dollar is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution and host of the Brookings trade podcast, Dollar&Sense. He is a leading expert on China’s economy and U.S.-China economic relations. From 2009 to 2013, Dollar was the U.S. Treasury’s economic and financial emissary to China, based in Beijing, facilitating the macroeconomic and financial policy dialogue between the United States and China. Prior to joining Treasury, Dollar worked 20 years for the World Bank, serving as country director for China and Mongolia, based in Beijing (2004-2009). His other World Bank assignments focused on Asian economies, including South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India. Dollar also worked in the World Bank’s research department. His publications focus on economic reform in China, globalization, and economic growth. He also taught economics at University of California Los Angeles, during which time he spent a semester in Beijing at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1986. He has a doctorate in economics from New York University and a bachelor’s in Chinese history and language from Dartmouth College.

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Gender Inclusiveness in Trade: Barriers, Challenges, and Opportunities

Global Governance, International Trade, Past Events

Thursday, November 18th 2021
9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. ET
Lindner Commons and Online via Zoom
There was a networking portion for those in person from 10:30 – 11:00 a.m.

This was a discussion leading up to the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12), where the panel addressed the nexus between gender and international trade. As the issue of gender equality rises to the top of public policy debate globally, it is critical to consider how trade may impact gender, including the barriers, the challenges and opportunities women face as they participate in trade as entrepreneurs, traders or workers. This event featured panelists Renata Amaral (WTO Program on Women in Trade), Jamaica Gayle (Global Innovation Forum), and Nadia Bourely (Canadian Embassy to the U.S.A.). Lisa Schroeter (Dow Chemical and IIEP Executive Circle) moderated, and IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh provided welcoming remarks.

This event was organized by members of the recently launched Executive Circle of George Washington University’s Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP). Established by the IIEP, the Circle is a leadership group designed to support and disseminate research and policies connected to global finance, trade, and development. Its members are senior leaders at the highest levels of their fields, and dynamic mid-career and young professionals who exhibit extraordinary potential, all who believe in the power of academic research and analysis to improve policy and enhance the wellbeing and prosperity of people around the globe. The event was co-sponsored by the Association of Women in International Trade (WIIT) and the Washington International Trade Association (WITA). The Association for Women in International Trade (WIIT) works to promote the professional development of women in international trade and business and to raise public awareness of the importance of international trade to economic development.

About the Panelists:

Picture of Renata AmaralRenata Amaral is an experienced international trade lawyer, with an extensive and proven record of successful engagement at the WTO dispute settlement, bilateral and regional trade negotiations. She holds a Ph.D. from Maastricht University and currently serves as Adjunct Professor at the American University Washington College of Law, where she co-directs the certificate program on WTO and US Trade Law and Policy. She is the founder of Women Inside Trade, a non-profit international organization that aims to contribute to the empowerment of women through its global network of professionals, specialized training and leadership development, and a member of the recently created WTO Gender Research Hub.

Picture of Jamaica GayleJamaica Gayle serves as Acting Executive Director of the National Foreign Trade Council’s Global Innovation Forum (GIF), a nonprofit that connects small businesses and policymakers to highlight the opportunities and challenges of engaging in the global marketplace. In this role, she leads the organization’s work advocating for trade policies and technology solutions that enable inclusive, sustainable growth. She is also responsible for managing engagements with international organizations including the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) on issues related to small businesses and inclusive trade. Jamaica started her career with the National Association of Manufacturers, working with the policy and government relations division. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the American University in Washington, DC.

Picture of Nadia BourélyNadia Bourély is the Minister Counsellor for Economic and Trade Policy at the Embassy of Canada in Washington D.C. In this capacity, she leads the Embassy’s economic and trade policy team. Prior to joining the Embassy in February 2020, Ms. Bourély held various positions at Global Affairs Canada, including Director for Trade Policy and Negotiations, Senior Legal Counsel in the Trade Law Bureau and Deputy Director for Strategic Policy Planning. She was also Senior Analyst for the Americas at the Foreign Affairs Secretariat of the Privy Council Office. Ms. Bourély served abroad as Senior Trade Commissioner and Counsellor at the Embassy of Canada to the Republic of Indonesia and as First Secretary at Canada’s Mission to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Prior to joining Global Affairs Canada, Ms. Bourély worked in private legal practice in Montréal, Québec, and at the Secretariat for Legal Affairs of the Organization of American States in Washington D.C. Ms. Bourély is a member of the Québec Bar and holds a LL.B. from the Université de Montréal and a LL.M. (Honours) from the McGill University Institute of Comparative Law.

About the Moderator:

Lisa SchroeterLisa Schroeter is the Global Director of Trade and Investment Policy for Dow. As part of the corporate Global Government Affairs team, Lisa’s responsibilities focus on trade policy and regulations, trade negotiations, and investment issues that foster growth in Dow’s global businesses. The role drives bilateral, regional and multilateral strategies to promote policies that secure market access and facilitates global trade across Dow’s value chains and manufacturing.

Her role has direct responsibility for developing corporate strategies across trade policy, from tariff reduction to regulatory simplification; from export controls and sanctions to IP protection and to promote growth of environmental markets and diverse, inclusive workforces. Lisa regularly works with international colleagues and business leaders to engage on trade policy issues critical to drive Dow’s operations around the world. For the industry, she leads the global chemical industry trade association (ICCA) work on trade policy and global regulatory cooperation.

Before joining Dow, Lisa was the Executive Director of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD). TABD was a unique trade-facilitation process by which American and European CEOs worked with the U.S. Administration and the European Commission to implement practical, detailed recommendations. Ms. Schroeter joined TABD in 1999 and managed the process on behalf of the Boeing Company, PricewaterhouseCoopers, United Technologies Corporation and Xerox.

Lisa is currently Chair of the WIIT Trust, driving a women’s empowerment and skills sharing program with local universities and was previously the President of WIIT (Association of Women in International Trade). In addition, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); and a Board member of the Washington International Trade Association (WITA). She recently and successfully completed the Georgetown University Qiyadat Women’s Leadership program.

As a long-term DC resident, Lisa is also a Board Member of Cultural Tourism DC, celebrating the unique heritage and history of the U.S. Capital.

Welcoming Remarks:

Picture of Jay ShambaughJay Shambaugh is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

GW Students, Faculty, and Staff are welcome to attend this event in person at the address below or via Zoom:

Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Family Commons, Suite 602
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052

Alumni, Guests, and General Public: Non-GW individuals are able to attend in person, but they have to complete the Covid registration form that GW now requires.

There will be a networking portion for those in person from 10:30-11:00 a.m.

A note about COVID-19: The health and well-being of GW students, alumni, friends, faculty, and staff remains a top priority for GW and all alumni events will proceed in compliance with all state, local, and public health guidelines.

Please complete the above form to officially register. Please register yourself individually for possible contact tracing or to ensure receipt of Zoom information. For questions, please contact the IIEP team at iiep@gwu.edu.

Logos of IIEP, WITA, and WIIT

Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021 Unmasking Disparities: Ethnicity, Race, and Gender

Development Economics, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Past Events

Monday, October 11th, 2021
11:00 a.m.  – 12:15 p.m. EDT
via Zoom

In this first event in the continuation of our seminar series on Multidimensional Poverty Measurement, jointly hosted by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford, the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University, speakers presented the extensive findings of the 2021 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI) Report Unmasking Disparities: Ethnicity, Race, and Gender. The global MPI Report is jointly produced by OPHI and HDRO, with results and report being updated each year. The 2021 global MPI presents findings on multidimensional poverty around the world, using the most recent data from 109 countries, covering 5.9 billion people, and including changes over time in 80 countries. For the first time, the 2021 global MPI includes findings for trends with up to three points in time, detailed disaggregations of global MPI results by racial and ethnic groups, gender of household head, and analyses on multidimensional poverty and the socio-economic implications of COVID-19.

