Development Economics X Corporation

It's critical to build food systems that sustainably work for households and businesses alike.

At @DevEconX, we think seriously about how economies actually become productive, and actually make it happen. It's time for organizations to sustainably and reliably become more capable, for industries to emerge, and for developing countries to organically move into increasingly sophisticated forms of production and compete globally. It's time.

It's critical to understand how productive capabilities accumulate. Why do some firms become globally competitive? How do entirely new industries emerge? How do economies move from producing simple goods to increasingly complex ones? It's time to make it happen.

The objective should not simply be to help all economies grow within their existing economic structures. It should also be to understand how those structures can be transformed: what new firms, industries, technologies and productive capabilities can be developed, and under what conditions. It's time for more.

Explore the future.

It's a new era. It's not about economists as individuals. It never really was. It's about economic problems being solved, not just understood. How that happens is increasingly beside the point. AI and other technologies will transform economic research. But the challenges facing developing countries aren't merely computational. They involve infrastructure, institutions, capital, production and implementation. Development economics won't simply be displaced by technology. Its future, like that of computer science and mathematics before it, will increasingly be industrial in scope. Academic economics isn't going anywhere. Cooking at home and eating at restaurants can coexist. So can academic and industrial research. And they will. Part of what made economists like Milton Friedman influential was that their ideas were useful beyond a university. Of course, his communication skills, institutional networks, public visibility and intellectual contributions also mattered. But even he would probably approach things rather differently today. The profession has an extraordinary opportunity ahead. It's a remarkable time to be an economist, even if the profession will never look quite the same. It's time to join the adventure.

Follow @DevEconX @DevEconXGhana @mlxdoing

When I was lecturing at UC Berkeley a Korean student of mine told me about this Ghanaian young man. Sam Okyere apparently went to Korea on a computer science scholarship and somehow ended up becoming an award-winning TV personality and celebrity there.

Making development dreams come true.

Yes. Faster and better clinical trials are critical.

As US universities transition from siloed AI experiments to campuswide integration, some are creating an interesting new leadership role: the Chief AI Officer.

I've always found the Jameel Corporation just as interesting as J-PAL. Development needs rigorous evidence. But it also needs the ambition to mobilize capital, build industries, and transform economies. Why not both? This is the next generation of development economics.

Development economics isn't just about understanding poverty. It's about understanding what creates prosperity—and how to scale it.

A Fields Medalist is revolutionizing homework in his mathematics classes with a small shift. He's now giving credit for simply having received the assignments.