Reimaging the IMF for a New Economic World Order

We are delighted to have Aqdas Afzal, the Program Director and Assistant Professor at the Social Development and Policy Program at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan, who will be speaking on Reimaging the IMF for a New Economic World Order.

We also extremely lucky to have Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at UMass Amherst as the discussant!

Abstract

Where the Covid-19 pandemic has been an unmitigated health crisis, it has wreaked tremendous economic destruction in poor countries. Still, poor countries have not been able to implement appropriate counter cyclical policies or vaccinate their citizens due to the lack of fiscal space. As a result, the world is now facing a two-track “recovery.” The time has come to reimagine and make a case for a new IMF. The new IMF will draw inspiration from the ideas first presented by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods. The new IMF will not only give more weight to poor and developing countries in decision making but will also be willing to use SDRs for transforming the poorest and hardest hit countries.

Speaker's bio

Aqdas Afzal is presently serving as the Program Director and Assistant Professor at the Social Development and Policy Program at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan. Dr. Afzal attended The Ohio State University, where he earned his bachelor’s in political science and economics with a minor in Farsi. In 2006, he completed his master’s in political science from The Ohio State University and returned to his native Pakistan. In 2011, Dr. Afzal won the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a doctorate in economics at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. In 2013,

While at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, Dr. Afzal taught as an adjunct faculty member at the Rockhurst University in Kansas City for over a year. Dr. Afzal has also participated in several seminars. These seminars include the “Minsky Summer School” at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College and “Complexity in Social Systems and Economics” at the famous Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Dr. Afzal has also presented his research in several economics conferences in the United States. Dr. Afzal has also published in the Kansas City Business Journal, Journal of Economic Issues and in the International Journal for Pluralism and Economics Education.

Aqdas Afzal also write regularly for DAWN, Pakistan’s premier English language newspaper. He tweets @AqdasAfzal.

Discussant's bio

Jayati Ghosh taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for nearly 35 years. In January 2021, she will join the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has authored and/or edited 19 books, including Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women’s Work in Globalising India (Women Unlimited, New Delhi 2009); the co-edited Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development (2014); Demonetisation Decoded (Routledge 2017), and Women Workers in the Informal Economy (Routledge forthcoming) and nearly 200 scholarly articles. She has received several prizes, including for distinguished contributions to the social sciences in India in 2015; the International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Research Prize for 2010; the NordSud Prize for Social Sciences 2010, Italy. She has advised governments in India and other countries, including as Chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Commission on Farmers’ Welfare in 2004, and Member of the National Knowledge Commission of India (2005-09). She is the Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates, an international network of heterodox development economists. She has consulted for international organizations including ILO, UNDP, UNCTAD, UN-DESA, UNRISD and UN Women and is a member of several international commissions, including the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) and the Commission for Global Economic Transformation of INET. She writes regularly for newspapers, journals and blogs.

Format

Aqdas Afzal will be speaking for the first 20 minutes, followed by a discussion by Jayati Ghosh for 20 min. We will be open for Q&A afterwards.

This session is a part of the larger project:

Expanding the frontiers of economics: Evidence from South Asia

This project aims to organize series of special sessions on emerging areas of research in Economics. By synthesizing theoretical assumptions of sociology, psychology, anthropology and political sciences, a new generation of researchers are rediscovering the principles which govern the actions and interaction among ‘economic (hu)man’.