11 Dec 08

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander MP has launched a new centre, to be led by the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics (LSE), to provide practical help to promote economic growth in developing countries.

The Department for International Development (DFID) will provide £37million over the next three years to fund the new International Growth Centre. At the launch at the LSE on 10 December, Mr Alexander described the Centre as a ‘global brains trust’, which could improve the ability of developing countries to cope with effects of the economic downturn and provide innovative research on growth.

Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander, said: ‘As the economic climate threatens to force people into poverty, we need even greater political leadership than we have seen in the last decade to ensure that the progress we have made is not reversed. We need a coordinated global response to this crisis to ensure that the next few years do not become the “lost years” in the global fight against poverty.’

As well as commissioning and conducting research, the Oxford-LSE hub will seek to create a global network of experts by forging partnerships with individuals, networks and institutions from all over the world. The IGC, together with its partners, will be a unique resource providing a ‘hotline’ to the advice from world experts for developing countries that need practical support on issues, such as finance, agricultural yields, the energy sector or policies for the economy as a whole.

The Co-Directors of the IGC are Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford and Robin Burgess, Professor of Economics at the LSE. Africa has been an important focus for Professor Collier who for more than a decade has directed the Oxford Centre for the Study of African Economies. Professor Collier wrote the internationally acclaimed book The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it, which won the 2008 Lionel Gelber, Arthur Ross and Corine Prizes. 

Professor Collier said: ‘For me the IGC is the realisation of a long held aspiration to put good quality research at the disposal of governments that face the most difficult development challenges on earth. Oxford and LSE already have a successful record of research partnership and the IGC will allow us to build on that relationship even further, not only sustaining our work but also giving us scope to scale up.’

Professor Robin Burgess said: ‘The IGC will leverage frontier research into concrete policies to promote and sustain growth in the developing world. It is a radically different approach from past efforts. Never before have two of the leading economics departments in the UK offered the services of their best economists to bring research into policy.’

The International Growth Centre will include some of the world’s biggest names in economics: IGC Executive Director is Gobind Nankani, who has extensive experience in the global development policy community; from the LSE, Lord Stern and Professor Tim Besley – also a member of the UK’s Monetary Policy Committee; from Stanford in the US, the Nobel Laureate Mike Spence, and from Harvard the former Chief Economist of the IMF, Kenneth Rogoff.

Stefan Dercon, Oxford’s Professor of Development Economics at the Department of International Development, will also be leading research to be carried out by the IGC. Professor Dercon takes a microeconomic approach to understand the opportunities for and constraints on wealth creation, examining some of the poorest countries in Africa.