About the Speakers:

Picture of Sabina AlkireSabina Alkire (Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford) directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Dr Alkire works on a new approach to measuring poverty and well-being that goes beyond the traditional focus on income and growth. This multidimensional approach to measurement includes social goals, such as health, education, nutrition, standard of living and other valuable aspects of life. She devised a new method for measuring multidimensional poverty with her colleague James Foster (OPHI Research Associate and Professor of Economics at George Washington University) that has advantages over other poverty measures and has been adopted by the Mexican Government, the Bhutanese Government in their ‘Gross National Happiness Index’ and the United Nations Development Programme. Dr Alkire has been called upon to provide input and advice to several initiatives seeking to take a broader approach to well-being rather than just economic growth, for example, the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (instigated by President Sarkozy); the United Nations Human Development Programme Human Development Report Office; the European Commission; and the UK’s Department for International Development.

Picture of Yanchun ZhangYanchun Zhang (Chief of Statistics, Human Development Report Office, United Nations Development Programme) has more than twenty years of quantitative research experience on a wide range of economic and sustainable development topics. She has published articles on international macroeconomics, climate change and development, economic vulnerabilities and social protection in refereed academic and policy journals.Prior to HDRO, she served as Chief of the Commodities Branch at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva from 2019 to 2020, leading analytical research, which includes a biennial statistics report State of Commodities Dependence, and capacity-building projects in a dozen of commodity dependent developing countries in Africa and Asia. Prior to that, she was Chief of the Commodity Policy Implementation and Outreach Section from 2014 to 2019, in charge of formulating demand-driven technical cooperation initiatives, mobilizing multilateral and bilateral funding sources and coordinating the preparation of publicity materials and press releases for outreach efforts.Before UNCTAD, she had worked at UNDP in New York from 2007 to 2013 as a Policy Specialist, conducting original research on emerging development topics that are strategically important for the organization. From 2003 to 2006, she was an assistant professor at San Francisco State University, teaching and researching on econometrics, statistics and macroeconomics. Prior to her academic career, she also worked for the World Bank’s Development Research Group.She holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Economics with specializations on econometrics, development economics and international economics from University of Virginia, U.S.A, and a B.A. degree in Economics with honors from Shanghai Fudan University, China.

Picture of Heriberto TapiaHeriberto Tapia (Policy Specialist, Human Development Report Office, United Nations Development Programme) is a senior member of the writing-research team at HDRO. He has worked on Human Development Reports 2015, 2016 and 2017. Previously, he served in the Executive Office of UNDP (2012-2014) and in the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (1998-2005). He has worked as a consultant to the IMF, UNDP and ECLAC. Furthermore, he has been lecturer at Columbia University (New York), University of Chile (Santiago) and University Diego Portales (Santiago). Heriberto holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, and a Master’s degree in economics and a Commercial Engineering degree from the University of Chile.

Picture of Sophie Scharlin-PetteeSophie Scharlin-Pettee (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford) supports the outreach team in policy programming. She has worked on the Changes over Time project, which focuses on trends in multidimensional poverty, harmonising earlier data to the specifications of the 2019 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Previously, she contributed to the data preparation, computation, analysis, and report publication for the global MPI revision in 2018 and the annual global MPI release in 2019.

Before OPHI, Sophie supported ESRC-funded research investigating dual career couples’ life course outcomes from a time-use, longitudinal, and cross-national perspective; she also interned at the Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights, where she delivered a background paper on the political economies of peace-building, among other research activities.

 

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Getting India to the Green Frontier

Climate Adaptation, Development Economics, India, Past Events

Wednesday, September 29, 2021
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. EDT / 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. IST

This was the eleventh webinar in the “Envisioning India” series, a platform for dialogue and debate co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy.

The “Envisioning India” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Co-Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber.

The talk focused on the Getting to the Green Frontier Development Model for India that has been proposed by Mr. Sinha and laid out a Net-Zero Pathway for India in the 21st century. He also discussed climate finance options and India’s expectations from the COP 26 conference in Glasgow in November this year.

About the Speaker:

Picture of Jayant SinhaJayant Sinha, Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Finance, Parliament of India and BJP Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. Mr. Sinha is a second term Member of Parliament from Jharkhand, India. Mr. Sinha won his Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019 with record margins. As Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Finance, Mr. Sinha leads the 31 member Parliamentary panel that has oversight of the Ministries of Finance, Corporate Affairs, Statistics & Program Implementation, and the Niti Aayog (the government planning agency). In addition, the panel has Parliamentary responsibility for the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities & Exchange Board of India, the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Board, and the Insurance and Pension regulatory authorities. Mr. Sinha is very active in Parliament having opened the debate on India’s Annual Budget on multiple occasions as well as by introducing important Private Member Bills. In the 2021 Budget session, he introduced the Climate Change (Net Zero Carbon) Private Member Bill 2021.

Previously, Mr. Sinha served on India’s Council of Ministers from 2014 to 2019; first, as the Minister of State for Finance and then as the Minister of State for Civil Aviation. During his time as a Minister, Mr. Sinha gained wide recognition as an innovative and results-oriented policymaker with singular successes ranging from piloting the legislation that brought in India’s game-changing bankruptcy code to establishing India’s sovereign wealth fund (the National Infrastructure Investment Fund) to privatizing multiple airports under an entirely new regulatory framework. As Aviation Minister, Mr. Sinha was instrumental in upgrading safety and security across India’s fast-growing aviation system. He launched the UDAN Regional Connectivity Scheme which expanded the number of operational airports in India by 50% in just three years. Mr. Sinha also implemented several major digital initiatives such as the DigitalSky Drone policy and the DigiYatra digital traveler program.

Prior to his career in public service, Mr. Sinha was Partner at Omidyar Network (ON) and the Managing Director of Omidyar Network India Advisors, where he led overall investment strategy and operations in India from 2009 to 2013. At Omidyar, Mr. Sinha made venture capital investments in a variety of companies including two unicorns: Quikr and DailyHunt. Before joining Omidyar Network, Mr. Sinha was Managing Director at Courage Capital Management, where he led Global Technology and India-related investing for a billion dollar global special situations hedge fund. Mr. Sinha joined Courage Capital in 2006 after twelve years with McKinsey & Company, where he was a Partner in the Boston and Delhi offices, and co-led the Global Software & Services Practice.

As a global thought leader, Mr. Sinha has been published in the Financial Times, Times of India, Economic Times, Indian Express, Business Standard, Harvard Business Review, and the McKinsey Quarterly. He has pioneered new thinking on platform-based businesses, innovation-driven entrepreneurship, Climate Change, and sustainable development. Mr. Sinha’s Getting to the Green Frontier development model is gaining broad acceptance as the Net Zero pathway for India in the 21st century.

Mr. Sinha has an MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School, an MS in Energy Management & Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BTech with Distinction from the IIT Delhi. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumni award from IIT Delhi in 2015.

