Dr. George Mavrotas is a leading development economist with about 30 years of experience in international development. He is 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. Other research interests include agricultural policies, poverty and agricultural transformation, youth employment and the agricultural sector, 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 is currently a Senior Research Fellow with the Development Strategy and Governance Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC and the Program Leader of the Nigeria Strategy Support Program in the IFPRI Abuja Office where he directs IFPRI’s research and capacity building program in Nigeria. Other current honorary appointments include Visiting Professor at the Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp, Belgium, and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for International Development Study and Research (Ferdi, France). Previous appointments include Chief Economist of the Global Development Network (GDN) and Senior Fellow and Project Director at the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER), 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 development topics. He also taught at the Universities of Helsinki (Finland), CERDI-Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand, France), Antwerp (Belgium) and Peking University (China). He has an extensive developing country experience (particularly in Africa and Asia) and very 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 also been a member of various international committees of leading experts in international development.

Dr. Mavrotas is widely published in a broad range of research areas in international development and he is the author and co-author of more than 120 publications, including numerous papers in peer-reviewed leading journals and 9 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); and Commodity Supply Management by Producing Countries (Oxford University Press, 1997; with A. Maizels and R. Bacon).

George holds a D.Phil. (PhD) in Economics from Oxford, an MSc in Development Economics (with distinction) also from Oxford University, an MA in Economics and Econometrics from the University of London and a BSc in Economics from the Athens University in Economics.