Abstract
Is the global development agenda changing and, if so, what does this imply for development researchers? The following remarks first discuss our quest for global justice and relate this objective to the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Then I give my take on how the development of poor countries is determined and suggest what directions future research should take to support global justice through the development of poor countries. Considering aid as a principal tool to promote global justice, I conclude with a few comments about changes in the contemporary aid landscape and their implications for aid research.
Notes on contributor
Arne Bigsten is Senior Professor of Development Economics at the University of Gothenburg and Director of Gothenburg Centre of Globalization and Development. He has been visiting professor at universities of Oxford, Nairobi, Keio, New South Wales and Auvergnes. He has been chairman of African Economic Research Consortium, vice chair of European Union Development Network, Swedish Economic Council and VR’s Committee for Development Research. He is a member Expert Group for Aid Analysis. His research has concerned poverty and income distribution, trade and globalization, industrial development, foreign aid, and institutional reform. Bigsten has been involved in major projects on the impact of the coffee boom in the 1970s in Kenya and Tanzania, the Regional Programme of Enterprise Development in Africa, Ethiopian households, and the impacts of new forms of aid. He has done work for, for example, the World Bank, United Nations, Sida, WIDER, OECD, African Development Bank, EU, UNIDO, and the IMF.