Professor Carol Newman, Professor of Economics, will deliver her Inaugural Lecture entitled ‘Against the headwinds: Evidence-based development in a turbulent world’.
Date: Tuesday 20 May 2025
Time: 18.15 to 19.15
Location: Robert Emmet Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin.
Please click here or on the image below to register your attendance. This event is free and open to the public.
Against the headwinds: Evidence-based development in a turbulent world
The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda sets out 17 Global Goals that aim to end poverty, reduce inequality, protect the planet, and promote peace and prosperity for all. As the world edges closer to the 2030 target, progress is faltering. Global poverty reduction has stalled, climate shocks are accelerating, and development budgets are shrinking. Rising geopolitical tensions are further undermining international cooperation and trust. In this turbulent context, making sound policy choices has become both more difficult and more urgent, particularly for low- and middle-income countries facing multiple, overlapping crises.
In this inaugural lecture, Professor Carol Newman demonstrates how rigorous, policy-engaged research, grounded in robust empirical evidence, serves as a critical tool for navigating these headwinds. Drawing on field experiments and firm-level analyses from sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, she examines how targeted interventions, coupled with evidence-based policies to improve firm productivity, job creation and stimulate economic growth, can contribute to inclusive and sustainable development. She presents findings from studies on firm productivity and trade integration, as well as from randomized controlled trials addressing agricultural information gaps, behavioural training for workers, and economic inclusion for refugees and vulnerable women. These cases offer insights into what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Professor Newman argues not only for better-targeted policies, but for embedding a culture of evidence in the development process. In a world of rising constraints and contested priorities, sustainable development depends on the ability to test, adapt, and scale effective interventions, and on grounding policy frameworks in robust evidence.
BIO
Carol Newman is Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin. An internationally recognised expert in development economics, her research explores the microeconomic foundations of development, focusing on how constraints, such as limited access to markets, finance, or information, affect individual and firm behaviour, and how targeted policies can alleviate these barriers. Her work contributes to building a strong evidence base for development policy.
She is co-founder of the Trinity Impact Evaluation (TIME) Research Centre and has led research projects across sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. Her research includes randomized controlled trials of policy interventions, as well as work on labour markets, firm dynamics, and industrial policy. She is currently a lead researcher on South Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED), a major research programme using tax administrative data to examine the drivers of job creation and productivity growth. She has published widely in leading academic journals, books, and edited volumes, and is currently Associate Editor of the European Economic Review.
She joined Trinity in 2002 and has held visiting positions at the University of Copenhagen, the University of Chicago, and the University of Bologna. She is Chair of the Board of Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP), a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University - World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and a consultant to the World Bank. She serves as an International Resource Person for the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) and since 2023 has chaired Ireland’s National Economic Dialogue.