British development economist (born 1949)
Sir Paul Collier ,
CBE ,
FBA (born 23 April 1949) is a
British
development economist who serves as the Professor of Economics and Public Policy in the
Blavatnik School of Government and the director of the
International Growth Centre .
[2]
He currently is a Professeur invité at
Sciences Po and a Professorial Fellow of
St Antony's College, Oxford .
[3] He has served as a senior advisor to the
Blair Commission for Africa and was the Director of the Development Research Group at the
World Bank between 1998 and 2003.
[4]
Early life and education
Collier was born on 23 April 1949.
[1] Collier’s great-grandfather, Karl Hellenschmidt, was a
German immigrant to the UK. During World War I, Collier’s grandfather, Karl Hellenschmidt Jr, changed his surname from Hellenschmidt to Collier.
[5]
[6]
Collier was brought up in
Sheffield where he attended
King Edward VII School . He studied
Philosophy, politics, and economics at the
University of Oxford .
[7]
In 2010 and 2011, he was named by
Foreign Policy magazine on its list of top global thinkers.
[8]
[9]
Academic career
He was a founder of the
Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford and remained its director from 1989 until 2014. From 1998 until 2003 he was the director of the Development Research Group of the
World Bank .
Collier currently serves on the advisory board of
Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP).
Collier is a specialist in the political, economic and developmental predicaments of
low-income countries .
[10] His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war; the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural resources rich societies; urbanization in low-income countries; private investment in African infrastructure and changing organizational cultures.
In 1988 he was awarded the Edgar Graham Book Prize for the co-written Labour and poverty in rural
Tanzania :
Ujamaa and rural development in the United Republic of Tanzania .
[11]
Collier's
The Bottom Billion : Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It , has been compared to
Jeffrey Sachs 's
The End of Poverty and
William Easterly 's The White Man's Burden , two influential books, which like Collier's book, discuss the pros and cons of
development aid to developing countries.
[10]
His 2010 book The Plundered Planet
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16] is encapsulated in his formulas:
Nature – Technology + Regulation = Starvation
Nature + Technology – Regulation = Plunder
Nature + Technology + Regulation (
Good governance ) = Prosperity
The book describes itself as an attempt at a middle way between the
extremism of "Ostriches" (
denialism , particularly
climate change denial ) and "Environmental Romanticism" (for example, anti-
genetically modified organisms movements in Europe). The book is about
sustainable management in relation with the geo-
politics of global warming , with an attempt to avoid a global
tragedy of the commons , with the prime example of
overfishing . In it he builds upon a legacy of the economic psychology of
greed and fear , from early
Utilitarianism (
Jeremy Bentham ) to more recently the
Stern Review .
In 2020 he published Greed is Dead: Politics After Individualism , coauthored with
John Kay .
Honours
Collier was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the
2008 Birthday Honours
[17] and
knighted in the 2014
New Year Honours for services to promoting research and policy change in Africa.
[18]
In November 2014, Collier was awarded the
President's Medal by the
British Academy , for "his pioneering contribution in bringing ideas from research in to policy within the field of African economics."
[19] In July 2017, Collier was elected a
Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's
national academy for the humanities and social sciences.
[20]
Work
Books
Labour and Poverty in Rural Tanzania: Ujamaa and Rural Development in the United Republic of Tanzania ,
Oxford University Press , New York, 1991
ISBN
978-0198283157 .
The Bottom Billion : Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It , Oxford University Press, 2007
ISBN
9780195311457 .
[21]
Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places ,
Harper , March 2009
ISBN
978-0061479649 .
[22]
The Plundered Planet: Why We Must, and How We Can, Manage Nature for Global Prosperity ,
Oxford University Press , 2010
ISBN
978-0-19-539525-9 .
[23]
Plundered Nations?: Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction co-edited with
Anthony J. Venables ,
Palgrave Macmillan UK , 2011
ISBN
978-0-230-29022-8 .
[24]
Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World ,
Oxford University Press , October 2013
ISBN
978-0195398656 .
[25]
Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World with
Alexander Betts ,
Oxford University Press , September 2017
ISBN
978-0190659158 .
[26]
The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties ,
Allen Lane , April 2018
ISBN
978-0241333884 .
