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High-Profile Role for Visiting Professor at EAEPE Conference

14 November 2016

Smita Srinivas EAEPE Conference Market Menagerie

Visiting Professor of Economics Smita Srinivas recently attended EAEPE's Annual Conference, 'Industrialisation, Socio-Economic Transformation and Institutions', where, as well as co-organising a session, she also presented two papers and was interviewed about her Myrdal Prize-winning book.

The first paper, Path Dependency in Technological Trajectories: Switching in Energy and Implications for Evolutionary and Development Theories, co-authored with Nathalie Lazaric, discusses the institutional implications for if and how switches occur and what this might mean for evolutionary and development theories. (The energy sector is of particular interest because of its enormous potential for development as well as its impact on climate change.) Contrasting the case of France and India, the paper probes the traditional developing / developed country divide and sets out to discover whether it is necessarily easier for developing countries to have more choice. Its findings suggest that – especially in developing countries which are industrialising and which as a result face more 'make' versus 'buy' permutations – there tend to be more, not less options, which makes the study of switching even more necessary.

The second paper was Innovation as a Political Process of Development: Are neo-Schumpeterians Value Neutral? Co-authored with IKD Deputy Director Theo Papaioannou, it argues for a redefinition of innovation as a predominately political process, one that's both historical and contextual, before going on to explore what the implications of this might be for development politics.

Finally, in a special session on her book Market Menagerie: Health and Development in Late Industrial States – the winner of last year's Myrdal Prize – Smita engaged in a lively debate with experts from industrial policy, economic methodology, development economics and political science.

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