In June 2018, the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre was launched (my new employer). During the launch, I held a presentation of my project “Heterodox Development Economics” and gave some remarks. See the promo video from the event below.

You can read more about the launch here and about the Heterodox Development Economics project here.

Below is the excerpt from the project:

Broadening the Debate on Economic Development

The Heterodox Development Economics project aims to broaden the international public and academic debate on how to best understand the causes and potential remedies of underdevelopment by drawing on ideas that have been neglected in mainstream Economics, including from Marxian, Keynesian, Structuralist, and Institutionalist traditions. The project also critically explores the theoretical and practical approaches of international development institutions through the lens of these alternative theories. The project is associated with the blog Developing Economics.

Theme 1: Structural Transformation

One part of the project aims to explore how structural change interacts in complex ways with institutional development, income distribution, growth, and economic development. The project also aims to explore how dependency theory could be helpful in explaining development trajectories today, clarify the critiques of the theory and their validity.

Theme 2: Finance in Development

The other part of the project explores the theoretical underpinnings of the mainstream approach to finance in development and investigates concrete challenges faced by developing economies. The project challenges the new development ‘fad’ of financial inclusion, both on theoretical and empirical grounds. At a macroeconomic level, the project has investigated new forms of finance emerging in development contexts and specifically the rise of sovereign bond issuance in sub-Saharan Africa.