Paul Collier

Paul Collier brings extraordinary expertise on global poverty and economic development from his work as Oxford professor and former World Bank director. He speaks on bottom billion nations and effective development and addressing root causes of poverty. Drawing from decades researching why some nations prosper while others remain trapped in poverty Paul challenges conventional wisdom about development aid and economic policy. His evidence-based approach identifies what actually works versus well-intentioned programs that fail. Organizations value Paul’s frameworks for understanding fragile states and conflict’s role in perpetuating poverty and the specific challenges facing resource-rich but institution-poor nations. His work reveals why development requires more than good intentions. His presentations address practical interventions that lift nations from poverty including good governance and resource management and security provision and economic diversification. Paul shows how development requires coordinated action across multiple domains simultaneously. Paul discusses the bottom billion people living in failed or failing states where conventional development approaches produce limited results. He provides different frameworks needed for these environments versus middle-income nations advancing steadily. What makes Paul valuable is combining academic rigor with policy relevance. His research informs actual development programs and government policies giving his recommendations credibility beyond theoretical exercises. Beyond poverty focus Paul addresses broader themes of inequality and globalization and migration and how developed nations should engage with struggling countries. His frameworks help leaders think about responsibilities and effective approaches. Paul discusses resource curse whereby natural resource wealth paradoxically impoverishes nations lacking institutions to manage revenues effectively. His work on transparency and governance shows how to convert resources into development. His books including The Bottom Billion and Exodus provide accessible explanations of complex economic and political dynamics. Paul translates academic research into frameworks general audiences understand and apply. International development organizations and multinational companies operating in frontier markets and policymakers and nonprofits and investors and anyone working in developing economies find Paul’s development economics expertise essential for understanding challenges facing poorest nations and what interventions actually improve prospects versus wasting resources on approaches that sound good but fail implementation reality tests.

Director for the Centre of the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, Collier is currently Advisor to the Strategy and Policy Department of the IMF and advisor to the Africa Region of the World Bank, where he previously served as Director of the Development Research Group.

Collier is a particularly important speaker for businesses and organizations concerned with emerging markets, as he effectively demonstrates the value, and the virtue, in combining compassion with wise investment strategies.

Collier writes a monthly column for the Independent, and his commentary also appears regularly in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. His bestselling book, The Bottom Billion, which has been compared to Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty and William Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden in its scope and impact, identifies the four traps that keep such countries mired in poverty, and outlines ways to help them escape. He is also the author of Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. His most recent book, entitled The Plundered Planet: How to reconcile prosperity with nature, was published in May of 2010.

Emerging markets

Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places

The Plundered Planet: How to reconcile prosperity with nature

Paul effectively demonstrates the value, and the virtue, in combining compassion with wise investment strategies

World’s Leading Expert on Global Poverty Solutions