Pavel Velkovsky

Charter Cities Podcast Episode 62: Kartik Akileswaran and Jonathan Mazumdar on Growth Teams and Structural Transformation

Many countries need radical structural transformation, specifically in more developing nations, and Growth Teams have made it part of their mission to empower developing countries to create jobs and grow their economies. Today, we are in conversation with the co-founders of Growth Teams, Kartik Akileswaran and Jonathan Mazumdar. The pair are here to discuss how their business is playing its part in creating economic stability in countries around the world. Our conversation begins with a breakdown of Growth Teams, how the company works, and why Kartik and Jonathan chose to build it. After taking a look at our guests’ professional backgrounds, we dive into the definition of structural transformation, assess its importance, discover why it’s so difficult to facilitate and brainstorm ways for governments to stand true to their promises of transformation. We also learn how Growth Teams get involved in government outreaches, how it’s doing things differently to achieve better results, the countries it is working with, and everything the business has planned moving forward.

February 14, 2024

Big Thinkers and Charter Cities ft. Jeffrey Sachs and the Economics of Heat, Disease, and Distance

Join our research team on an exploration of the key ideas from notable thinkers in political philosophy, economics, political science, urban planning, and other traditions as they relate to charter cities in our Big Thinkers blog series.

February 8, 2024

January Book Club Review

Each month, the CCI team selects a new book to read and discuss together. Our book club selections cover a wide range of topics that are relevant to charter cities, but they are most often related to development, urban issues, and governance. In this ongoing series, reviewers will offer summaries of the books we’ve read and share some of the highlights from our discussions.

January 25, 2024

Walking the Un-Walkable: Final Thoughts

This blog post provides a summary of the concluding thoughts from the “Walking the Un-Walkable” project series.

January 24, 2024

The Return of the Washington Consensus? William Easterly, Good Economic Policy, and Economic Growth in India

This paper engages with a specific effort by Easterly (2019) to solve the liberalization–economic growth paradox. This paradox centers on the failure of significant global economic liberalization after 1980 to generate a clear increase in global economic growth—despite the powerful theoretical and empirical predictions of the likely impact of the former. Easterly made a significant contribution to this debate by updating various cross-country measures of economic policy. This report provides an extended discussion of the Easterly paper using India as a case study. India conducted extensive economic liberalization in 1991, but economic growth (and productivity growth) in the 1990s showed no increase over rates in the 1980s. Where did all the growth go? This paper makes four criticisms of the Easterly paper. First, much of the original growth paradox highlighted by Easterly emerges from using non-rigorous before-and-after liberalization narratives and disappears when using a more rigorous body of empirical work. Second, even though India conducted extensive liberalization in 1991, the measures of policy reform used by Easterly fail to capture this reform effort. Third, while Easterly argued that the advent of good policy tends to be delayed, this paper uses the India case study to show that it is the growth payoff from good policy that is likely to be delayed. This is partly because economic liberalization needs complementary policies to be effective, it can have a significant impact at the firm level that takes time to show up at an aggregate, macro level, and liberalization is likely to have a J-curve impact on productivity. Fourth, Easterly’s finding that more rapid economic growth in the 1990s was associated with better economic policy is not very informative. Growth accelerations are widespread across time and space and are associated with various impulses, including but not limited to economic liberalization. The big question, with which Easterly does not engage, is whether this growth can be sustained. Thinking about the interaction between economic growth and institutions instead can allow us to better understand India’s economic growth since 1980.

January 22, 2024

Charter Cities Podcast Episode 61: Jon Vandenheuvel on Small Farm Cities

Affordable housing and economic development challenges in Africa are multifaceted and interconnected, but what is the solution? In today’s conversation, we sit down with Jon Vandenheuvel, the founder of Small Farm Cities Africa and senior advisor for the Charter Cities Institute. Small Farm Cities integrates horticulture, aquaculture, infrastructure, and residential housing for ownership and wealth creation throughout Africa. Jon is a visionary leader in agribusiness, municipal infrastructure development, and applied technology systems. His impactful work spans multiple African nations, where he has spearheaded infrastructure, agribusiness, and e-commerce initiatives to help foster economic growth. In our conversation, we unpack his hyper-affordable agribusiness concept, the importance of systems solutions to systems problems like poverty, and how Jon came to be building new cities in Africa. Discover his definition of affordable housing, what is stunting the development of African countries, and why formal ownership of housing and land is so crucial for Africa. We delve into why building and storing wealth is a core value of Small Farm Cities, how the company plans to scale, leveraging the industrial sector for development, realizing Africa’s economic potential, and much more! Jon also shares details about the success of their pilot project in Malawi and how the concept is resulting in larger projects he is currently working on. To find out how Jon is driving housing accessibility and development in Africa, tune in now!

January 17, 2024