About the Discussants:

Picture of Mohua MukherjeeMohua Mukherjee served for over 25 years in many roles at the World Bank in Washington DC, primarily on investment projects. Her experience with World Bank lending spans 9 different sectors in 44 countries. Her most recent responsibility at the World Bank was heading the innovative US$1 billion Solar Program for Govt of India, which covered rooftop solar, large-scale solar parks and dedicated transmission lines to transport solar energy from one part of the country to the rest. She is also an Advisor with the India Smart Grid Forum. Previously, she worked pro bono for two years to support the establishment of the International Solar Alliance and served as their Program Ambassador. Mohua retired early from the World Bank in 2017 due to family reasons, and today she works as a Consultant for various international organizations, including the World Bank.

She also worked as an investment banker during a four year sabbatical in Nairobi, Kenya, where she successively headed the Corporate Finance Departments of Citibank and ABN AMRO Bank. Mohua has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Economics and an MBA, all from Boston University on an academic scholarship, and she has a Certificate in Public Private Partnerships from Harvard University.

Picture of Nitin DesaiNitin Desai has had a long and distinguished career in the Government of India and the United Nations. He has also worked for some time in private industry and taught at two UK Universities.

In the Government of India Mr. Desai worked at senior levels in the Planning Commission from 1973 to 1987. From 1988 to 1990 Mr. Desai was the Chief Economic Adviser and Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance.

Mr. Desai joined the United Nations in 1990 as Deputy Secretary General of the Rio Earth Summit and was Under Secretary General from 1993 to 2003 dealing with economic and social affairs. Mr. Desai’s international involvement has been most prominent in the development and promotion of sustainable development as the goal of policy, first as Senior Adviser and key draftsman for “Our Common Future”, the Report of the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development and then as Deputy Secretary-General for the Rio Earth Summit, the manager of the Commission on Sustainable Development for its first decade and as the Secretary General for the Johannesburg Summit. He was also responsible for the organisation of the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development, the Monterrey Summit on Finance for Development and many other global events.

After his retirement from the UN Mr. Desai continued to remain a Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General for Internet governance and chaired the Advisory Group that organizes the annual UN Internet Governance Forum till December 2010.

He chaired a Committee on Venture Capital and Technology Innovation set up by the Planning Commission in 2005-06 and the Advisory Panel on Transparency Standards set up by the Reserve Bank of India in 2007-08. He is also the Indian co-chair with Lord Chris Patten of the Indo-UK Roundtable set up by the two governments. He is a member of the Council on Climate Change chaired by the Prime Minister and was a member of the National Security Advisory Board 2008-10. He is also a member of the News Broadcasting Standards Authority.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. In India he is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Honorary Professor at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER). He is connected with the governing bodies of several NGOs and research institutions including the Institute of Economic Growth whose Governing Body he chairs. He is a trustee of Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) International. He writes a monthly column for the Business Standard, an Indian daily.

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Poverty, Climate, and Unemployment: Towards a World of Three Zeros

Climate Adaptation, Development Economics, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Global Governance, James Foster, Past Events

Thursday, September 16, 2021
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m. EDT
via Zoom

We were pleased to invite you to a conversation with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh who created a model for combating poverty through microlending. He is the author of three books, including Banker to the Poor. The event was moderated by Prof. James Foster, Oliver T. Carr Jr Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Vice Dean at the Elliott School of International Affairs. Prof. Foster is known for developing the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) along with Dr. Sabina Alkire. Elliott School Dean Alyssa Ayres provided welcome remarks.

About the Speaker:

Picture of Muhammad YunusNobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank, pioneering the concepts of microcredit and social business, founding more than 50 Social Business companies in Bangladesh. For his constant innovation and enterprise, the Fortune Magazine named Professor Yunus in March 2012 as “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time.” At the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 Professor Yunus was conferred with the Olympic Laurel award for his extensive work in sports for development, bringing the concept of social business to the sports world.

In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Professor Muhammad Yunus is the recipient of 63 honorary degrees from universities across 26 countries. He has received 143 awards from 33 countries including state honours from 10 countries. He is one of only seven individuals to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom and the United States Congressional Gold Medal. He has appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, Newsweek and Forbes Magazine.

Professor Yunus has been stressing the need for a basic decision of ‘No Going Back’ to the old ways of thinking and doing. He proposes to create new roads to go to a new destination by creating a World of 3 Zeros – zero net carbon emission, zero wealth concentration for ending poverty once and for all, and zero unemployment by unleashing entrepreneurship in everyone.

His recent focuses are:

a. Professor Yunus has been campaigning for making the Covid 19 Vaccine as a Global Common Good since June, 2020, urging the World Trade Organization to place a temporary waiver on Intellectual Property rights on vaccines to free up the global capacity to produce vaccines at all locations around the world.

b. Professor Yunus has launched a programme of creating a network of 3ZERO Clubs, each club to be formed by five young people. The programme aims to engage the global youth in initiating actions for creating solutions for global problems.

About the Moderator:

Picture of James FosterJames E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Vice Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in Mexico. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu.

Professor Foster’s work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank.

Alyssa Aryes will provide welcome remarks.

Picture of Alyssa AryesAlyssa Ayres is Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Dean Ayres is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. She was Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she remains an adjunct senior fellow. From 2010 to 2013 Ayres served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia in the Barack Obama administration, where she covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people at the time (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates. Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. Her last book is, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World (OUP, 2018). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Disaggregating the Global MPI by Ethnicity

Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, James Foster, Past Events

Monday, May 17, 2021
10 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

Alkire and Kovesdi discussed how the painful topic of race relations, discrimination, and disparities across ethnic groups are in the public eye. Far earlier, Amartya Sen drew attention to the disparity in life expectancies between Costa Rica, Kerala India, and African-American men. Can we study ethnic inequalities quantitatively at a larger scale? This presentation disaggregates the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by ethnicity for 24 countries and 650 million people, using the recognized ethnic groups for which data were representative. Striking disparities are visible – ranging from pockets of poverty among groups such as the Roma, to yawning gaps between the average poverty levels. This paper illustrates the methodology – and the importance – of disaggregating global poverty measures by ethnic groups.

Jiménez discussed how part of the historic and ambitious nature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is its pledge to leave no one behind, including a specific goal to reduce inequality between and within countries. This move beyond national averages to look at the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities and voice within countries includes the target to empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.

This presentation provided an overview of how the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) has operationalized the pledge to “leave no one behind,” with a specific focus on trends in inequality by race and ethnicity. It is based on the OPHI Briefing on global MPI ethnicity disaggregations.

Meet the Presenter:

Maren Jiménez is a Social Affairs Officer in the United Nation’s Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). At DESA, Ms. Jiménez forms part of the writing team of the World Social Report (previously the Report on the World Social Situation), the United Nation’s flagship publication on social development issues. Prior to joining DESA, Ms. Jiménez held several positions at United Nations’ regional commissions in Addis Ababa, Bangkok and Santiago de Chile. Ms. Jiménez holds a M.A. in Sociology from The University of Texas at Austin. 

 

Picture of Sabina AlkireSabina Alkire directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Dr Alkire works on a new approach to measuring poverty and well-being that goes beyond the traditional focus on income and growth. This multidimensional approach to measurement includes social goals, such as health, education, nutrition, standard of living and other valuable aspects of life. She devised a new method for measuring multidimensional poverty with her colleague James Foster (OPHI Research Associate and Professor of Economics at George Washington University) that has advantages over other poverty measures and has been adopted by the Mexican Government, the Bhutanese Government in their ‘Gross National Happiness Index’ and the United Nations Development Programme. Dr Alkire has been called upon to provide input and advice to several initiatives seeking to take a broader approach to well-being rather than just economic growth, for example, the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (instigated by President Sarkozy); the United Nations Human Development Programme Human Development Report Office; the European Commission; and the UK’s Department for International Development.

