Private incentives for technological development do not automatically align with public purpose objectives of providing solutions to the poorest, or solving the so-called grand challenges like universal access to medicines or halting climate change. There continues to be a constant under-investment of science and technology resources to solve such public policy challenges that stand to benefit the global community as a whole. Private incentives, while relevant to promote innovation, often skew the rewards away from the kind of solutions we need most. My work in this regard looks at ways in which we can address this effectively by promoting ways to match private incentives with broader global goals, and/or articulating new kinds of interventions (economic or regulatory) that will foster the development of technology as a global public good.

Promoting the production of, and access to, pharmaceutical, vaccines and diagnostics remains a critical prerogative for the global community, given not only the rising disease burden globally, but also the emergence of pandemics such as COVID-19. But pharmaceutical production and innovation is complex, and does not just depend on national regulations or a specific set of incentives. My work explores the impact of intellectual property, technology access, finance and regulatory issues that dictate what firms can produce, where and how, and what markets they can access; just as it is affected by the ways in which pharmaceutical value chains are organised.

I have been working on this topic since 2002, looking comparatively at capacity constraints in local pharmaceutical firms. Since then, I have led large multi-country, multi-agency projects on the topic that brought together academics, international agencies, national policy makers and pharmaceutical companies together on questions of production, technology access, regulatory compliance and supply for pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

Centuries after the first industrial revolution, scholars and policy makers continue to grapple with the challenge of promoting sustainable industrialisation of the kind that puts countries firmly on the path of prosperity and economic development. My work in this area looks at the how technology, entrepreneurship, trade, specialisation and history impact country-specific trajectories of industrialisation. Working on this topic since the early 2000s, I look at these issues from a sectoral, as well as a national and regional perspectives, particularly in light of new challenges such as digital technologies and the climate imperative.

The global energy transition is complex. Not only will different regions be affected differentially; they will also bear varied burdens of facilitating the transition depending on their current energy trends, trading positions in the global economy, macroeconomic resilience, and capacity for public spending. Climate change and its after-effects will also exacerbate environmental, and economic injustice intra-regionally posing additional issues. A series of macrostructural challenges in the global economy will continue to worsen the transition challenge for countries, including financial instability, the declining income share of labour and a weakening of productive investment, at a time when countries need to mobilise greater resources to facilitate overall industrial, social and economic change.

My work on this topic emphasises how the prevention and mitigation of climate change (including policies and infrastructure) is a global public good, with a focus on the fact that it will be systematically under-provided for by private market forces, and how its under-provision of this will have important. international externality effects. It also points to a fundamental collective action dimension; namely that every region has to move in collaboration and coordination to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, without which, climate change cannot be mitigated.

Can the digital revolution help countries to catch-up better and more efficiently or will it increase the gap to the frontier? Do we still need manufacturing, and what is the emerging role of services? Where are the employment gains in digitisation, and how can we leverage development in the data economy? This area of work aims to generate evidence-based findings for policy advice to policy makers on how the fourth IR technologies can be used to promote structural change and industrialisation in developing countries. It focuses on the two most important technologies - big data and AI – and how they be applied equally to all industrial sectors, namely manufacturing, services and agriculture to enhance prosperity in less developed countries.

Click here to view the workshop conducted on Development in the Data Economy.