José Antonio Ocampo is Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, co-President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He is also Chair of the Committee for Development Policy of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and Chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).. He has occupied numerous positions at the United Nations and his native Colombia, including UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and Minister of Finance, Minister of Agriculture, Director of the National Planning Office, and Co-Director of Banco de la República (Colombia’s central bank).
In 2015-16, he was also the head of Colombia’s Rural Development Commission. In 2012 he was one of the two candidates from developing countries for President of the World Bank. He has received numerous academic distinctions, including the 2012 Jaume Vicens Vives award of the Spanish Association of Economic History for the best book on Spanish or Latin American economic history, the 2008 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and the 1988 Alejandro Angel Escobar National Science Award of Colombia. He has published extensively on international financial issues, macroeconomic theory and policy, economic and social development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.
His most recent books include The Palgrave Handbook of Development Economics: Critical Reflections on Globalisation and Development, coedited with Machiko Nissake (2019); International Policy Rules and Inequality: Implications for Global Economic Governance (2019); The Future of National Development Banks, coedited with Stephany Griffith-Jones (2018); Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System (2017); Global Governance and Development (2016; Spanish edition in 2015); Global Governance and Rules for the Post-2015 Era, coedited with José Antonio Alonso (2015); several editions of Historia Económica de Colombia (the most recent one in 2015); The Economic Development of Latin America since Independence, with Luis Bértola (English 2012, Spanish 2013, Portuguese 2014; the Oxford Handbook of Latin American Economics, edited with Jaime Ros (2011); Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis, coedited with Stephany Griffith-Jones and Joseph E. Stiglitz (2010); and Growth and Policy in Developing Countries: A Structuralist Approach, with Lance Taylor and Codrina Rada (2009). He holds a BA in Economics and Sociology from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.
