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SIPA Faculty
José Antonio Ocampo
International Affairs Building, Room 1315
Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs
Phone: 212-854-6339
jose.ocampo@sipa.columbia.edu
jao2128@columbia.edu
Biography:
José Antonio Ocampo is Professor of Professional Practice, Director of the Economic and Political Development Concentration at and a Member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He also currently heads a Commission to review the activities of the International Monetary Fund’s Independent Evaluation Office. In 2008-2010, he served as co-director of the UNDP/OAS Project on “Agenda for a Citizens’ Democracy in Latin America”, and in 2009 as a Member of the Commission of Experts of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.
Prior to his appointment, Ocampo served in a number of positions in the United Nations and the Government of Colombia, most notably as United Nations Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs; Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); Minister of Finance and Public Credit and Chairman of the Board of Banco del República (Central Bank of Colombia); Director of the National Planning Department (Minister of Planning); Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Executive Director of FEDESARROLLO.
Ocampo has published extensively on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic and social development, international trade, global economic governance, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.
Ocampo received his BA in economics and sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 1972 and his PhD in economics from Yale University in 1976. He served as Professor of Economics at Universidad de los Andes and of Economic History at the National University of Colombia, as well as visiting Professor at Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Yale. He has received a number of personal honors and distinctions, including the 2012 Jaume Vivens Vives Prize for the best book on Spanish and Latin American economic history of the biennium 2010-11, the 2008 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and the 1988 Alejandro Angel Escobar National Science Award of Colombia.
Publications:
The Economic Development of Latin America since Independence, with Luis Bértola (2012).
Oxford Handbook of Latin American Economics, edited with Jaime Ros (2011).
Development Cooperation in Times of Crisis, edited with José Antonio Alonso (2012)
Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis, edited with Stephany Griffith-Jones and Joseph E. Stiglitz (2010).
Growth and Policy in Developing Countries: A Structuralist Approach, with Lance Taylor and Codrina Rada (2009).
Search Categories: macroeconomics, economic development, finance, trade, global economic governance, economic history, Latin America