Conference Overview
Pathways to Development is a multidisciplinary conference that brings together empirical and historical research by economists, political scientists, sociologists, legal and constitutional scholars, and law and policy reform experts, within and outside Pakistan, to document and describe the scale of challenges facing Pakistan and to organize discourse about ways in which these can be mitigated.
G²LM|LIC / Path2Dev / BREAD Conference on Development Economics
Path2Dev co-organised the G²LM|LIC / Path2Dev / BREAD Conference on Development Economics, held from 11–13 September 2025 at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan.
The BREAD Conference has long served as a leading forum for advancing rigorous empirical research in development economics. The 2025 edition brought together a global community of scholars working on critical issues of poverty, inequality, growth, and institutional change, creating space for new ideas, collaborations, and policy engagement across regions and disciplines.
Jointly organised by the IZA/FCDO Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries Program (G²LM|LIC), the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and Pathways to Development (Path2Dev), the conference featured both an academic program alongside a dedicated one-day policy conference. Through paper presentations and panel discussions, participants engaged with research on political economy, structural inequality, education, labour markets, health systems, and financial inclusion in low- and middle-income countries.
A special mentorship initiative for junior researchers based in South Asia, led by BREAD fellows and affiliates, also ran alongside the event, supporting early-stage research and strengthening the pipeline of development economists from the region.
At its core, the conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to reflect on the evolving landscape of development economics and to consider what inclusive and context-sensitive development can and should look like.
