The 2008 Ibrahim M. Oweiss Lecture

Dr. Steven Radelet

The 2008 Oweiss Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Steven Radelet. Dr. Radelet is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he works on issues related to foreign aid, developing country debt, economic growth, and trade between rich and poor countries. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. He oversaw policy development on the U.S. response to TurkeyÕs financial crisis, PakistanÕs debt restructuring, IndiaÕs financial relationships with the U.S., the aftermath of IndonesiaÕs financial crisis, NigeriaÕs re-engagement with the international financial institutions, and development issues throughout Africa. He currently serves as an economic advisor to the President and the Minister of Finance of Liberia. His research and publications have focused on foreign aid, economic growth, financial crises, and trade policy in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.

For more information please visit his website.

Previous Oweiss Lecturers

François Bourguignon

The 2007 Oweiss Lecture was delivered by François Bourguignon, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank.

For a comprehensive biography, please refer to this World Bank Page.

Kemal Dervis

The 2006 Oweiss Lecture was delivered by Dr. Kemal Dervis, the head of the United Nations Development Program.

For a comprehensive biography, please refer to this UNDP page.

Professor Emeritus Ibrahim M. Oweiss

Dr. Ibrahim M. Oweiss, former professor of economics at Georgetown University, retired in 2001. While at Georgetown, he was appointed to the Egyptian Cabinet as First Under-Secretary for Economic Affairs in August 1977 and, with the rank of Ambassador, he served as Chief of the Egyptian Economic Mission to the United States. Dr. Oweiss was also an advisor to former President Jimmy Carter. Dr. Oweiss was one of the founding members of Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies as well as the College of Commerce and Economics at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Dr. Oweiss is now the President of the Council on Egyptian-American Relations. In addition to other honors, President Sadat awarded Dr. Oweiss with Egypt's Order of Merit, First Class. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II sanctioned his admission to the order of St. John. Dr. Oweiss also holds the Grand Cordon of the Order of Mohammed Ali Pasha and the Knight of the Order of the Queen of Sheba.

Dr. Oweiss has authored over 50 scholarly publications including: Petrodollar Surpluses, Arab Civilization, The Political Economy of Contemporary Egypt, and in pioneering work on oil revenues, he coined the term "Petrodollars." The "Oweiss Demand Curve" related to the economics of oil was first presented at Oxford University.

For a comprehensive biography please refer to this website.

William Easterly

William Easterly is currently Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development and the Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. He worked for 16 years at the World Bank, most recently as Senior Adviser for the Research Group. He received his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

He is the author or editor of three books and of dozens of articles on economic growth in poor countries. He has worked on countries as diverse as Ghana, Mexico, Jamaica, Kenya, Russia, Colombia, Pakistan, Thailand, and Ethiopia. He has talked about economic growth in conferences on five continents and in classes at local universities.

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