ISSUE 45: MARCH-MAY 2007
network of research and training centres/programmes
FRONT PAGE | ARCHIVE |
Top UN Official to inaugurate Maastricht policy seminar series
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José Antonio Ocampo (right), United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, José Antonio Ocampo,0 will inaugurate the new UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research and Training Centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT)/Maastricht School of Governance joint seminar series April 17.
The lecture at Maastricht University will be the first of a monthly series that seeks to bridge the academic and policy dimensions of key global issues in the area of technological development, innovation, international policy and governance.
Professor Ocampo has vast experience as an academic and policymaker at national, regional and international level. He previously headed the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and has served both as a government minister and Director of the Foundation for Higher Education and Development in Colombia, in addition to holding professorships at leading universities in South America, the United States and Britain.
The starting point for the seminar is the observation that the rich and diverse analytical insights that have been garnered in the field of development economics have so far not been matched in the policy design sphere where “…the triumph of liberal economics is the dominant rule.”
In his book Beyond Reforms: Structural Dynamics and Macroeconomic Vulnerability (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, World Bank and ECLAC, 2005) Ocampo writes: “After an era marked by strong state intervention and protectionism, it was expected that less interventionist, open economies would provide the basis for rapid growth in the developing world. These expectations have been largely frustrated so far. Latin America represents, in this regard, an outstanding example of a region where the record of economic liberalization has not only been disappointing, but indeed has been considerably poorer than that of state-led (or import-substitution) industrialization.”
Ocampo concludes that the key to rapid growth in the developing world is a combination of strategies aimed at the dynamic transformation of production structures with appropriate macroeconomic conditions and stability, in the broad sense of the latter term; to improve the distributive effects of growth, such a strategy should be supplemented with policies aimed at reducing the structural heterogeneity of production structures.
© 2007 United Nations University