October 14-15, 2014
The World Bank Group | Preston Auditorium | 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC | USA
Day 1 | Tuesday, October 14
Breakfast and Registration (8:30am – 9:00am)
Opening Keynote: Bertrand Badré, Managing Director and WBG Chief Financial Officer
9:00am – 9:10am
Welcoming Remarks: Anabel Gonzalez, Senior Director, Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice
9:15am – 9:25am
Keynote: Dani Rodrik, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
9:30am – 10:10am
Panel 1 – Measuring the Impact of the New Growth Strategies (10:15am – 11:30am)
Speakers
Andreu Mas-Collel (Minister for Economy and Knowledge, Catalonia Government, Spain), Dani Rodrik
(Institute of Advanced Studies), Philippe Aghion (Harvard University)
Moderator Ivan Rossignol (Chief Technical Specialist, Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice, WBG)
In many places, five to ten years have passed since the push for new growth strategies began. Given that
Themes
these strategies often start with a range of coordinated actions (in a sub-jurisdiction ‘enclave’), with the
hope to catalyze – indirectly – wider growth, they create serious methodological and substantive issues in
defining and measuring their impact. How do they fit into, or reshape, traditional growth theory? Based
on that, how can we adequately assess whether they are succeeding or failing? What are the implications,
for theory and practice?
Panel 2 – Institutional Means to Support New Growth Strategies (11:45am – 1pm)
Speakers
Dato' Sri Idris Jala (Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and CEO of Performance Management
& Delivery Unit (Pemandu), Malaysia), Arun Maira (Former Member for Industry, Planning Commission,
Government of India, and Founder, India Backbone Implementation Network – IbIn), Christian Ketels
(Harvard University), Charles Sabel (Columbia University)
Moderator Pierre Jacquet (President, Global Development Network)
If traditional institutions struggled with ‘old’ industrial policy, in an era of less volatile and uncertain
Themes
markets, they are liable to be wholly inadequate to new growth strategies. New institutions thus need to
be developed, which will require new concepts, and may be demanding (even unfeasible) in their
requirements on governance and political economy. In practice, what new institutions are emerging and
how are they faring? What are their demands on and risks for governance? What new concepts do they
require? Where could they be pursued, and where not?
Lunch Break (1pm-1:30pm)
FUNDING FOR THE CONFERENCE PROVIDED BY:
Panel 3 – New Growth Strategies in Developed Economies (1:30pm – 2:30pm)
Speakers
Jane Frances (Director, Growth and Public Services, The Treasury, New Zealand), (TBC) Senior European
Commission Official
Moderator (TBC) Shahid Yusuf (Chief Economist, The Growth Dialogue, George Washington University)
Job creation has been the defining challenge for developed countries as much as for developing ones
Themes
since the latest financial crisis. With persisting low growth, high unemployment and rising inequality, the
former have been juggling with the same key question as the latter: how does one encourage the growth
of job-creating industries in an era of open trade? The European Union and the government of New
Zealand have recently engaged on new competitiveness and growth strategies for job creation, which
both integrate the new realities of globalized trade and fast innovation in offering a package to encourage
investment, growth and job creation. What are the defining features of these policies, and the key
challenges in implementing them? What can developing countries learn and adapt?
Panel 4 – Competitive Cities: New Growth Policies & Urban Development (2:45pm – 4:00pm)
Speakers
Ravi Naidoo (Executive Director for Economic Development, City of Johannesburg, South Africa), (TBC):
Enrico Moretti (University of California, Berkeley), Tracey Nichols (Director of Economic Development,
City of Cleveland), William Kerr (Harvard University)
Moderator (TBC)
With rapid urbanization in much of the developing world, cities are becoming the locus of the jobs
Themes
challenge, a key nexus for global trade, but are also where economic inequality is felt most starkly. Cities’
success or failure in improving livelihoods and increasing economic opportunities for their residents cuts
across urban management and economic development –beyond the technical challenges of building city
roads and delivering treated water. How can cities and local governments tackle income inequality and
economic segregation while increasing global competitiveness? What should cities be doing more of, and
what should they be doing less of? Can new high tech industries provide an answer to this challenge?
