News

Nature: How India is attempting to slow the coronavirus

April 10, 2020

Ricardo Hausmann in Nature

Like many nations, India does not have enough kits to test most of its population for the new coronavirus. The country is instead relying on people power: thousands of health-care workers are fanning out across the country to trace and quarantine people who might have had contact with those with COVID-19. People are typically only tested if they develop symptoms.

...

However, further lockdowns could have dire consequences. Strict social-distancing measures mean that people must stay at home, so many cannot work —...

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Harvard researchers studied 9 million people to discover the surprising secret to career success

January 16, 2020

Frank Neffke - Fast Company

A Harvard study has pinpointed the secret to career success: choosing the right coworkers. The researchers looked at everyone in Sweden (then nine million people) over 10 years, tracing their educations, jobs, and coworker histories. They found that coworkers with complimentary skills and educations earned higher wages, and that those wages rose even further for workers with teammates who had few skills similar to their own. “...

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Australia is rich, dumb and getting dumber

October 8, 2019

Arron Patrick - Financial Review

Bangladesh, Cuba, Iran, Mali and Turkmenistan share an unexpected connection to Australia, and it isn't membership of a tourist destination hot list.

All are among the economies that are so lacking in complexity, and have such limited natural opportunities to develop new products, that Harvard University recommends they adopt industrial policy straight out of the post-colonial developing world: the "strategic bets" approach.

The advice comes from the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for International Development,...

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New interactive website helps chart paths for economic growth

September 26, 2019

James F. Smith - The Harvard Gazette

Let’s say you are a government official weighing economic development strategies. Or you’re an entrepreneur looking for the best place to manufacture your new high-tech device. How do you sort through the mountains of available data to figure out which countries have the know-how to achieve dynamic growth — and which do not?

Researchers at Harvard have built a powerful new tool that will do a lot of the work for you.

The Growth Lab, a program of the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard Kennedy...

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Markets Are Starting to Play a Haunting 2007 Tune

September 18, 2019

John Authers - Bloomberg

...Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government has made it his life’s work to understand why some economies grow faster than others, and therefore which countries are likely to grow next. He believes the answer lies in economic complexity. To paraphrase, countries that develop complex industries with transferable skills are able to grow much faster. Countries that do nothing more than extract raw materials and don’t diversify (like Hausmann’s native Venezuela), have little chance of growth. Those that develop know-how...

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China Risks, Unlike Mexico Tariffs, Aren't Vanishing

June 11, 2019

John Authers - Bloomberg

...Which countries will manage to notch the fastest growth over the next decade? Nobody can know for certain, but Harvard’s Center for International Development has gone to great lengths to try to find out. Its key insight is that growth hinges on economic complexity. The more different skills a population has developed, and the more adaptable its economy, the better its chances of expansion. The more dependent it remains on one industry, the harder it is to achieve growth. It measures this phenomenon in a fascinating and public...

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Don't Blame Washington for Venezuela's Oil Woes: A Rebuttal

May 2, 2019

Ricardo Hausmann and Frank Muci - Americas Quarterly

On August 2017, the White House imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela, limiting its access to U.S. financial markets. Shortly after, Venezuela’s economy and oil sector collapsed. ​Economists Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Jeffrey Sachs conclude​ ​that the sanctions caused the collapse and human suffering that followed. Is this persuasive?...

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Understanding Venezuela's Collapse

February 12, 2019

Ricardo Hausmann - Harvard Gazette

Thousands of angry demonstrators in Venezuela took to the streets again this week to protest the government of President Nicolás Maduro, two weeks after he was sworn in for a second term following an election that many critics say was rigged. The protests were organized by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, president of the National Assembly, who has declared himself acting president.

Once one of the richest countries in Latin America with the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela has been in political, economic, and...

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The knowhow path to Sri Lankan development

September 5, 2018

Ricardo Hausmann - DailyFT

When Adam Smith wrote ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in 1776, the richest country in the world was four times richer than the poorest one. Today, Singapore is over 110 times richer than Burundi. What could possibly explain such an extreme divergence of the wealth of nations? 

Economists have shown that these differences are too large to be explained by differences in the availability of land or capital – including human capital. So, they ascribe it to differences in the productivity with which land and capital are used,...

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Planet Money: The Measure Of A Tragedy

June 19, 2018

Ricardo Hausmann on NPR's Planet Money: The Indicator podcast

The Venezuelan economy has collapsed. Years of economic mismanagement and a deepening political crisis have led to a recession that has almost no parallel in recent memory.

But explaining just how bad things have gotten is also really hard because the normal economic indicators that we use to measure a country's economy have started to sound so so unfathomable — 25,000% inflation, for example — that it feels impossible to get our heads around them.

Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard-based...

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Immigration key catalyst for development

May 17, 2018

Daily FT

Reforming immigration law to allow free movement of people through progressive laws could tackle Sri Lanka’s chronic economic challenges of narrow exports, low Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and limited innovation, a top expert said yesterday, outlining many examples of countries that have experienced growth spurts by opening up their labour markets.  

Prof. Ricardo Hausmann is Director of Harvard’s Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government. Delivering a...

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Authers’ Note: Turning and turning in the widening gyre

May 7, 2018

2026 Growth Projections in the Financial Times

Some parts of the world do not follow a cycle, but may actually enjoy secular growth over the next decade or so. The only problem is that you will need courage and a lot of due diligence to take advantage.

The latest edition of the Atlas of Economic Complexity by Harvard’s Center for International Development was published last week. It shows the countries best positioned to grow thanks to their networks of diverse and transferable skills. Their projected winners might provide some:

I strongly...

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Harvard offers hope on SA economy

May 4, 2018

The Sunday Times

Researchers at Harvard’s Center for International Development are predicting that South Africa's economy will grow at 4.9% annually until 2026. This‚ says banking's Michael Jordaan‚ "would be radically transformative".

It's also optimistic‚ as the International Monetary Fund recently forecast SA economic growth to strengthen to 1.5% in 2018 and to 1.7% in 2019.

Harvard's CID report ranks South Africa in 66th place.

With projected growth of 7.9%, India tops list of fastest growing economies for coming decade

May 4, 2018

India TV News

India tops the list of the fastest growing economies in the world for the coming decade and is projected to grow at 7.9 per cent annually, ahead of China and the US, according to a Harvard University report. 

The Centre for International Development at Harvard University (CID) said in new growth projections on Thursday that countries that have diversified their economies into more complex sectors, like India and Vietnam, are those that will grow the fastest in the coming decade. 

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