Network Angle: News from our Network


In the news this month, Kaushik Basu was appointed Chief Economist of the World Bank. Justin Yifu Lin founder and first director of the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) and Tilman Brück to Lead SIPRI in Stockholm

The recent announcement by the World Bank that Professor Kaushik Basu of Cornell University is to be its next chief economist and senior vice president was warmly received at UNU-WIDER. Professor Basu recently served as Chief Economic Adviser of the Government of India, Ministry of Finance, while on leave from his position as Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University.

Kaushik Basu gave the WIDER Annual Lecture in 2003 on the topic of 'Global Labour Standards and Local Freedoms'. His association with UNU-WIDER goes back to our very earliest years in the 1980s when he published a series of UNU-WIDER working papers on globalization and poverty, international debt, surplus labour, share tenancy, and land tenure.

Kaushik Basu succeeds Professor Justin Yifu Lin as the World Bank’s chief economist and senior vice president. Professor Lin gave the WIDER annual lecture in 2011, entitled ‘From Flying Geese to Leading Dragons: New Opportunities and Strategies for Structural Transformation in Developing Countries’. Justin Lin is the founder and first director of the China Centre for Economic Research (CCER) a major recent initiative at Peking University. In addition to giving the WIDER annual lecture (in Mozambique, the first time it has been held in Africa), Justin Lin participated in UNU-WIDER’s projects on poverty and income distribution, contributing several working papers on economic reform, income distribution and poverty.

It is also with great pleasure that Angle notes the appointment of Professor Tilman Brück as the new director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. Professor Brück will assume his post on 1 January 2013 and, at 42, will be the youngest director in SIPRI’s history. He is currently Professor of Development Economics at Humboldt University in Berlin and Head of the Department of Development and Security at the German Institute for Economic Research.

Tilman Brück has been actively engaged with UNU-WIDER in our projects and conferences around issues of conflict and development. These include the book Making Peace Work: The Challenges of Social and Economic Reconstruction, co-edited with Tony Addison, Deputy Director-Chief Economist of UNU-WIDER. His other UNU-WIDER publications include the journal special issue Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Violent Conflict in Developing Countries, with Wim Naudé (formerly of UNU-WIDER, and now a professor at the Maastricht School of Management and UNU-MERIT), and Philip Verwimp and a working paper with Kati Schindler on ‘The Impact of Conflict and Fragility on Households: A Conceptual Framework with Reference to Widows’.

Our best wishes to Kaushik, Justin, and Tilman in their new roles.