What else can cities do to change their own economic trajectory?
Panel 5 – Global Value Chains – Perspective From the Private Sector (4:15pm – 5:30pm)
Speakers
(TBC) Gary Gereffi (Director, Duke University), Ted Chu (IFC Chief Economist), High-level
representatives from leading international manufacturing and agribusiness firms
Moderator Anabel Gonzalez (Senior Director, Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice, WBG)
Directed country interventions to favor the development of some value chains, like the automotive
Themes
sector, have led to mixed results. What is the perspective of business leaders on what are the main
constraints on business investment, growth, and job creation? What are drivers for different industries
and value chains? What types of interventions can have the greatest effect on company decision-making?
Closing Remarks: TBC
(5:30pm – 5:45pm)
FUNDING FOR THE CONFERENCE PROVIDED BY:
Day 2 | Wednesday, October 15
Deep-dives on work in progress related to the themes raised during the conference
Breakfast (8:30am – 9:00am)
Deep-dive 1 – Regional Focus: Manufacturing in South Asia (9:00am – 10:15am)
Presenters
Moderator
Themes
Arvind Subramanian (Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics and Center for
Global Development), (TBC) Saquib Shirazi (CEO, Atlas Honda, Pakistan)
Onno Ruhl (Country Director, India, WBG)
Few combinations of sector and region combine the importance and the challenges of manufacturing
in South Asia. The region’s demographic boom makes job creation (at a rate of 1 million per month)
ever more important, but the sector – historically a key source of employment in the transition to
middle-income – is much smaller than in other regions at a similar stage of development. What is
holding it back? What is the balance between regional and country-specific factors? What are the
success stories, and what can be learned from?
Deep-dive 2 – Parallel sessions (10:30am – 11:30am)
Competitive Cities Knowledge Base: Review
Making Skills Programs Work
Austin Kilroy & Megha Mukim (Trade and
Competitiveness Global Practice, WBG)
Manish Sabharwal (Teamlease CEO and former member,
PM’s commission for skills, Government of India), Amit
Dar (Director, Education Global Practice, WBG)
How can cities generate more jobs? For the last six
months, a multi-Practice team has been working to
assemble evidence, to support task teams in responding
quickly and efficiently to cities’ needs. The session will
review draft results structured around three questions:
(1) what explains job creation in cities worldwide?
(quantitative analysis and five city case studies);
(2) how can priorities be determined?
(3) how can project plans and strategies be turned into
action and success?
Skills are a defining factor for competitiveness, and
greater human capital is perhaps the most positive-sum
route to reducing inequality, and hence sharing
prosperity. Yet firms tend to under-provide training,
while skills programs are among the most difficult to
deliver in practice. Such market and government failures
persist globally, but in a few cases, new cooperation
models seem to have worked. Under what conditions?
What role have different institutions (firms, unions,
government) played? How have they been better
integrated in practice?
Deep-dive 3 – Parallel sessions (11:45am – 12:45pm)
Climate Change and Growth Strategies
Making Tourism work for the poor: defining a
systematic methodology
Alexios Pantelias (Trade and Competitiveness Global
Practice, WBG), 1-2 other speakers TBC.
TBC
New growth strategies can’t be decouple from the risks
and opportunities presented by climate change. As
mentioned by Jim Kim, this new reality in the growth
agenda will shape our next development challenge. Recent
reports found a number of key climate compatible policies
would lead to global GDP gains of between $1.8tn and
$2.6tn a year by 2030. The challenge is that climate change
requires a global agenda and commitment to ensure an
even playing field. This session will focus on the challenge
climate change poses to growth strategies, policies that can
address both challenges of ensuring growth and mitigating
climate change, and examples of countries and
circumstances where this is being done.
TBC
FUNDING FOR THE CONFERENCE PROVIDED BY: