From End of History to Hell in a Handbasket: Framing the Current Development Challenge

Lant Pritchett

Visiting Professor of Practice,

London School of Economics, School of Public Policy

Lant Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. He graduated from BYU in 1983 and received his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1988. He worked for the World Bank from 1988 to 2007, living in Indonesia 1998-2000 and India 2004-2007. He taught at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2000 to 2019, and was, intermittently, the Faculty Chair of the MPA/ID Degree program. From 2018 to 2023 he was the Research Director of the RISE Programme at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. Having now thrice retired, he is currently a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics in the School of Public Policy and the co-founder and Research Director of Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP). He has published over a hundred works with over fifty co-authors. His work spans a range of development topics including: economic growth, state capability, basic education, labour mobility, development assistance (and more). His work has been, at times, influential, and his publications have been cited over 50,000 times.