Global and Regional Green Steel Transition: From Resource Potential to Supply Chain Re-configuration
September 27, 2023 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am
The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
Speakers:
Alli Devlin is a DPhil in Engineering Science Candidate at the University of Oxford.
Aidong Yang is a Professor of Engineering Science and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford.
Today’s steel industry is one of the top industrial emitters, responsible for ~8% of global carbon emissions. Decarbonising steelmaking is thus attracting significant attention of industrial players and policymakers, with the green transition already gaining momentum in some countries (e.g., Sweden), although most steel production is still deeply reliant on fossil fuels. This transition will be a huge undertaking, with great challenges in resource, technology, and economics to overcome. In this seminar, the authors will focus on the physical aspects of green steelmaking, sharing recent and ongoing mathematical modelling work on (1) understanding global resource potential for deploying green steel facilities, particularly addressing the availability of renewable energy and suitable iron ore, and (2) exploring potentially favourable supply chain (re-) configurations at the regional scale, taking into account a wide range of technological options and their geographical allocation. The results highlight key opportunities and challenges from technical perspectives, which will hopefully provide useful input to wider discussions about the green steel transition involving economics, policies and development agendas.
This seminar is online only. Please register in advance.
Fighting for Growth: Labor Scarcity and Technological Progress During the British Industrial Revolution
September 20, 2023 | 10:00 am – 11:15 am
The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
This session is online only. Please register in advance.
In this seminar, Bruno Caprettini will discuss new data and present new evidence on the effects of labor scarcity on the adoption of labor-saving technology in industrializing England. Where the British armed forces recruited heavily, more machines that economized on labor were adopted. For purposes of identification, we focus on naval recruitment. Using warships’ ease of access to coastal locations as an instrument, exogenous shocks to labor scarcity led to technology adoption. The same shocks are only weakly associated with the adoption of non-labor saving technologies. Importantly, there is also a synergy between skill abundance and labor scarcity boosting technology adoption. Where labor shortages led to labor-saving machine adoption, technology afterwards improved more rapidly.
About the Speaker: Bruno Caprettini is Assistant Professor at the University of St Gallen, where he is affiliated with the Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic Research (SIAW). He holds a PhD from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He is interested in the determinants of long-term growth, both economic and political. Some of his work appeared on AER, QJE and AER-Insights.
Research Seminar: The Role of Green & Non-Green Relatedness in the Development of New Green Specialization in Argentinean Provinces
September 13, 2023 | 10:00 am – 11:15 am
The Growth Lab’s Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
Register for the session.
In this Research Seminar, Andrea Belmartino will analyze the role of relatedness in developing new green specialisations for the Argentinean provinces between 2008-2019. Even though the global demand for green products creates development opportunities, whether this applies to emerging economies is still under analysis. Therefore, exploring how to leverage available capacities to facilitate the green transition is worthwhile. Her study draws on indices that capture knowledge bases to achieve this goal. Results show that developing a new green specialisation is positively related to productive capabilities, proxied by relatedness density (green and non-green). In addition, there the path dependent process benefits more wealthier provinces.
About the Speaker:
Andrea Belmartino is a PhD fellow in Urban Studies and Regional Science at Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) in L’Aquila (Italy). She holds a MA in Economics from Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina). She was a research assistant at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata (Argentina). Her current research interests are related to regional capabilities to foster the green transition. In addition, she is especially interested in the sustainability challenges and opportunities for Latin American economies. Since 2023, she is co-coordinating the Regional Studies Association’s Research Network “Knowledge, Innovation and Regional Development in South America (KIRDSA)”
Development Talk: A Conversation with Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank
September 8, 2023 | 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
The Growth Lab’s “Development Talks” is a series of conversations with policymakers and academics working on economic growth and development in countries, regions, states and cities in the US and around the world. The seminar provides a platform for practitioners and researchers to discuss both economic growth and development and analytical work centered on policy.
Speaker: Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics
Moderator: Dany Bahar, Associate Professor, Brown University’s Watson Institute; Senior Research Fellow, Growth Lab
Whether attending in-person or virtually, please register in advance. Room attendance is limited to the Harvard community. Seating availability is based on a first-come, first-served basis. Lunch will be provided. The Zoom webinar is open to the public.
About the speaker:
Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. He brings to the role a broad combination of leadership, expertise, and practical experience working with governments on macroeconomic imbalances, growth, poverty, institutions, conflict, and climate change.
Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, Gill served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he played a key role in shaping the Bank’s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program.
Research Seminar: Exploration and Exploitation in US Technological Change
May 15, 2023 | 10:30 am – 11:30 am
The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
Location: Zoom
Please register in advance. The Zoom webinar is open to the public.
About the Seminar: How do firms and inventors move through knowledge space as they develop their innovations? In this seminar, Vasco M. Carvalho proposes a method for tracking patterns of exploration and exploitation in patenting behaviour in the US for the period since 1920. The exploration measure is constructed from the text of patents and involves the use of Bayesian Surprise to measure how different current patent-based innovations are from existing portfolios. Results indicate that there are distinct life-cycle patterns to firm and inventor exploration. Furthermore, exploration activity is more geographically concentrated than general patenting, but this concentration is centered outside the main hubs of patenting.
Research Seminar: Self-Employment within the Firm
May 1, 2023 | 10:15 am – 11:30 am
The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
Location: Online only/Zoom Please register in advance.
