Two Newly Appointed TCD Professors of International Development give Inaugural Lectures
Posted on: 04 April 2008
Professor of International Financial Economics and Development Patrick Honohan Speaks on ‘Money Matters for Poor Countries’
Professor of International Business and Development Frank Barry Speaks on ‘What Lessons for Africa from Irish Development?’
Dublin, April, 3, 2008 -Two newly appointed Professors of International Development at Trinity College Dublin gave their inaugural lectures today (Thursday, April 3rd). The event was chaired by the CEO of Concern, Tom Arnold.
In his lecture entitled ‘Money Matters for Poor Countries,’ Professor of International Financial Economics and Development, Patrick Honohan (School of Social Sciences and Philosophy) drew on research and experience of financial systems on six continents and talked about the policy trade-offs needed in developing countries to ensure that their financial systems work for the poor:
“Financial mishaps are both symptoms and causes of economic distress in developing countries. Getting things wrong can result in spectacular failures, whether it is hyperinflation (such as the 100,000 per cent plus recorded in Zimbabwe in the past year); or banking collapses – the cost of which in developing countries has exceeded the total transfer of development aid from North to South since the Second World War”.
“Less visibly, dysfunctional financial systems often serve to protect incumbent elites from the emergence of competition from disadvantaged entrepreneurs. And fewer than 20% of Africans, for example, have access to the formal financial system for saving, let alone credit. In contrast, an effective financial system can boost growth and lower poverty.”
In his lecture entitled, ‘What Lessons for Africa from Irish Development?’, Professor of International Business and Development, Frank Barry (School of Business Studies) provided political-economic analyses of major Irish policy reforms:
“Over the long term, liberal democracy and competitive capitalism – which limit the power of the state and minimise the potential for corruption – are the institutional forms that offer the greatest potential for economic development. Authoritarian regimes can occasionally stumble on the keys to economic growth but the subsequent strengthening of the middle classes leads almost invariably to the emergence of liberal democracy. Inadequate attention was paid to these institutional factors in the ‘Washington Consensus’ package of reforms advocated by the World Bank and IMF over recent decades”.
“The sequencing of policy reforms was also frequently mishandled, with insufficient attention paid to the need to develop political pro-reform constituencies. What light can the Irish experience shed on these processes? The Irish land reforms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries expanded and strengthened the middle classes and helped ensure that Ireland remained a liberal democracy after independence. The export profits tax relief measures introduced in 1956 (the forerunner of Ireland’s low corporation-tax regime) expanded the constituency for the trade liberalisation of the 1960s without immediately threatening established interest groups”.
His paper provided similar political-economy analyses of the educational revolution of the 1960s and 70s, of the restoration of fiscal stability in the late 1980s and of the other factors deemed to have been important in the rapid economic growth of the last two decades. It also discussed the institutions that have been developed to overcome the dilemma raised by Garret FitzGerald that “democratic national governments tend to be subject to such strong pressure from vested interests within their own territories that many of their decisions operate against the interests of society as a whole”.
Ends
Notes to the Editor:
1.The TCD Inaugural Lectures:
The purpose of these inaugural lectures is to celebrate the appointment of two new Professors of International Development at Trinity College Dublin, Professor of International Financial Economics and Development Patrick Honohan and Professor of International Business and Development Frank Barry. The new professorships underline Trinity’s growing contribution to understanding the challenges of growth and poverty reduction in developing countries.
2. Biographies
Frank Barry is Professor of International Business and Development at Trinity College, Dublin. He previously held an Associate Professorship in Economics at UCD. He has served as an economic consultant for the World Bank, the European Commission, the Harvard Institute for International Development and other international agencies. His main research over the last decade has been in the area of foreign direct investment. He holds a PhD in Economics from Queen’s University, Ontario, and has held visiting appointments at the University of California, the University of Stockholm and the University of New South Wales.
Patrick Honohan is Professor of International Financial Economics and Development at Trinity College, Dublin. Previously he was a Senior Advisor in the World Bank working on issues of financial policy reform. During the 1980s he was Economic Advisor to the Taoiseach and spent several years at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and at the Central Bank of Ireland. A graduate of UCD and of the London School of Economics, from which he received his PhD in 1978, Dr. Honohan has published widely on issues ranging from exchange rate regimes and purchasing-power parity, to migration, cost-benefit analysis and statistical methodology.