Fanni Kovesdi is a Research Analystat the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), where she is supporting research focused on the global MPI, moderate poverty and wellbeing, and technical work with national governments. Prior to joining OPHI, she has worked on research projects at the University of Oxford, the Centre for Social Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the regional office of Terre des Hommes in Central and South East Europe. Previously, she worked on the “Changes over Time” project which harmonized global MPI data across 80 countries to analyze trends in poverty. She has also supported previous releases of the global MPI through data work and report writing along with leading the ethnicity disaggregation of the measure in 2019. Kovesdi holds a bachelor’s degree in Politics and Sociology from the University of Bristol, and a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Oxford. Her primary research interests are in multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, wellbeing, and ethnicity and migration, particularly in the European context.

Meet the Discussant:

Rachel M. Gisselquist, a political scientist, is a Senior Research Fellow with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and a member of the institute’s senior management team. She works on the politics of developing countries, with particular attention to inequality, ethnic politics, statebuilding and governance and the role of aid therein, democracy and democratization, and sub-Saharan African politics. At UNU-WIDER, she currently leads the projects Addressing Group-based Inequalities and The State and Statebuilding in the Global South – International and Local Interactions, and co-leads the projects The Impact of Inequality on Growth, Human Development, and Governance @EQUAL, Clientelist Politics and Economic Development – Theories, Perspectives, and New Directions, and Effects of Swedish and International Democracy Support. She serves as Helsinki-based research focal point for the Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) programme, and is a core member of the UNU-WIDER team in the African Cities Research Consortium. Under the institute’s previous research programmes, she was a focal point for The Politics of Group-Based Inequalities: Measurement, Implications, and Possibilities for Change (2014–18), and the Governance and Fragility theme of the Research and Communication on Foreign Aid (ReCom) programme (2011–13). Her work is published in various journals and edited volumes, including World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Oxford Development Studies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Indicators Research, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Democratization, and International Peacekeeping. She is editor/co-editor of a dozen journal special issues and collections, and co-author of the first two editions of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which has become a standard reference on governance. Before moving to Helsinki, she spent three years at Harvard University as Research Director, Index of African Governance. She has also spent time at the London School of Economics and with the World Bank. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University.

Meet the Moderator: 

Picture of James FosterJames E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).

More From This Series

India’s Environment Challenges and Impact of COVID

Adaption to Climate Change Events, India, Past Events

Wednesday, May 12, 2021
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
via WebEx

This was the ninth webinar in the “Envisioning India” series, a platform for dialogue and debate co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. We invited you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.

The “Envisioning India” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Co-Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. The ninth event featured Sunita Narain, Director General of the Center for Science and Environment, discussing “India’s Environment Challenges and Impact of COVID.” Laveesh Bhandari and Muthukumar Mani provided discussant remarks. IIEP Co-Director Jay Shambaugh moderated.

This session with India’s leading environmentalist Sunita Narain highlighted findings of the State of India’s Environment 2021, the most comprehensive report on India’s environment produced by 60 notable experts in the subject in India by the Down To Earth magazine at the Centre for Science and the Environment. It has three special sections: an assessment of the pandemic and its impacts a year after, a data analysis of how India’s states are faring on environment and development parameters, and a tribute to the decade of biodiversity.

About the Speaker:

Sunita NarainSunita Narain is a Delhi-based environmentalist and author. She is currently the Director General of Center for Science and Environment (CSE) and Editor of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth. Dr. Narain plays an active role in policy formulation on issues of environment and development in India and globally. She has worked extensively on climate change, with a particular interest in advocating for an ambitious and equitable global agreement. Her work on air pollution, water and waste management as well as industrial pollution has led to an understanding of the need for affordable and sustainable solutions in countries like India where the challenge is to ensure inclusive and sustainable growth. She was a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change and has been awarded the Padma Shri. In 2005, the Centre for Science and Environment, under her leadership was also awarded the Stockholm Water Prize. In 2016, Time magazine selected her as one of the most influential people in the world. She received “The Order of the Polar Star” award from the Swedish Government in 2017. Narain also received the Edinburgh Medal 2020 conferred by the City of Edinburgh Council in the UK. She continues to serve on national and international committees on environment.

About the Discussants:

Laveesh Bhandari is a Senior Fellow at CSEP. Laveesh will lead and develop the climate change capability at CSEP. In addition, he will help define the broad macro agenda and advise on the sub-national reform. Dr Bhandari is an economist, entrepreneur and an environmentalist. He is currently the Director of Indicus Foundation and leads its Environment and Sustainable Livelihoods initiative. Laveesh has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic and social reforms in India, economic geography and financial inclusion. He received his PhD in economics from Boston University for which he was awarded the Best thesis in International Economics. He has taught economics in Boston University and IIT Delhi. He has been the managing editor of Journal of Emerging Market Finance, and worked at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. He has built, seeded, and exited from three companies in the research, analytics and digital domain.

Muthukumar Mani is a Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist in the South Asia Region (SAR) of the World Bank. In his current position, Mani has been working on climate change mitigation and adaptation issues, water and environmental issues in the SAR. He has led several regional flagship reports on climate change, glaciers, air pollution, and water. His report on “South Asia’s Hotspots,” was featured in the New York Times as a benchmark study. More recently, Mani has been supporting South Asia region’s green, resilient and inclusive recovery program in addition to co-leading the preparation of the SAR Climate Change Action Plan. Prior to joining this position, Mani was in operations with the SAR Climate Change Team, where his work program focused on leading policy dialogue in advancing inclusive green growth and climate change issues with national and sub-national governments.

About the Moderator:

Picture of Jay ShambaughJay Shambaugh is the Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and recently served as a member of the Biden transition team. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross-country impact of fiscal policy, the crisis in the euro area, and regional growth disparities. He has also served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

More From This Series

Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas

International Finance, Past Events, U.S.-China Economic Relations Events

Friday, April 30, 2021
9 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

The Institute for International Economic Policy and the GW Elliott School of International Affairs Book Launch Series was pleased to invite you to a book launch discussion of Prof. Stephen B. Kaplan’s Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas (Cambridge University Press).

China’s overseas financing is a distinct form of “patient capital” that marshals the country’s vast domestic resources to create commercial opportunities internationally. Its long-term risk tolerance and lack of policy conditionality has allowed developing economies to sidestep the fiscal austerity tendencies of Western markets and multilaterals. Professor Stephen B. Kaplan will discuss his new book, Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas, which examines China’s state-led capitalism, and the costs and benefits of state versus market approaches to development. In the talk, Professor Kaplan explores how patient capital affects national-level governance across the Americas and beyond, including how Chinese leaders might react to developing nation’s ongoing struggles with debt and dependency.

The book launch was also part of our 13th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. The conference took place as a virtual series. This conference was co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the GW Center for International Business Education and Research, the Latin American & Hemispheric Studies Program (LAHSP) at GW, the GW Department of Political Science, and the Elliott School Book Launch Series.

Meet the Speaker:

Stephen Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.

