Senior Treasury Official Joins The Center For Global Development

7/2/2002

From: Andrew Stober of the Center for Global Development, 202-416-0705

WASHINGTON, July 2 -- The Center for Global Development (CGD), a new Washington think tank, announced today that Steven Radelet, the U.S. Treasury's top Africa and Asia expert, and Jean ("Jenny") Lanjouw, a leading economist on affordable medicines in developing countries, will join its staff as Senior Fellows in July. The Center also announced that a prominent member of its senior research staff, acclaimed economist and author William Easterly, will assume a distinguished faculty position at New York University (NYU) next January, while remaining a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center.

The Center for Global Development is a non-governmental, non-partisan research institute. CGD, which was launched last fall, is dedicated to reducing global poverty and inequality through policy-oriented research and active engagement on development issues with the policy community and the public. The Center's distinguished board of directors, which is chaired by Edward W. Scott, Jr., the Center's co-founder, includes two Nobel laureates, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, as well as prominent former officials of Republican and Democratic Administrations, former senior executives of international financial institutions and developing country governments, and leaders from the academic community and civil society.

Nancy Birdsall, the President of the Center for Global Development said about the new appointments, "We are fortunate to have Steve and Jenny; they are both doing cutting-edge work -- work that will identify policy alternatives that could make a real difference in the lives of poor people around the world."

Dr. Radelet has served for the past two years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In that capacity, Radelet has managed U.S. financial policy, macroeconomic policy consultations, and multilateral assistance policies towards the countries in those regions. As the Treasury Department's senior Africa specialist, Radelet accompanied Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on his recent ten-day trip to Africa with rock star, Bono. Radelet has also played a leading role in Treasury's work on President Bush's proposed Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) for development assistance. Radelet received his Ph.D. from, and subsequently taught at, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Drawing upon his work at Treasury, Radelet's initial focus at CGD will be on developing proposals for the design and implementation of the MCA. "Steve's combination of senior-level U.S. policy experience and first-rate academic credentials is rare in Washington," Nancy Birdsall, the President of CGD said. "Treasury was lucky to extract him from Harvard, and we are lucky to extract him from Treasury."

Lanjouw, who is Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University, will assume a joint Senior Fellow position with the CGD and the Brookings Institution, where she is currently a Visiting Fellow. Lanjouw is one of the country's leading experts on the economics of intellectual property rights. Lanjouw received her doctorate in Economics from the London School of Economics.

"Jenny's work at the Center will focus on a set of issues that has become a major flashpoint in commercial relations between the world's rich and poor countries," said Birdsall referring to Lanjouw's research on policies to encourage the global pharmaceutical industry to produce affordable medicines targeted on diseases prevalent in developing countries. "She has highly innovative ideas for how to use market-based mechanisms and incentives to encourage the development and sale of affordable medicines in developing countries."

Center Senior Fellow William Easterly, author of the highly regarded book "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" (MIT, 2001), will join the Economics Department at New York University (NYU), where he will work in association with the university's Africana Studies Program. After assuming his NYU appointment in January 2003, Easterly will continue with CGD as a Non-Resident Fellow, leading a research project on the effectiveness of development aid and alternative strategies for aid delivery. Birdsall commented, "We are proud that our colleague Bill Easterly has been asked to join the faculty at NYU, and we are pleased that he will continue to make the Center his home base in Washington."