Sir Paul Collier | |
---|---|
Born | Paul Collier 23 April 1949 [1] |
Nationality | British |
Academic career | |
Institution | Blavatnik School of Government, International Growth Centre, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford |
Field | Development economics |
Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Sir Paul Collier, CBE , FBA (born 23 April 1949) is a British development economist who serves as the Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the director of the International Growth Centre. [2]
He currently is a Professeur invité at Sciences Po and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. [3] He has served as a senior advisor to the Blair Commission for Africa and was the Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank between 1998 and 2003. [4]
Collier was born on 23 April 1949. [1] Collier’s great-grandfather, Karl Hellenschmidt, was a German immigrant to the UK. During World War I, Collier’s grandfather, Karl Hellenschmidt Jr, changed his surname from Hellenschmidt to Collier. [5] [6]
Collier was brought up in Sheffield where he attended King Edward VII School. He studied Philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford. [7]
In 2010 and 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine on its list of top global thinkers. [8] [9]
He was a founder of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford and remained its director from 1989 until 2014. From 1998 until 2003 he was the director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank.
Collier currently serves on the advisory board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP).
Collier is a specialist in the political, economic and developmental predicaments of low-income countries. [10] His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war; the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural resources rich societies; urbanization in low-income countries; private investment in African infrastructure and changing organizational cultures.
In 1988 he was awarded the Edgar Graham Book Prize for the co-written Labour and poverty in rural Tanzania: Ujamaa and rural development in the United Republic of Tanzania. [11]
Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, has been compared to Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty and William Easterly's The White Man's Burden, two influential books, which like Collier's book, discuss the pros and cons of development aid to developing countries. [10]
His 2010 book The Plundered Planet [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] is encapsulated in his formulas:
The book describes itself as an attempt at a middle way between the extremism of "Ostriches" (denialism, particularly climate change denial) and "Environmental Romanticism" (for example, anti-genetically modified organisms movements in Europe). The book is about sustainable management in relation with the geo-politics of global warming, with an attempt to avoid a global tragedy of the commons, with the prime example of overfishing. In it he builds upon a legacy of the economic psychology of greed and fear, from early Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham) to more recently the Stern Review.
In 2020 he published Greed is Dead: Politics After Individualism, coauthored with John Kay.
Collier was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours [17] and knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to promoting research and policy change in Africa. [18]
In November 2014, Collier was awarded the President's Medal by the British Academy, for "his pioneering contribution in bringing ideas from research in to policy within the field of African economics." [19] In July 2017, Collier was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [20]
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same state . The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies. The term is a calque of Latin bellum civile which was used to refer to the various civil wars of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.
Population is the term typically used to refer to the number of people in a single area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the size of a resident population within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and plants, and has specific uses within such fields as ecology and genetics.
Development economics is a branch of economics that deals with economic aspects of the development process in low- and middle- income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic development, economic growth and structural change but also on improving the potential for the mass of the population, for example, through health, education and workplace conditions, whether through public or private channels.
Economic inequality is an umbrella term for a) income inequality or distribution of income, b) wealth inequality or distribution of wealth, and c) consumption inequality. Each of these can be measured between two or more nations, within a single nation, or between and within sub-populations.
Rebellion is a violent uprising against one's government. A rebel is a person who engages in a rebellion. A rebel group is a consciously coordinated group that seeks to gain political control over an entire state or a portion of a state.
In international relations, aid is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another.
An international non-governmental organization (INGO) is an organization which is independent of government involvement and extends the concept of a non-governmental organization (NGO) to an international scope.
Human overpopulation describes a concern that human populations may become too large to be sustained by their environment or resources in the long term. The topic is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may concern individual nations, regions, and cities.
Ann Pettifor is a British economist who advises governments and organisations. She has published several books. Her work focuses on the global financial system, sovereign debt restructuring, international finance and sustainable development. Pettifor is best known for correctly predicting the financial crisis of 2007–08. She was one of the leaders of the Jubilee 2000 debt cancellation campaign.
Ian Andrew Goldin is a South African-born British professor at the University of Oxford in England, and was the founding director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford.
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It is a 2007 book by Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford University, exploring the reasons why impoverished countries fail to progress despite international aid and support. In the book Collier argues that there are many countries whose residents have experienced little, if any, income growth over the 1980s and 1990s. On his reckoning, there are just under 60 such economies, home to almost 1 billion people.
Ngaire Tui Woods CBE is the founding dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and professor of Global Economic Governance at the University of Oxford, formerly a professor at Harvard University. She founded the Global Economic Governance Programme and is the co-founder of the Oxford–Princeton Global Leaders Fellowship programme.
The phrase "greed versus grievance" or "greed and grievance" refers to the two baseline arguments put forward by scholars of armed conflict on the causes of civil war, though the argument has been extended to other forms of war, such as violent conflict in general, rebellion and insurgency, for example.
The Blavatnik School of Government is a school of public policy founded in 2010 at the University of Oxford in England. The School was founded following a £75 million donation from a business magnate Len Blavatnik, supported by £26 million from the University of Oxford. It is part of Oxford's Social Sciences Division, which aims to train current and future leaders in the practice of government.
The New Bottom Billion refers to the 960 million or so poor people who live in Middle Income Countries (MICs). Based on research by Andy Sumner, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, the New Bottom Billion raises serious questions about Paul Collier’s original Bottom Billion thesis, particularly in relation to its claims regarding the geographical distribution of global poverty. While Collier argued that the Bottom Billion are to be found in the poorest 60 or so economies, Sumner's research shows that the majority of the world's poor actually live in MICs such as China, India, Nigeria and Indonesia. The New Bottom Billion therefore suggests that poverty is not just a Low Income Country (LIC) problem, and that further policy discussions are called for.
Political violence is violence which is perpetrated in order to achieve political goals. It can include violence which is used by a state against other states (war), violence which is used by a state against civilians and non-state actors, and violence which is used by violent non-state actors against states and civilians. It can also describe politically motivated violence which is used by violent non-state actors against a state or it can describe violence which is used against other non-state actors and/or civilians. Non-action on the part of a government can also be characterized as a form of political violence, such as refusing to alleviate famine or otherwise denying resources to politically identifiable groups within their territory.
Sir Dieter Robin Helm is a British economist and academic.
The India Observatory (IO) is a research unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Sustainable population refers to a proposed sustainable human population of Earth or a particular region of Earth, such as a nation or continent. Estimates vary widely, with estimates based on different figures ranging from 0.65 billion people to 9.8 billion, with 8 billion people being a typical estimate. Projections of population growth, evaluations of overconsumption and associated human pressures on the environment have led to some to advocate for what they consider a sustainable population. Proposed policy solutions vary, including sustainable development, female education, family planning and broad human population planning.
Anke Hoeffler is a German economist and political scientist who is known for her work on social causes of morbidity and mortality.