Professor Kaplan joined the GWU faculty in the fall of 2010 after completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University and his Ph.D at Yale University. While at Yale, Kaplan also worked as a researcher for former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Prior to his doctoral studies, Professor Kaplan was a senior economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, writing extensively on developing country economics, global financial market developments, and emerging market crises from 1998 to 2003.

Meet the Discussants:

Picture of Carol WiseProfessor Carol Wise, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California (USC), has written widely on trade integration, exchange rate crises, institutional reform, and the political economy of market restructuring in the Latin American region. Wise is author of the book, Dragonomics: How Latin America is Maximizing (or Missing Out) on China’s International Development Strategy (Yale University Press, 2020), which received USC’s Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award in 2021 and the Luciano Tomassini 2021 Award-Honorable Mention for the Best Book on International Relations from the Latin American Studies Association. Professor Wise’s most recent journal articles include: “Playing both Sides of the Pacific: Latin America’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with China,” Pacific Affairs (2016); “Conceptualizing China-Latin America Relations in the 21 st Century” (with Victoria Chonn Ching), The Pacific Review (2017); and, “International Trade Norms in the Age of Covid-19” (with Nicolas Albertoni), Fudan Humanities and Social Science Journal (2020). Professor Wise has held Fulbright Grants to Canada, Mexico, and Peru. She is a member of the core social science faculty at Renmin University’s annual International Summer Program, Beijing. In 2019, Wise was the Fulbright-Masaryk University Distinguished Chair in the Czech Republic. Her latest research compares the political economy of development in Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe.

Picture of Roselyn HsuehRoselyn Hsueh is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she codirects the Certificate in Political Economy. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Global Scholar Award for research in India, Mexico, and Russia. Her next book, Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism: Sectoral Pathways to Globalization in China, India, and Russia, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. She is the author of China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization (Cornell, 2011), and scholarly articles and book chapters. BBC World News, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, and other media outlets have featured her research. She has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and consulted for The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Hsueh has served as a Global Order Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, member of the Georgetown Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, and Residential Research Faculty Fellow at U.C. Berkeley. She also lectured as a Visiting Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. She held the Hayward R. Alker Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Southern California and conducted international fieldwork in China, Japan, and Taiwan as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar and David L. Boren National Security Fellow. She earned her B.A. and doctorate in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Meet the Moderator: 

Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and  International Affairs, and Co- Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

More From This Conference

The Policy and Advocacy Use of Multidimensional Poverty Measures

Development Economics, Past Events

Monday, April 26, 2021
10:00am EDT
via Zoom

Policy and programme impacts of multidimensional (child) poverty measurement

Multidimensional poverty measures are being used increasingly widely, and indeed included in the Sustainable Development Goals which require countries to reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030. Despite this increased prominence and adoption of multidimensional poverty measures both at the global and national level – including by UNICEF country offices, there have been few if any comprehensive assessments on the policy and programme use of multidimensional poverty measures.

The talk, and the paper behind it, aims to address this knowledge gap to understand how in practice multidimensional poverty measures – with a focus on child poverty – have been used to guide policy makers and practitioners towards poverty reduction. Accordingly, rather than focus on possible or conceptual pathways of impact, the work intends to review real world examples of how measures have been used to better understand their potential and their limits.

Meet the Presenters:

Sola Engilbertsdottir is a Social Policy Specialist at UNICEF Headquarters in NY and has 14 years of social policy and research experience with UNICEF, with a specific focus on child poverty. She has broad experience working in the East Africa region, in Kenya she supported a decentralized social budgeting initiative and the development of the Kenyan social protection strategy. With UNICEF Rwanda she managed the first ever Rwandan multidimensional child poverty analysis and the evaluations of a child sensitive social protection pilot and an integrated ECD programme. Between 2008 and 2012 Sola provided research and policy advocacy support to over 50 countries participating in a Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities. She currently supervises UNICEF’s child poverty efforts, including support to UNICEF country offices in measuring child poverty and translating child poverty evidence into policy action. Prior to joining UNICEF Sola was a social worker in her native country, Iceland. She holds a degree in Anthropology, as well as a degree in Social Work from the University of Iceland and an MPA from Columbia University.

Picture of David StewartDavid Stewart began his career at the Global Human Development Report of UNDP where he spent 6 years working on the Human Development Reports and indices and researched, wrote and presented Reports on Human Rights, Democracy, the Millennium Development Goals, New Technologies, Cultural Freedom and Development Assistance. Between 2005 and 2010 he worked with UNICEF in New York working initially on State of the World’s Children, and subsequently led the organisation’s work on Policy Advocacy. David spent 4 years as Chief of Social Policy and Evaluation for UNICEF Uganda where he has worked on a range of social policy issues including child poverty, social protection, and public finance for children. He is currently the Chief of the Child Poverty and Social Protection Unit for UNICEF in New York, where he works on measurement, technical support to country and regional offices and global advocacy in the areas of social protection and child poverty. Recent work includes “A World Free from Child Poverty” a practitioner’s guide to achieving the SDGs on child poverty, “Making Cash Transfers Work for Children and Families” and he is currently working on universal child grants and developing UNICEF’s updated social protection framework. He co-chairs the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty, and holds a degree in Economics from the University of Sussex and a Masters in Development Economics from the University of Oxford.

Meet the Discussants:

Gonzalo Hernandez LiconaGonzalo Hernández Licona is Director of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN), providing strategic direction to the activities of the South-South network of 60 countries and 20 international agencies sharing best practice on how to measure multidimensional poverty.

He was formerly the Executive Secretary of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) in Mexico, which is responsible for evaluating social development programmes and carrying out the country’s poverty measurement. Previously, he was Head of Evaluation and Monitoring at the Ministry of Social Development in Mexico.

Between 2017 and 2019 he was the author, together with 14 scientists of the 2019 Global Development Sustainable Report for the United Nations. He was full-time Chair Professor at the Autonomous Institute of Technology of Mexico (ITAM) in the Economy Department from 1991–1992 and 1996–2002. He has taught Development Economics at ITAM since 2003.

More From This Series

Horizontal and Intersecting Wealth Inequalities in Mozambique – 1997 to 2017

Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Economics of Ultra-Poverty Events, Past Events

Monday, April 19, 2021
10:00 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

In this seminar of the MPI series, a UNU-WIDER paper was presented.

Picture of Ricardo SantosPresenter: Ricardo Santos is a Research Fellow of the United Nations University World Institute of Development Economics Research – UNU-WIDER, stationed in Maputo, Mozambique, as Technical Advisor to the Centre of Economics and Management Studies at the Faculty of Economics of Eduardo Mondlane University. His doctoral research examined the post-conflict labour market and education sector in Timor-Leste, looking at the medium-run impact of exposure to violence and conflict produce on the households’ choices regarding education. His recent research has focused on the Mozambican labour market, school-to-work transition and on poverty and inequality. His previous work in the development field includes voluntary work for one year in Timor-Leste as a member of a Portuguese NGO and, Program Manager for Timor-Leste and Angola and Deputy Executive Officer of the same NGO.

 

 

Abstract: This study seeks to add to the research on inequality in Least Developed Countries, namely in Mozambique, by measuring and mapping indicators of between-group and within-group wealth inequality along geographic and ethnolinguistic identities. Using census data for 1997, 2007 and 2017, we adapt the Multidimensional Poverty Index applied by the Government of Mozambique to build a corresponding Household Wealth Index. We use it to identify possible intersecting inequalities, measuring between-group inequality along joint provincial – urban/rural – ethnolinguistic identities. Additionally, we find heterogeneous evolutions of group inequality between 1997 and 2017 among the country’s eleven provinces.
We find that, while there is a general improvement in the average household wealth indicators, there is a strong suggestion of increasing group inequalities between 1997 and 2017. While this is manifest throughout the country, in general, there is evidence that the Southern provinces may be experiencing a more equitable development. We find evidence that this evolution may be driven by a urban-rural decoupling, added to low internal migration.
These are insights from correlates. No causal inference can be made from this analysis. However, the differences in average wealth between groups, if perceived, may feed grievances. They should be better understood, so that underlying causes can be addressed.

