On the afternoon of April 12, 2018, at 15:30, the 67th BNUBS Master Forum was successfully held in Room 1620 of the main building. The forum, presided over by Professor Li Shi of BNUBS, was honored to invite Professor Kunal Sen, a development economist from the University of Manchester, to deliver a speech entitled “Deals and Development: The Political Dynamics of Growth Episodes”.

Professor Kunal Sen who is a professor of development economics at the University of Manchester, a joint research director of the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) Research Center, a member of Council of the Association of South Asian Studies in Europe and an ESRC peer review member, mainly researches in development economics and trade theory, and publishes many papers in international leading magazines such as Journal of Institutional Economics , Economic and Political Weekly , and The Journal of Development Studies .

At the beginning of the lecture, by quoting the question raised by Professor Lucas in 1988: “Is there some action a government could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia’s or Egypt’s?” as the background of his speech, Professor Kunal Sen used a large number of facts and evidence to show the meaning of “growth” and factors and events that can promote economic growth. Then the two core variables and one mediator variable of the speech were pointed out: political balance, rent space and processing space, and the relations and problems between the three were discussed. Finally, selecting 10 countries from Africa and Asia to conduct empirical analysis with the model framework, he summed up the four stages of India’s economic growth, and concluded that any realistic strategy for realizing sustainable development must recognize the political and economic dynamics of growth events.

After the speech, the teachers and students present actively discussed the analysis framework and conclusions of the paper and interacted with Professor Kunal. The lecture also ended with a warm applause.