Stefan Dercon Interviewed by Ian Goldin

Economist and government adviser Professor Stefan Dercon looks at why some countries have prospered in recent decades and why others have failed.

Dercon has spent decades visiting developing countries and talking to prime ministers, civil servants and ordinary people in his quest to find out what brings success. He argues that a set of policies does not lie behind the difference but rather a ‘development bargain’ in which a country’s elites switch from protecting their own position to espousing a growth-based future. He says this is behind the success of countries such as China, Bangladesh, Ghana and Ethiopia.

Dercon is professor of economic policy and director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford. He is a former Department for International Development chief economist and a policy advisor to the UK foreign secretary. Here he talks to Professor Ian Goldin, professor of globalisation and development at the University of Oxford and a former vice-president of the World Bank.