Growth Lab Podcast Series

In this episode of the South Africa Growth Through Inclusion series, Ketan Ahuja, Research Fellow at the Growth Lab, joins Joanne Bate, Chief Operating Officer of South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation, for a discussion on how South Africa can build new engines of economic growth in green industries and how it can use its unique capabilities to help the world decarbonize and develop its economy.

In this episode of the South Africa Growth Through Inclusion series, Alexia Lochmann, Research Fellow at the Growth Lab, speaks with Carel Kleynhans, CEO of Divercity Property Group. Divercity is South Africa's leading investor in well located affordable housing precincts. Carel worked closely with the Growth Lab during its two year research engagement in South Africa and has been instrumental to the teams understanding of post apartheid urban planning, housing policy and patterns of spatial exclusion.

In this episode of the South Africa Growth Through Inclusion series, Chris Yelland, a Johannesburg based energy analyst, engineer and the founder and Managing Director of e-Business Intelligence talks with former Growth Lab Research Manager Kishan Shah. The conversation focuses on the electricity crisis and strategic issues facing electricity and energy sectors in South Africa. Chris has been an expert and a key observer of energy markets for the past several decades and is a frequent commenter and writer on the electricity crisis in the country.

In this episode of the South Africa Growth Though Inclusion series, Tim O'Brien, Senior Manager of Applied Research at the Growth Lab, speaks with Nomvuyo Guma, Chief Director of Microeconomic Policy at the National Treasury and Saul Musker, Director of Strategy and Delivery Support of the private office of the President of South Africa. The discussion centers on Operation Vulindlela - a joint initiative of the presidency and the National Treasury. Operation Vulindlela has been at work for about three years, focusing on many areas that the Growth Lab has found are most critical to growth and inclusion in South Africa: electricity, water, transport, digital communications and the visa regime.

In this introductory episode, Ricardo Hausmann, the founder and Director of Harvard's Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School and Andres Fortunato, Research Fellow at the Growth Lab, discuss the key takeaways of their two year research engagement in South Africa.

In this Development Talk seminar, Suman Bery discusses his optimism for India's future growth, whether the energy transition complicates India's growth trajectory, the potential sources of capital for India's energy transition, how to jump start private sector investment in green energy, and how India's engagement with industrial policy should look like moving forward.

Speaker: Suman Bery, Vice Chairperson, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog

Moderators:

Ricardo Hausmann, Director, Growth Lab, and Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy, HKS

Akshay Mathur, Edward S. Mason Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

About the speaker:

Mr. Suman Bery is currently Vice Chairperson, NITI Aayog, in the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister. An experienced policy economist and research administrator, Mr. Bery took over as NITI Aayog Vice Chairperson on May 1, 2022. At the time of his appointment, Mr. Bery was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi; a Global Fellow in the Asia Programme of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington D.C.; and a non-resident fellow at Bruegel, an economic policy research institution in Brussels. He was also a member of the Board of the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, New Delhi.

From early 2012 till mid-2016, Mr. Bery was Royal Dutch Shell’s global Chief Economist based in The Hague. In this capacity, he advised the board and management on global economic and political developments. He was also part of the senior leadership of Shell’s global scenarios group. During his time at Shell, he led a collaborative project with Indian think tanks (later published) to apply scenario modeling to India's energy sector.

Speaker: Mamo Mihretu, Governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia, HKS MPA 2009

The Growth Lab worked closely with Mr. Mihretu during our three-year policy engagement in Ethiopia, a country that has established a fragile peace after a devastating civil war. We have studied macroeconomic challenges that the government is trying to address to enable a sustainable post-war recovery.

In this talk, Mr. Mihretu discusses the economic reform program currently being implemented in Ethiopia, the challenges they are facing, future prospects and some lessons learned in policymaking.

Speaker: Alain Bertaud, Senior Fellow, New York University's Marron Institute of Urban Management; Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University.

Moderator: Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

The discussion revolves around Alain's recent book, "Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities," where he argues operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure.

The Growth Lab's Development Talks is a series of conversations with policymakers and academics working in international development. The seminar provides a platform for practitioners and researchers to discuss both the practice of development and analytical work centered on policy.

Speaker: Stefan Dercon, Professor of Economic Policy, Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government

Moderator: Clement Brenot, Research Manager, Growth Lab

Prof. Dercon's latest book, Gambling on Development: Why some countries win and others lose draws on his academic research as well as his policy experience across three decades and 40-odd countries, exploring why some countries have managed to settle on elite bargains favoring growth and development, and others did not.

The Growth Lab has been engaged in an applied research project with the country of Albania since 2013. In this time, we have conducted research on numerous, diverse workstreams related to stimulating economic growth in the country.

During this research engagement, our team worked directly with policymakers to help build their capabilities so they can better design and implement policy reforms. In this podcast episode, Growth Lab researchers Jessie Lu and Ermal Frasheri discuss the importance of growth reforms for the Albanian economy, the specific reform initiatives that the government has been engaged in during recent years, and the impact of COVID-19 on the implementation of these reforms.