Prof. Mavrotas is currently a Full Professor at the Institute of
Development Policy of the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is a development
economist with about 30 years of experience in international development and a
renowned scholar and expert in the overall nexus between macroeconomics and
development finance, including the macroeconomics of foreign aid effectiveness
and domestic resource mobilization, financial sector development and poverty
reduction. He is also widely recognized as a leading expert in foreign aid
effectiveness issues with a policy oriented influential published work in this
area for many years. Other research interests include humanitarian assistance,
agricultural policies, poverty reduction and agricultural transformation, youth
employment and the agricultural sector, food security and nutrition, primary
commodity markets and natural resources, human capital development (with an
emphasis on the economics of education & training) as well as international
migration and urbanization and development.
He brings with him an extensive developing country experience (particularly in Africa and Asia) and having worked in multicultural and multidisciplinary international environments for many years (having also lived and worked in Nigeria, India, Finland and UK). He has also substantial experience as an advisor to various international organizations, donor and government agencies, and the broad policymaking community and extensive exposure to high level policy debates in international development. He has served as a member in various international committees on development finance issues, including the Committee of Experts on Development Finance led by the late Sir Anthony B. Atkinson, with the late Nobel Laureate Sir James Mirrlees among others, as a senior advisor of the UN General Assembly and one of the lead authors of a report on new sources of development finance presented to 50 world leaders in the UN General Assembly in 2004; the senior advisory group of experts of the Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy; the G-20 Advisory Group; and one of the founding members of the Development Forum of the OECD Development Centre & the Development Finance Network (DeFiNe) of the OECD, among others.
He has vast experience in managing several multi-million USD research projects at the global, regional and country level (coordinating also large teams of researchers from all over the world) in the broad area of international development, and an excellent fundraising record in all organizations/institutes he has worked so far. Prior to joining the Institute of Development Policy of the University of Antwerp he was a Senior Research Fellow of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Leader of IFPRI’s Nigeria Strategy Support Program (NSSP), coordinating a large-scale research and capacity building program for IFPRI in Nigeria as well as managing the IFPRI Nigeria Office. Other appointments include Chief Economist of the Global Development Network (GDN) and based in GDN’s HQs in New Delhi for 6 years (having also served as an Acting GDN President for a short period in 2009); Senior Research Fellow and Project Director at the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER), based in Helsinki, Finland for 5 years; and prior to that on the Economics Faculties of the Universities of Oxford and Manchester where he taught for many years having also supervised 12 PhD theses and 37 Master’s dissertations on a broad range of international development topics. He also taught as Visiting Professor at the Universities of Helsinki (Finland), CERDI-Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand, France), Antwerp (Belgium) and Peking University (Beijing). Current and past honorary appointments include Senior Fellow, Foundation for International Development Study and Research (Ferdi), Clermont-Ferrand, France (since 2010); Visiting Research Fellow, Policy Research Department, the World Bank, Washington DC (June-Sept. 1996); Non-Resident Associate Fellow at the Centre of Regional Integration Studies of the United Nations University (UNU-CRIS), Bruges, Belgium (2010-2016); Adjunct Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Economics & Business of the University of the South Pacific, Fiji (2010-2013); and External Research Associate at the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of the Resource Rich Economies (OxCarre) of the Department of Economics, University of Oxford, UK (2011-2015).
He is widely published in a broad range of research areas in international development and he is the author and co-author of more than 130 publications, including numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals (such as Economica, Oxford Economic Papers, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, World Development, Food Security, Review of Development Economics, Agricultural Economics, Economic Modelling, Journal of Financial Stability, European Journal of Finance, Manchester School, Journal of International Affairs, Public Health Nutrition, PLoS ONE, Maternal and Child Nutrition and World Economy among many others) and 10 books. Books include Security and Development (Edward Elgar, 2011 – with contributions by leading scholars including Nobel Laureate Michael Spence); Foreign Aid for Development: Issues, Challenges and the New Agenda (Oxford University Press, 2010 – endorsements for this book are available here); Commodities, Governance and Economic Development under Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; with M. Nissanke); Development Aid: A Fresh Look (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; with M. McGillivray); Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Financial Development, Institutions, Growth and Poverty Reduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; with B. Guha-Khasnobis); Development Finance in the Global Economy: The Road Ahead (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; with T. Addison); Advancing Development: Core Themes in Global Economics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; with A. F. Shorrocks – both in hardback and paperback, a bestseller in Palgrave Macmillan - with a Foreword by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen); Commodity Supply Management by Producing Countries (Oxford University Press, 1997; with A. Maizels and R. Bacon); and Challenges of Urbanization: Perspectives from the Global South (Routledge, forthcoming 2021; with K. Sridhar).
He holds a D.Phil. (PhD) in Economics from Oxford, an MSc in Development Economics (with distinction) also from Oxford, an MA in Economics and Econometrics from the University of London and a BSc in Economics from the Athens University in Economics.