A 'global brains trust' is born

Understanding the complex economic, social and political processes of change in countries in the poorer parts of the world has long been an integral part of international development research at Oxford. In December, a new centre, the International Growth Centre (IGC), in which the University plays a pivotal role, was created.

The IGC seeks to provide practical help to promote economic growth in developing countries – giving governments a ‘hotline’ to advice from experts on such issues as finance, economic policy, agricultural yields and the energy sector. Funding – initially £37 million over three years – is from the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID), enabling researchers to respond rapidly to requests for help without waiting for grants to be approved.

The IGC is led jointly by Oxford University and the London School of Economics (LSE). Its co-directors are Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford, and Robin Burgess, Professor of Economics at the LSE. ‘The rationale is to try to bring the world’s best economic resources to bear on the growth problems facing countries in Africa and South Asia’, says Professor Collier. ‘In the past, there were not enough resources in relation to the scale of the problem, and what resources there were have often not been well translated into government policies.’

Oxford’s particular expertise in Africa – Professor Collier also directs the renowned Centre for the Study of African Economies – together with the LSE’s Asia-focused research means that the two are well placed to be the joint research hub of a worldwide network of academics who offer their services in this capacity. Oxford already has around 60 academic economists signed up to the IGC network, based mostly within the Department of Economics but also including political scientists and researchers in the Saïd Business School, and although the Centre offers no postgraduate teaching as such, many of the researchers involved draw in their postgraduate students to work on projects run by the IGC (see student profile overleaf).

‘We work only where governments sign up and tell us the problems they want us to look at’, stresses Professor Collier. ‘Sometimes a government has a problem it may not be able to formulate into a research agenda, so we visit to discuss options with them. Part of my job is to form a bridge between governments and specialist academics. Once we have established the agenda, we feed that to the network and see what research projects members suggest. We then decide what to fund: the service is entirely free to governments.’

The real relevance of their research is a powerful attraction for many IGC members. ‘Many individual researchers in development economics and other relevant disciplines here at Oxford have a long track record of interacting with policy-makers worldwide’, says Stefan Dercon, Oxford’s Professor of Development Economics and executive committee member of the IGC. ‘The IGC allows us to build on this experience but also to make it more systematic by including an explicit demand-driven dimension: we are choosing to work on topics directly identified by prime ministers, ministers or central bankers, without the usual intermediation of international aid agencies such as the World Bank, DFID or the IMF. We don’t do this as short-term consultants, but are building long-term and coherent research programmes to provide the evidence base around key issues.’ An impressive number of countries is already consulting the IGC. Current participants are India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana and Sierra Leone; Zambia is also gearing up to join, and Professor Collier estimates that, on average, two new countries are signing up each quarter.

The IGC sets up a local office in each participating country. ‘We use permanent staff to establish a continuous presence, so we’re not just academics flying in and out’, says Professor Collier. ‘Sometimes, for example, a local economist committed to policy work is hired; on other occasions we might have an academic on a year’s sabbatical in the office, and there are also people on visiting scholarships.’

A major strength of the Centre is the way it enables academics to interact directly with government ministers and departments to develop policies. ‘I’ve worked on Ethiopia for many years, but for most of the time the work has been on rather specific, well-defined research areas related to rural development and poverty’, explains Professor Dercon. ‘The IGC is now offering the opportunity to identify the real strategic issues for development policy, and even though we have only worked as IGC for less than a year, its impact is already very tangible. In Ethiopia, the local political economy and donor aid policy has meant that surprisingly little work is done on the overarching vision for achieving growth and poverty reduction. We have been instrumental in feeding a high-level policy debate on the role of agriculture in Ethiopian development, and on the scope and place for industrial development.’

Professor Collier highlights too the authoritative nature of the expertise the IGC provides. Sir Anthony Atkinson, former Warden of Nuffield College and a distinguished economist, is investigating the situation in Tanzania. This is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a third of the population living below the poverty line. In the mid-1990s Tanzania implemented wide-ranging macroeconomic reforms and turned itself into one of the most dynamic economies in Africa. Yet despite now having healthy national indicators of economic growth, household survey data indicate that living standards seem to be stagnant. ‘It’s a real enigma’, says Professor Collier, ‘and the explanation will have huge implications for economic policy. Tony Atkinson will engage with government and discuss the limitations and implications of his research, and his reputation means that not only will he probably get the right answer, he will also be seen as getting the right answer – and that’s very important when it comes to formulating policy. Working directly with governments like this just wouldn’t have happened without the IGC.’