Celebrating Interdisciplinary Development Research and Policy Engagement with the Annual Paul Streeten Distinguished Lecture

By Maureen Heydt

On Wednesday, March 23, the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the Institute for Economic Development and the Department of Economics will host the third Paul Streeten Distinguished Lecture in Global Development Policy. The 2022 Distinguished Speaker is Dani Rodrik, renowned economist and Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Rodrik is an economist whose research revolves around globalization, economic growth and development and political economy. His current work focuses on how to create more inclusive economies, in developed and developing societies.

The theme of Rodrik’s talk is “The Future of Development Strategy,” wherein he will discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed some of the crucial gains made in economic development and poverty reduction in recent decades. But Rodrik will argue that even prior to the pandemic, there were signs that the golden age of economic development was coming to an end, as the export-oriented industrialization model begun running out of steam. As a result, it is unlikely low-income countries will be able to return to the accelerated development paths they were previously on. According to Rodrik, new models of development will need to be considered, models that perhaps place less emphasis on promoting trade and industrialization and more emphasis on creating decent jobs and building a domestic middle class.

The annual Paul Streeten Distinguished Lecture in Global Development Policy celebrates the example and legacy of Boston University Professor Paul Streeten as an eminent economist and interdisciplinary scholar, who had a significant impact on global development policy. The joint sponsorship of this lecture by the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the Institute for Economic Development and the Department of Economics reflects the breadth and depth of Professor Streeten’s engagement at Boston University during his years as Professor of Economics and Director of the World Development Institute.

The lecture series has three goals. First and foremost, it honors the impact and legacy of Paul Streeten’s scholarship and policy engagement. Second, the lectureship seeks to shine a light on scholars working in the ‘Streeten tradition’ of pursuing rigorous scientific research while connecting with other disciplines and the policy community to advance financial stability, human well-being, good governance and environmental sustainability across the world. Third, the lectureship hopes to inspire scholars to pursue interdisciplinary research on pressing development problems and thereafter engage actively with the policy community.

In 2021, Ann E. Harrison, an economist and Dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, presented on the role of industrial policy in global development, citing evidence from China and India. Relying on history and economics, Dr. Harrison summarized the state of the literature on the effective role of the state in promoting innovation and growth and discussed how states can strike ‘the right balance’ between free markets and state support.

The inaugural Streeten address was presented in 2019 by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor at Columbia University. During his address, Dr. Stiglitz focused on the importance of multilateralism for development, arguing the world was currently confronting “an unraveling of multilateralism,” which was sure to worsen outcomes and global coordination on addressing major development issues like climate change and global health. His remarks seem especially prescient considering the global coordination challenges in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly with climate change.

Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, no Streeten lecture was held in 2020.

The lectureship seeks to honor Professor Streeten’s rigorous scholarship, inter-disciplinarity and policy involvement. He made significant contributions to the economic theory of industry and trade with articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economic Studies, The Journal of International Economics and The American Economic Review. Professor Streeten also founded the journal of World Development, which has become the world’s leading interdisciplinary journal in development studies. His groundbreaking scholarly books, such as First Things First: Meeting Basic Human Needs in the Developing Countries (Oxford University Press) and Thinking About Development (Cambridge University Press), dealt with broad and important development questions.

Professor Streeten’s scholarly research and direct engagement with development policy made substantial contributions to the policy discourse on global development. He served as Deputy Director General of the Economic Planning Staff of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Overseas Development; then as senior adviser to the World Bank where he helped formulate the Bank’s policies on basic needs during the 1970s; and with his scholarly work which laid the foundations of what became the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI), emphasizing and quantifying the importance of education and human health as essential components of the development process. During the 1990s, he also provided major inputs into the UNDP’s Human Development Report and UNESCO’s World Culture Report.