An initiative of the Department of International Economics, with the support of CFD and ICMB
This spring the Graduate Institute, with the support of the Center for Finance and Development (CFD) and the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB), offered a course “Economic Policy in Developing and Emerging Countries: A Practitioners’ View”.
The course is taught by a group of ten Graduate Institute alumni who now hold senior positions in the private sector or international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the OECD.
The course emphasises the links between academic training and policy applications, and is fully in line with the mission of the Department of International Economics of providing training on the application of sound economic analysis and advanced quantitative techniques to address real-world policy issues.
The course, which was piloted at the Institute in 2012, is the brainchild of Institute alumna Corinne Deléchat, who also coordinates the sessions with fellow alumni.
The fact that ten professionals were able to carve out a week from their busy schedules to teach at the Institute is witnesses to the strong ties between the Institute and its alumni community.
The course covered the macroeconomic impact of aid (Corinne Deléchat, IMF), private capital flows to emerging and developing economies (Anne-Marie Gulde, IMF), natural resource management (Jaroslaw Wieczorek, IMF), fuel subsidy reforms (Raju Singh, World Bank), investing in frontier markets (Aurélie Martin, Autonomy Capital Research), public finance in developing and emerging countries (Pirita Sorsa, OECD), service trade and global value chains (Sherry Stephenson, ICTSD), monetary policy in emerging economies (Thomas Helbling, IMF), external imbalances (Luca Ricci, IMF), and sovereign debt (Paul Mathieu, IMF).
The course was complemented by two public lectures and a presentation at the Economics Department's weekly research seminar.
The alumni also made time to meet with students outside of class, giving them an opportunity to discuss their own areas of interest or specific questions about working in economics.