About the Series: The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report Office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to announce new events in our special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions. The global MPI 2020 offers a tool to make progress towards this goal.

Produced in partnership with the UNDP HDRO, the global MPI 2020 compares acute multidimensional poverty for 107 countries in developing regions and provides a detailed image of who is poor and how they are poor. It offers both a global headline and a fine-grained analysis covering 1,279 sub-national regions, and important disaggregation such as children, and people living in urban or rural areas, together with the indicator deprivations of each group. Bringing together the academic and policy spheres, this series of seminars will highlight topics such as sensitivity analyses, overlapping deprivations, changes over time (poverty trends), and inequality using the global data. The sessions will also include work that applies the global MPI methodology, the Alkire-Foster method, to innovative measures.

The seminars will continue to take place online on Mondays at 10 a.m. EDT. IIEP Co-Director Professor James Foster will host and the events are open to anyone focused on improving the lived experience of those who are deprived.

More From This Series

Minimum Performance Targets, Multitasking and Incentives: Theory and Evidence from China’s Air Quality Controls

Chao Wei, Past Events, U.S.-China Economic Relations Events

Friday, April 9, 2021
9:30 a.m.-11 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to invite you to the 13th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year, the conference will take place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research.

As the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, China has launched serious efforts to tighten its environmental regulation and curb air pollution in the past decade. A distinctive feature of Beijing’s approach is the critical role played by local governments in complying with central directives. China’s local officials are currently facing the dual tasks of pursuing local economic development and curbing air pollution, which are potentially conflicting with each other. To resolve this multitasking challenge, China has recently introduced minimum targets for air quality controls to discipline local officials while continuing to link their promotion prospects to local economic performance (such as GDP growth).

In the event, Peking University’s Li-An Zhou discussed how local Chinese officials respond strategically to minimum air quality control targets when they care more about pursuing regional economic development, which is closely linked to their career prospects. Using a novel prefecture-day-level dataset on air quality, Zhou finds strong evidence that air quality tends to improve when the air quality target is doomed to fail, but deteriorates significantly after the early fulfillment of the target is guaranteed. These “asymmetric” strategic responses are mainly driven by “outsiders” – local officials with no previous exposure to the regions to which they are assigned. Greater pressure to promote local economic development reinforces outsiders’ asymmetric responses. For “non-outsiders” who have been promoted from the local area and who are more likely to intrinsically value the local environment, air quality performance is stable in both cases of target fulfillment. The study sheds light on how minimum air quality targets have worked in China’s context and highlights the role of intrinsic motivations in mitigating strategic responses to minimum performance targets in a multitasking environment.

JHU’s Matthew Kahn served as a discussant and IIEP Co-Director Jay Shambaugh served as a moderator, with a brief introduction from IIEP’s Chao Wei.

Co-sponsors:
Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research.

Meet the Speakers: 

Li-An Zhou Li-An Zhou is is Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of Guanghua School of
Management at Peking University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford
University. His research interests include political economy, industrial organization,
economic development, and Chinese economy. Dr. Zhou has published papers in
leading international journals of economics and management including American
Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of
Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, and Strategic Management Journal.

Meet the Discussant: 

Matthew E. KahnMatthew E. Kahn is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business at Johns Hopkins University and the Director of JHU’s 21st Century Cities Initiative. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at IZA. He has taught at Columbia, the Fletcher School at Tufts University, UCLA and USC. He has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard and Stanford and as the Low Tuck Kwong Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is a graduate of Hamilton College and the London School of Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He is the author of Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment (Brookings Institution Press 2006) and the co-author (joint with Dora L. Costa) of Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton University Press 2009). He is also the author of Climatopolis (Basic Books 2010) and Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China (joint with Siqi Zheng published by Princeton Press in 2016). He has also published three other Amazon Kindle books on urban economics and microeconomics. His research focuses on urban and environmental economics.

Meet the Moderators: 

Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and  International Affairs, and Co- Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

Chao WeiChao Wei received her PhD in Economics from Stanford University in 2001. She also holds an MA in economics from Columbia University and a BA in economics from Fudan University in China. She worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for two years before joining the George Washington University in 2003. Her research interests focus on the intersection of macroeconomics and financial economics, with an emphasis on the asset pricing implications of production economies with and without nominal rigidities. Her current research examines the impact of personal and corporate income taxes on asset returns. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Money and banking, and Macroeconomic Theory.

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Africa after COVID-19: Charting a New Course for Economic Growth and Development

Development Economics, Past Events

Tuesday, March 9, 2021
10:00am – 11:30am
via Zoom

Join IIEP and the Institute for African Studies for a discussion with Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of the African Union Development Agency/NEPAD; Dr. Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and Dr. Khaled Sherif, Vice President for Regional Development, Integration, and Business Delivery at the African Development Bank, on charting Africa’s path out of economic crisis toward a more resilient future.
 
The COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the world with devastating impact on human health and livelihoods,  deepening existing vulnerabilities and disparities within societies, national economies, and the global system. African economies shrank by an average 2.1 percent in 2020 and will emerge from the crisis weakened and more deeply in debt. The crisis compels new thinking on the path to recovery and redressing national and global economic inequality and fragility. What new tools and approaches are needed to speed Africa’s economic recovery and build future reslience? What role for African-based and global multilateral institutions in recovery and growth? What entry points for broader international solidarity and  support? Ours speakers are leaders at the forefront of these debates within African multilateral insitutions and global fora.
 

Co-sponsors:
GWU Institute for African Studies

Meet the Speakers: 

Dr. Ibrahim Assane MayakiDr. Ibrahim Assane Mayaki of the Republic of Niger is the CEO of the African Union Development Agency/New Economic Partnership for African Development (AUDA-NEPAD), mandated to facilitate and coordinate  implementation of regional and continental priority development programs and projects.  Dr. Mayaki served as Prime Minister of Niger from 1997-2000 and previously as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister in Charge of African Integration and Cooperation. Dr. Mayaki holds a Masters degree from the National School of Public Administration (Enap), Quebec, Canada and a PhD.

 

dr. vera songweVera Songwe of Cameroon is Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, appointed in April 2017. She previoulsy served as the International Finance Corporation’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, World Bank Country Director for Senegal, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania, and Adviser to the Managing Director of the World Bank for the Africa. She holds a PhD in Mathematical Economics at the Centre for Operations Research and Econometrics, an MA in Law and Economics, a Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies in Economic Sciences and Politics from the Université Catholique de Louvain, and a BA  in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan.

 

Dr. Khaled Sherif is Vice President for Regional Development, Integration, and Business Delivery at the African Development Bank. Previously, he held several senior positions at the World Bank, including Sector Manager for the Private and Financial Sector Development department and Chief Administrative Officer for Africa Resource Management Unit. He has worked at the Agency for International Development in Egypt and at Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and Administrative Development also in Egypt He holds a B.A and an M.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Political Science from the American University in Cairo; and holds a Ph. D. in Public Policy and Management at Boston University.

