It’s easy to be a bit nostalgic for work pre-internet, when research could involve exploring the dusty confines of the British Library or the excitement of digging out an old tome from a government archive with numbers on Ugandan coffee exports from 1957. But nothing really beats the satisfaction available today from downloading in just three or four clicks the entire import-export database for the same country. Yet, it can be tempting to make Wikipedia or Google the default for research. So, here are some gems which make international development research better, easier and more productive.
Diversification is critical to a country’s long term economic growth plan, especially as many older industries shrink in a world of globalization and rapid technological evolution. But establishing new industries in a region requires access to workers with the right skills and know-how. By definition, local workers lack experience in these new industries. So how do “pioneer” plants, the plants that are the first of their kind in a region, overcome this difficulty? Do they train locals or hire experienced workers from elsewhere? New research at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University finds that pioneers are much more likely than other plants to hire their better-paid, higher-skilled workers from outside the region, lending evidence that mobility of workers is crucial for new industries to diffuse.... Read more about Mobility of Workers Key for Diffusion of Industries
The Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University has been ranked the 2nd best university think tank and 5th best international development think tank, according to UPenn's new 2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index.
The Index - produced annually by James McGann, director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania’...
Bogotá - En agosto de 2014, se anunció la creación del Atlas de la Complejidad Económica, liderado por el profesor Ricardo Hausmann de la Universidad de Harvard, para identificar las potencialidades de cada región. El presidente de Bancóldex, Luis Fernando Castro, habló con LR sobre los primeros hallazgos que está entregando esta herramienta, que se publicaría por completo dentro de un mes.
What do you think are the key determinants of a country’s economic and social development?
Life in modern-day society is complex. It requires numerous complementary ingredients and, if just one of them is missing, it will have huge negative effects. Thus, two equally poor countries may suffer from the absence of very different ingredients. This is also why simple recipes, such as education, microcredit or “institutions”, are inadequate answers. But if I had to come up with a synthetic vision to encompass all developing countries, I would say that the secret to development or, in any case, the most difficult ingredient to accumulate is collective know-how or knowing-how-to-do things. The secret to prosperity is technology, but technology is expressed in three kinds of elements: tools or equipment, codes or prescriptions, and know-how or tacit knowledge. While tools and prescriptions are easy to disseminate, know-how is hard to spread, because it is acquired slowly through imitation and repetition, in the same way that we learn to walk or learn a language as children. Nobody learns to play a sport or diagnose a patient by reading about it. It requires years of practice.... Read more about Q&A with Ricardo Hausmann
By Ricardo Hausmann (originally published in GrowthPolicy)
The challenges of economic growth are very different in different countries. The U.S. and Europe face a certain set of issues that look very different from the issues faced in China or India, or the issues faced in the Americas or in...
By Ricardo Hausmann (originally published in GrowthPolicy)
Financial crises are a bit like airplane crashes. Airplanes, and banks, operate well most of the time. But every so often they crash with very bad consequences and our strategy is to do a forensic study of the last crash, see what we learn, and incorporate that learning into the system so that we might prevent the recurrence of the same kind of crash. In aviation, that has made air travel incredibly safe, to the point that, right now, the Civil Aviation Board does not only analyze crashes but they also analyze “near misses” because there are so few crashes that it’s very hard to keep on learning. So near misses are a way to reduce the likelihood of bad things happening that have not really happened.... Read more about How Should We Prevent the Next Financial Crisis?
By Ricardo Hausmann (originally published in GrowthPolicy)
Inequality is the result of many different phenomena. Some of them should be a source of policy concern while others should not. My main problem is the inequality that arises from differences in productivity—namely, differences in productivity across regions, across cities, within cities and across social groups. We know that there are huge differences in income across countries of the world: the richest countries are 200 to 300 times richer than the poorest countries in per capita terms. That’s inequality at the global scale.... Read more about What Should We Do About Inequality?
Earlier this year I conducted two interviews with the Albanian TV station, Vizion Plus. In the first interview, I give an overview of the type of work that CID is doing in Albania and discuss some of the economic challenges and potentials in Albania:
La Alianza para el Gobierno Abierto, de la que México es miembro fundador, es una iniciativa multilateral que tiene como objetivo hacer a los gobiernos más transparentes, eficientes, que tengan una mejor rendición de cuentas e incentiven la participación ciudadana.
La semana pasada tuvo lugar en nuestro país la Cumbre Global de la Alianza para el Gobierno Abierto (AGA) México 2015, como espacio de diálogo entre sociedad civil y gobierno donde...
Inclusion Hub spoke with Eduardo Lora, senior fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, about the role of government in advancing innovation
After the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit, it is clear that government and the private sector both have key roles to play in creating inclusive growth, but according to Eduardo Lora, senior fellow in the Growth Lab at the Harvard University Center for International Development (CID), these roles are more closely connected than is often realized.
Inclusion Hub spoke with Dr. Ricardo Hausmann, director of Harvard's Center for International Development, about how those who are excluded must be included in the inclusive growth process through interventions to increase their productivity
Ricardo Hausmann, The Atlas of Economic Complexity - Folha de S. Paulo
A derrocada da indústria e exportações cada vez mais concentradas em commodities indicam risco de reversão no processo de queda da desigualdade de renda no país.
Since ancient times, Greeks have always been wary of facing bad choices. Homer’s Odyssey vividly highlights this predicament with the story of the famous two sea monsters (Scylla and Charybdis) that Jason and his Argonauts had to navigate in order to passing through the Straits of Messina, giving rise to the English idiom of finding oneself between a rock and a...
l Venezuelan Ricardo Hausmann, 58, is one of the most influential Latin American economists. He is director of the Center for International Development and Professor of Development Economics at Harvard University. Participates in the First Annual Industry Conference, held Monday and Tuesday in Madrid. Considers that productivity is the root of inequality, the role of academic education in economic growth is exaggerated and is very concerned about the situation in...
