The Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) is a non-profit organization based at Columbia University in the United States. IPD was founded in July 2000 by Joseph E. Stiglitz. It stimulates a heterodox policy dialogue on major issues in international development. IPD is a global network of leading economists, political scientists, and premier academic and policy centers in the global South and North. It brings the issues of developing countries to academics and the fruits of academic research to policymakers.
Description Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) in July 2000, a few months after leaving his post as Chief Economist of the World Bank. Stiglitz’s years at the Bank convinced him that the developing world and emerging markets needed a more authoritative voice in global policy discussions. They also needed better advice on how to manage their economic, political and social affairs beyond the neoliberal Washington Consensus doctrines then sold as “good policy.” Stiglitz was appalled to see international financial institutions foisting these conservative policies on developing countries, often with the support of progressive, advanced countries that had rejected the same policies within their own borders. He witnessed too large a gap between high-minded rhetoric and the actual power plays that drove global governance, with the exercise of power tilting policies away from those that might have advanced the wellbeing of poor countries. IPD’s strategy has been to bring together the international scholars from both developed and developing countries to address the hard and controversial issues facing the global community related to globalization and development. The think tank was founded on two hypotheses: Good ideas matter; and that Gresham’s law, which says bad money drives out good money, might similarly work in the realm of ideas, with bad ideas driving out good ideas. With a good articulation of theoretically sound ideas and democratic dialogue, good ideas might displace bad ones. From the start, IPD was committed to advancing and disseminating knowledge in the belief that better knowledge would lead to better policies and institutions and would enhance the wellbeing of people everywhere, but especially in the developing world. Knowledge is a global public good, and the functioning of democracy requires citizens to be informed. To that end, IPD has fostered conversations not just among economists, but dialogues within countries between citizens, leaders in both the public and private sector and civil society, and leading economists. It has fostered discussions around central themes in development, globalization, and public policy, hosting multiple high-level conferences each year; and partly based on those discussions—and with the belief that the knowledge and understandings generated in them should be shared—has produced a book series with more than 50 volumes. It also publishes an academic, peer-review journal: the Journal of Globalization and Development (JGD).
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