Moderate internationally comparable MPI

Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, Economics of Ultra-Poverty Events, James Foster, Past Events

Monday February 1st, 2021

10:00 AM-11:30AM EST

Many of the current poverty measures used to track progress towards the Agenda 2030 fall short of its ambition to “end poverty in all its forms, everywhere”. This talk introduces a new measure of “moderate multidimensional poverty” that complements the current measures of acute poverty, in line with the ambitions outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The new trial index, here called Moderate MPI (MMPI), builds on the basic capabilities included in the global Multidimensional Poverty Index but adjusts the indicators to reflect a meaningful change in the level of ambition anchored in the SDGs. MMPI is intended to provide a complementary measure of poverty globally, but will be most meaningful for middle-income countries and regions where acute poverty is already low and possibly no longer reflects a valid level of ambition for national development.

The main value-added of the new trial MMPI is that it: i) is globally comparable across countries at all income levels, ii) aligns the indicators with the higher standards for development as defined in the Agenda 2030, and iii) allows us to study some aspects of intrahousehold deprivation. The trial MMPI is illustrated empirically using nationally representative household surveys from Thailand, Iraq, Tanzania, Serbia, Guatemala, and Bangladesh. While data constrains remain, the results demonstrate that the MMPI is feasible, has desirable properties as a global poverty index, and allows to unearth thus far hidden aspects in poverty measurement, such as intrahousehold deprivations in education. The talk concluded by discussing the steps needed towards a wider policy relevant use of the index that would support the global development community to find sustainable pathways out of poverty

About the Presenter:

Elina Scheja SidaElina Scheja is currently working as a Lead Economist at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), where her tasks include economic analysis, multidimensional poverty analytics, and advisory support. Her professional interest focus on evidence of what works for poverty reduction, how poverty can be measured in multiple dimensions, and how to promote sustainable and inclusive economic development that benefit people living in poverty. Prior to her current position, Ms Scheja was based in Rwanda managing Sida’s project portfolio for productive employment, analysing economic development, and engaging in dialogue with partners for sustainable poverty reduction. Ms Scheja has long experience in development cooperation in different roles and organisations, such as the World Bank where she worked with inclusive growth, development effectiveness, and migration. Ms Scheja holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex, Masters in Economics from Helsinki School of Economics, and Masters in Development Studies from Helsinki University, and has research experience from several universities and research institutions

 

About the Discussant:

Iván González de AlbaIván González de Alba is a Country Economist at UNDP’s Country Office in Cambodia. Until August 2020, he was the Regional Policy Advisor in Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development at UNDP’s Regional Hub for Latin America and the Caribbean. Economist and holds a Masters in Public Policy from ITAM (Mexico) as well as a Masters in Economics and a DPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, England. Former OPHI collaborator, also worked for the Mexican government holding different positions at the ministries of tourism, social development and urban development.  Social protection in Africa and the regional study on environmental variables into MPIs are among his most recent publications.

Picture of Khalid

Khalid Abu-Ismail is a Senior Economist at UN-ESCWA, ERF Policy Affiliate and formerly UNDP Policy Adviser and Faculty Member of the Economics Department of the Lebanese American University.

Over 50 research papers and UN publications with a focus on poverty, inequality and human development in Arab countries, including: “Arab Vision 2030 Report” (ESCWA, 2015), “Arab Middle Class” (ESCWA, 2014), “Rethinking Economic Growth” (ILO and UNDP, 2012), “Arab Multi-Dimensional Poverty Report” (LAS, OPHI, UNICEF and ESCWA, 2017), “Rethinking Inequality in Arab Countries” (ESCWA and ERF, 2019) and lead author of the forthcoming ESCWA report on “Rethinking Human Development”. He has a D. Phil. in Development Economics from the New School for Social Research in New York.

 

About the Moderator:

Picture of James E. FosterJames E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published annually by the UNDP in the Human Development Report, dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).

 

These seminars are organized jointly with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the UNDP Human Development Report Office. They will be hosted by IIEP Co-Director James Foster.

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More From This Series

“Saving Indian Capitalism from its Capitalists” featuring Pranab Bardhan

Global Economic Governance Events, India, James Foster, Past Events

Wednesday, December 9th, 2020

11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST

This was the fourth webinar in the “Envisioning India” series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. It is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invited you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.

The “Envisioning India” series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Co-Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Ajay Chhibber. The fourth event, “Saving Indian Capitalism from Its Capitalists” featured Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Economics at University of California-Berkeley, with Jean Dreze of Ranchi University and Michael Walton of the Harvard Kennedy School as discussants. The discussion was moderated by Professor James Foster, with an introduction by Dr. Ajay Chhibber. 

There are often conflicts in the interests of capital, between the individual capitalist and the capitalist class as a whole, or between the short-term and long-term interests of capital. In this talk Prof. Bardhan will give examples of this from the Indian debates on labor reform, health policy, policy relating to vocational education, and from the adverse effects of the growing concentration of capital and wealth distribution.

The Indian Government recently enacted a major labor reform that has been widely acclaimed in the business press and by many reform-mongering economists. The attempt to bring some order to the tangled mess that the old labor laws were in is welcome, as is more ‘flexibility’ in labor employment, but as part of a package deal with a reasonable scheme of unemployment benefits for workers; instead the new laws make the already insecure life of workers even more insecure. Capitalists envisioning a longer horizon should be aware that an insecure, disgruntled and unstable labor force is a sure bet for low productivity. Health Policy and Vocational Education also show cases where a more prudent corporate sector would have encouraged serious alternatives; this will be elucidated in the talk.

More broadly, in India the data suggest that corporate concentration and inequality in wealth distribution are galloping, and this is bound to have a negative effect on overall productivity and innovations, which is against the  long-term interests of capitalism, even though it may give a boost to short-term earnings of individual capitalists. Compared to some other capitalist countries, India is more of a crony oligarchy that is cozy with the current regime, which is not conducive to a healthy development of capitalism in India. Nor is the rise in inequality that exacerbates demand deficiency, or the brazen dilution of environmental regulations that poisons and uproots community life.

About the Speakers: 

pranabPranab Bardhan is Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was educated at Presidency College, Kolkata and Cambridge University, England. He had been at the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics before joining Berkeley. He has been Visiting Professor/Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and London School of Economics. He held the Distinguished Fulbright Siena Chair at the University of Siena, Italy in 2008-9. He was the BP Centennial Professor at London School of Economics for 2010 and 2011. He got the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982.

He has done theoretical and field studies research on rural institutions in poor countries, on political economy of development policies, and on international trade. A part of his work is in the interdisciplinary area of economics, political science, and social anthropology. He was Chief Editor of the Journal of Development Economics for 1985-2003. He was the co-chair of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Network on the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance for 1996-2007.

He is the author of 16 books and editor of 14 other books, and author of more than 150 journal articles including in leading Economics journals (like American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, American Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Oxford Economic Papers, etc.).

He has also contributed essays to popular outlets like New York Times, Scientific American, Financial Times, Die Zeit, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Project Syndicate, Yale Global Online, Times of India, Economic Times, Business Standard, Bloomberg Quint, Hindustan Times, Ideas for India, Economic and Political Weekly, Indian Express, Ananda Bazar Patrika (in Bengali), etc. From 2018 he has started writing a periodic column for a New York-based blog, 3 Quarks Daily.

