2024 Pathways to Development Conference

The conference will showcase the work of local and international scholars on the various dimensions of inequalities located within broader thematic areas such as public health, climate change, labour markets, education, political economy, gender and others. The Conference will also showcase findings from various IGC research projects.

Effective governance structures serve as the cornerstone for shaping policies, regulations, and institutions that drive societal progress, all of which are critical for sustainable development. True development requires that progress and its dividends are accessible to all, beyond economic, social, and political inequalities. However, in the contemporary landscape, democracies globally are grappling with growing polarization and democratic backsliding, which threaten these very foundations.

Call for papers: Recognizing the urgency of strengthening governance systems in the face of rising inequalities and social fragmentation, the upcoming Pathways to Development Conference 2024 is issuing a Call for Papers for work on governance and inclusion in economics, sociology, politics and political economy. Work on multiple dimensions of inclusion may be located within various thematic areas including democratic governance, institutional reforms, social inclusion, service delivery, digital governance, global governance, or broader areas such as public health, the labour market, education, gender, climate change, political movements and participation, urban development and others. Through an examination of the dynamics of governance and inclusion, the Pathways to Development Conference 2024 seeks to unravel the complexities inherent in building resilient, inclusive societies.

Keynote speakers

Lantt Pritchett (Visiting Professor of Practice, London School of Economics, School of Public Policy)

Lant Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. He graduated from BYU in 1983 and received his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1988. He worked for the World Bank from 1988-2007, living in Indonesia 1998-2000 and India 2004-2007. He taught at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2000-2019, and was, intermittently, the Faculty Chair of the MPA/ID Degree program. From 2018-2023, he was the Research Director of the RISE Programme at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. Having now thrice retired, he is currently a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics in the School of Public Policy and the co-founder and Research Director of Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP). He has published over a hundred works with over fifty co-authors. His work spans a range of development topics including: economic growth, state capability, basic education, labour mobility, development assistance (and more). His work has been, at times, influential, and his publications have been cited over 50,000 times.

Mazhar Waseem (Professor of Economics, University of Manchester)

Mazhar Waseem's research primarily focuses on public finance issues in emerging economies, particularly on the behaviour of economic agents in response to tax and transfer policies. The main aim of the research is to understand how, given these behavioural responses and the weak enforcement environment of emerging economies, the design of tax policy can be improved. He holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. He is a Research Associate at the Institute of Fiscal Studies, a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and a Research Network Fellow of CESifo. Before beginning his PhD, he worked for Pakistan’s revenue authority for more than ten years.

The conference is jointly organised by the following institutional partners: Institute of Development & Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), Chaudhry Nazar Muhammad Department of Economics at LUMS, Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre (MHRC), Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (IDS), Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR), International Growth Centre (IGC), and Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP).

For queries, please write to Alishbah Khwaja at [email protected].