Abstract: In this seminar, Alessandra Peter, Assistant Professor of Economics at NYU will share her research with Vittorio Bassi, J. H. Lee, Tommaso Porzio, Ritwika Sen, and Esau Tugume on the internal organization of firms in developing countries and how it affects their productivity and optimal size. They collected detailed time use data for 1,000 manufacturing firms in urban Uganda and document limited within-firm labor specialization. Even in relatively large firms, entrepreneurs and their employees work on similar tasks. As such, firms resemble a collection of self-employed individuals who share a production location. To interpret the empirical evidence, they develop an equilibrium model of task assignment, firm size, and occupational choice. They find that barriers to labor specialization generate decreasing returns to scale at the firm level, which reduces the returns to entrepreneurial ability and keeps firms small in equilibrium. Given the internal organization of firms we document, benefits from alleviating any other frictions that constrain firm growth are muted.
About the speaker: Alessandra Peter is an assistant professor of Economics at NYU, with a focus on Macroeconomics and Development. Her research analyzes constraints and barriers to firm growth in low-income countries as well as the effect of imperfect competition across firms on consumers in the United States.
Research Seminar: Regulation by Reputation? Intermediaries, Labor Abuses & International Migration
April 24, 2023 | 10:15 am – 11:30 am
The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
Please register in advance.
Speaker: Nilesh Fernando, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame
About the Seminar: Migrant workers and employers rely on intermediaries to facilitate labor market placements. If information frictions obscure their reputation, however, intermediaries may under-invest in placement quality. Using data on over 1.5 million Sri Lankan migrants to the Gulf region, Nilesh Fernando will examine the effects of an intermediary rating program that publicly revealed ratings two years after it was announced. Prior to the ratings being revealed, eligible under-performing agencies invest in the rating criteria and place migrants with less abusive employers who pay higher salaries. Results suggest that the threat of quality revelation induced agencies to prospectively screen employers.
Development Talk: The Political Economy of the Postwar Reconstruction of Ukraine
April 19, 2023 | 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
The Growth Lab’s “Development Talks” is a series of conversations with policymakers and academics working in economic development. The seminar provides a platform for practitioners and researchers to discuss both the practice of development and analytical work centered on policy.
Speaker: Vladyslav Rashkovan, Alternate Executive Director, International Monetary Fund
Moderator: Konstantin Usov, Acting Deputy Mayor of Kyiv, HKS MC/MPA 2023
Whether attending in-person or virtually, please register in advance. Room attendance is limited to the Harvard community. Seating availability is based on a first-come, first-served basis. The Zoom webinar is open to the public.
About the speaker:
Vladyslav Rashkovan became a member of the International Monetary Fund Executive Board in February 2017. As an Alternate Executive Director, Vladyslav represents Ukraine and 15 other European countries. Previously, Vladyslav had a prominent banking career, serving as a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ukraine and being responsible for the banking sector reforms and central bank transformation. Before joining the NBU in 2014, Vladyslav occupied the position of Chief Financial Officer of UniCredit Bank in Ukraine, also being engaged in the leadership of the Group turnaround projects in Central and Eastern Europe. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladyslav stands at the center of many international projects to provide financial support to Ukraine and plan its post-war reconstruction and modernization. He also serves as a member of the International Advisory Panel for the National Recovery Council.
Green Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Inter-American Development Bank’s Vision
April 20, 2023 | 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Decarbonization will transform global production and trade patterns so radically that new growth opportunities are bound to arise for Latin America and the Caribbean. The panel will discuss those opportunities considering the Inter-American Development Bank’s vision for the energy transition in the region.
Speakers:
Ricardo Hausmann, Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy, Director of the Harvard Growth Lab, Harvard Kennedy School
Lenin H. Balza, Economist in the Infrastructure and Energy Sector of Inter-American Development Bank
Araceli Clavijo, Researcher at National Scientific and Technical Research Council | conicet · GEISA (Grupo de Estudios e Investigaciones Socio Ambientales)
Moderated by: José Ignacio Hernandez, Visiting Fellow, Harvard Growth Lab, Harvard Kennedy School
This event is hybrid. To register for this in-person event, click here. To register for the virtual session, click here.
Presented in collaboration with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.
Development Talk: Investment in the Energy Transition / Global and Domestic Dimensions
April 18, 2023 | 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
The Growth Lab’s “Development Talks” is a series of conversations with policymakers and academics working in economic development. The seminar provides a platform for practitioners and researchers to discuss both the practice of development and analytical work centered on policy.
Speaker: Suman Bery, Vice Chairperson, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog
Moderator: Akshay Mathur, Edward S. Mason Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Opening remarks: Ricardo Hausmann, Director, Growth Lab, and Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy, HKS
Whether attending in-person or virtually, please register in advance. Room attendance is limited to the Harvard community. Seating availability is based on a first-come, first-served basis. The Zoom webinar is open to the public. Boxed lunch will be provided at the end of the seminar.
About the speaker:
Mr. Suman Bery is currently Vice Chairperson, NITI Aayog, in the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister. An experienced policy economist and research administrator, Mr. Bery took over as NITI Aayog Vice Chairperson on May 1, 2022. At the time of his appointment, Mr. Bery was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi; a Global Fellow in the Asia Programme of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington D.C.; and a non-resident fellow at Bruegel, an economic policy research institution in Brussels. He was also a member of the Board of the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, New Delhi.
From early 2012 till mid-2016, Mr. Bery was Royal Dutch Shell’s global Chief Economist based in The Hague. In this capacity, he advised the board and management on global economic and political developments. He was also part of the senior leadership of Shell’s global scenarios group. During his time at Shell, he led a collaborative project with Indian think tanks (later published) to apply scenario modeling to India’s energy sector.