 

Picture of Jean DrezeJean Dreze studied Mathematical Economics at the University of Essex and did his Ph.D. at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. He has taught at the London School of Economics and the Delhi School of Economics, and is currently Visiting Professor at Ranchi University as well as Honorary Professor at the Delhi School of Economics. He has made wide-ranging contributions to development economics and public policy, with special reference to India. His research interests include rural development, social inequality, elementary education, child nutrition, health care and food security. Jean Drèze is co-author (with Amartya Sen) of Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989) and An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (Penguin, 2013)”, and also one of the co-authors of the Public Report on Basic Education in India, also known as “PROBE Report”.

 

michael_waltonMichael Walton is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he has taught since 2004 and is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi.  He also works with the non-profit IMAGO Global Grassroots whose goal is to take established grassroots organizations to the next level, working especially in India, Latin America and the United States.  In addition to core teaching in HKS’ MPA in International Development, he leads the signature on-line course on Policy Design and Delivery.  Michael was VKRV Rao Professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore in 1998 and 1999, and visiting professor at the Delhi School of Economics in 1998. Before academia, Michael worked for 20 years at the World Bank, including on Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and Zimbabwe. While there he led two and worked on two other World Development Reports (on Poverty in 1990 and 2000, on Labor in 1995, and Inequality in 2005). Book publications include co-edited volumes on Culture and Public Action, and No Growth without Equity? on Mexico.  Current research in India, includes work on Self Help Groups and on scaling up of social enterprises of the Self Employed Women’s Association.  Michael is also a dancer.  He has a B.A. in Philosophy and Economics and an M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University.

 

This event was sponsored with the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

More From This Series

9th Annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S. China Economic Relations

Chao Wei, Maggie Chen, Past Events, Remi Jedwab, Research Conference, Steve Charnovitz, Susan Aaronson, U.S.-China Economic Relations EventsLeave a Comment on 9th Annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S. China Economic Relations

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The U.S.-China relationship is now second to none in importance for international economic relations and policy and accordingly is a major focus of IIEP. The centerpiece of this initiative is our annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic and Political Relations

This year, key topics discussed will include China’s financial market, the state of China’s macro-economy, the China-Africa relationship, and China’s outward investments and their impacts. For more information about the conference and bios of each panelist, visit our blog. 

An archive of all previous Annual Conferences on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations is available here. For more information, please contact Kyle Renner at iiep@gwu.edu or 202-994-5320.

Schedule of Events

November 11, 2016

​8:00 – 8:50AM Coffee and Continental Breakfast

8:50 – 9:00AM Welcome and Overview of the Conference

  • Stephen Smith, Director, Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP), Professor of Economics and International Affairs, GWU

9:00 – 11:00AM Panel 1: The Future of Trade Integration in the Asia Pacific

Moderated by IIEP affiliate Steve Suranovic, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, The George Washington University

  • Jeff Schott, Peterson Institute for International Economics, “Will the US Invest in or Divest from Asia-Pacific Economic Integration?” 
  • Michael Plummer, JHU, “Megaregionalism in the Asia-Pacific and Options for Shared Chinese-US Leadership”
  • Jiandong Ju, Shanghai University of Finance & Economics, “Huaxia Community: A FTA and a New Architecture for the Global Economic System”

11:00 – 11:15AM Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:45PM Panel 2:The Internet in China’s Economy

Moderated by IIEP affiliate Susan Aaronson, Research Professor of Intenrational Affairs, The George Washington University

  • Hong Xue, Beijing Normal University, “Chinese Electronic Commerce Law: the New Basic Law for Digital Economy”
  • Jingting Fan, UMD, “The Alibaba Effect: Spatial Consumption Inequality and the Welfare Gains from e-Commerce”
  • Maggie Chen, George Washington University, “International Trade on the Internet: Evidence from Alibaba”

12:45 – 2:00PM Lunch

2:00 – 3:30PM Panel 3: Trade, Migration, and Wage Premium in China

Moderated by IIEP affiliate Joseph Pelzman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, The George Washington University

  • Chao Wei, George Washington University, The Short and Long of Trade and Migration Reforms in China (joint with Xiaodong Zhu)
  • RuiXue Jia, UCSD, “Access to Elite Education, Wage Premium, and Social Mobility: The Truth and Illusion of China’s College Entrance Exam”
  • Eunhee Lee, University of Maryland at College Park, “Trade, Inequality, and the Endogenous Sorting of Heterogeneous workers”
3:30 – 4:00PM: Coffee Break

4:00 – 5:30PM  Panel 4: China’s Macroeconomy, Urban Growth and Policy Analysis

Moderated by IIEP affiliate Remi Jedwab, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, The George Washington University

  • Zheng Liu, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (also affiliated with the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance),“Reserve Requirements and Optimal Chinese Stabilization Policy”
  • Matthew Turner, Brown University, “Highways, Market Access and Urban Growth in China”
  • Kai Zhao, University of Connecticut, “The Chinese Saving Rate: Productivity, Old Age Support and Demographics

Inclusive and Sustainable Growth in India: Policy Challenges and Prospects

Ajay Chhibber, Development Economics and Poverty Alleviation Events, India, Past Events, Remi Jedwab, Research Conference

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Commons, 6th floor
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
Watch the conference videos

Click here to access the morning speakers

Click here to access the afternoon speakers

Click here to access all other remarks

To prepare for the future, India emphasizes addressing inclusive and sustainable growth, eliminating poverty, and expanding their urban sphere. The growth-orientated government faces challenges in creating efficient policy reforms to fit their agenda. Issues including poverty, inequality, lack of infrastructure, and an unfinished plan for reform limit the country’s tremendous growth prospects.

How can India utilize macro economic policy for faster growth? What additional policies are needed to boost infrastructure and urbanization? How is India responding to climate change and sustainability? How can revised policy and programs aid in eradicating poverty?

The Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs and India’s National Institute of Public Finance and Policy hosted a conversation with top academic researchers, officials from the IMF, NIPFP, and World Bank, and current and former advisors of the Indian governments.

View the Schedule
8:30 – 9:00AM: Continental Breakfast
9:00 – 10:00AM: Opening Session
  • Welcome Address
    • Ambassador Reuben Brigety, Dean of the Elliott School
  • Key Note Address: “India’s Reform Challenges and Unfinished Reform Agenda”
    • Arvind Subramaniam, Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India 
10:00 – 11:15AM: Session I – “Macro Economic Policy for Faster Growth”
  • Chair: Dr. Ajay Chhibber, IIEP & NIPFP
  • Dr. Subir Gokarn, Exective Director, India IMF
  • Dr. Rathin Roy,  Director, NIPFP, “A Macro-Fiscal Snapshot“
11:15 – 11:30AM: Coffee Break
11:30AM – 1:00PM: Session II – “India’s Commitment to Climate Change and Sustainable Growth”
1:00 – 2:00PM: Lunch: Luncheon Address
  • Dr. Junaid Kamal Ahmad, Country Director, India, World Bank 
2:00 – 3:15PM: Session III – “Infrastructure and Urban Drivers of Growth”
3:15 – 3:30PM: Coffee Break
3:30 – 4:45PM: Session IV – “Equitable Growth and Poverty Eradication: Measurement, Programs, and Policies”
4:45 – 5:30PM: Closing Address: “Getting India back to the Growth Turnpike: What will it take?“
  • Dr. Rakesh Mohan, Yale University, and former Executive Director, India, IMF 
  • Dr. Ajay Chhibber, IIEP & NIPFP

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