News
Press release - AL 14

(New York) Professor José Antonio Ocampo will deliver the United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) Annual Lecture 14 on 9 December 2010, 10.30-12.00, at the United Nations Headquarters, ECOSOC Chamber, New York.

The lecture titled ‘Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Architecture’ is arranged in collaboration with United Nations University Office in New York (UNU-ONY).

Amidst still unsettled financial times, international monetary and financial system reforms are at the centre of global debate. Professor Ocampo will look at the reform agenda from developing countries’ perspective. He will discuss how global governance must design a system that not only provides the global public goods necessary to guarantee global macroeconomic financial stability and balanced growth, but also ends the disadvantages that developing countries presently face.

Professor Finn Tarp, UNU-WIDER Director, said: ‘The WIDER Annual Lecture is among the most important events on the Institute’s calendar and is delivered by an eminent scholar every year. We are honoured that Professor Ocampo will be speaking on such a timely and relevant subject at Annual Lecture 14. In our effort to reach out to a broader audience of policy makers and researchers we are now organizing the annual lecture at venues other than in Finland, where UNU-WIDER is located.’

José Antonio Ocampo is Professor and Director at the Economic and Political Development Program of the School of International and Public Affairs, and Fellow of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He has occupied numerous positions within the UN, including Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Co-Director of the UNDP-OAS project ‘Agenda for a Citizens’ Democracy in Latin America’, and Member of the Commission of Experts of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.

He has received numerous distinctions, including the 2008 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, and the 1988 Alejandro Angel Escobar National Science Award of Colombia. His latest books are Growth and Policy in Developing Countries: A Structuralist Approach, with Lance Taylor and Codrina Rada (2009); and Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis, edited with Stephany Griffith-Jones and Joseph E. Stiglitz (2010). Professor Ocampo is from Colombia, and holds a PhD in economics from Yale University.