[27]
Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism with
John Kay , July 2020 978-0241467954
[28]
Selected articles
(with Anke Hoeffler) 'On economic causes of civil war' Oxford Economic Papers , vol 50 issue 4, 1998, pp. 563–573.
(with V. L. Elliott, Håvard Hegre, Anke Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, Nicholas Sambanis)
'Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy' "World Bank Policy Research Report," 2003.
(with Anke Hoeffler) 'Greed and grievance in civil war' Oxford Economic Papers , vol 56 issue 4, 2004, pp. 563–595.
(with Lisa Chauvet and Haavard Hegre) 'The Security Challenge in Conflict-Prone Countries',
Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Challenge Paper, 2008.
Video
Press
See also
References
^
a
b "Birthdays",
The Guardian , p. 33, 23 April 2014
^
"Paul Collier" . www.bsg.ox.ac.uk . Retrieved 11 May 2023 .
^
"Paul Collier" . www.bsg.ox.ac.uk . Retrieved 29 March 2019 .
^
"Paul Collier" . IGC . Retrieved 29 March 2019 .
^
"Exodus, by Paul Collier" . Financial Times . 27 October 2014.
^ Paul Collier (14 April 2015). Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World . Oxford University Press. p. 273.
ISBN
978-0-19-023148-4 .
^ Ward, Nick.
"It's hats off to a master of art!" . The
Sheffield Star . Retrieved 6 October 2009 .
^
https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,39#thinker56 December 2011
Foreign Policy
^
"Foreign Policy's Second Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy" . foreignpolicy.com . Archived from
the original on 1 December 2010.
^
a
b
"How to help the poorest: Springing the traps" .
The Economist . 2 August 2007. Retrieved 7 August 2007 .
^
"IUB Libraries: Edgar Graham Book Prize (African Studies)" .
^ Quadir, Iqbal (1 June 2010).
"Empowerment is key" . Nature . 465 (7298): 550–551.
Bibcode :
2010Natur.465..550Q .
doi :
10.1038/465550a .
^ Alex Renton (15 May 2010).
"The Plundered Planet: How to Reconcile Prosperity with Nature by Paul Collier" . the Guardian .
^ Vidal, John (8 May 2010).
"The Plundered Planet: How to Reconcile Prosperity with Nature by Paul Collier" .
The Guardian . London.
^
"The Plundered Planet" . Financial Times . 21 June 2010.
^ Low, B. S. (20 August 2010). "Sustainability and Sources of Wealth".
Science . 329 (5994): 904.
Bibcode :
2010Sci...329..904L .
doi :
10.1126/science.1193025 .
S2CID
154893918 .
^
"No. 58729" .
The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 June 2008. p. 7.
^
"No. 60728" .
The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2013. p. 1.
^
"British Academy President's Medal awarded to Paul Collier" . Social Sciences Division . University of Oxford. 28 November 2014. Archived from
the original on 15 September 2017. Retrieved 23 July 2017 .
^
"Elections to the British Academy celebrate the diversity of UK research" . British Academy . 2 July 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017 .
^
The Bottom Billion - Hardcover - Paul Collier - Oxford University Press . Global.oup.com. 25 May 2007.
ISBN
978-0-19-531145-7 . Retrieved 25 November 2021 .
^
"Wars, Guns, and Votes – HarperCollins" .
^
The Plundered Planet - Hardcover - Paul Collier - Oxford University Press . Global.oup.com. 11 May 2010.
ISBN
978-0-19-539525-9 . Retrieved 25 November 2021 .
^
"Plundered Nations? - Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction | Paul Collier | Palgrave Macmillan" . www.palgrave.com . Archived from
the original on 8 October 2018.
^
"Exodus: How migration is changing our world. By Paul Collier. | Migration Studies | Oxford Academic" . Academic.oup.com. 28 October 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2021 .
^
Refuge - Paul Collier; Alexander Betts - Oxford University Press . Global.oup.com. 6 September 2017.
ISBN
978-0-19-065915-8 . Retrieved 25 November 2021 .
^
"The Future of Capitalism" . www.penguin.co.uk . Archived from
the original on 20 February 2020.
^
"Greed Is Dead" . www.penguin.co.uk . Archived from
the original on 6 August 2020.
External links
International National Academics People Other