Finn Tarp

Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow

Professor Tarp has four decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research and teaching. His field experience covers more than two decades of in-country work in 35 countries across Africa and the developing world more generally, including longer-term assignments in Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Vietnam. He is the former Director of UNU-WIDER from 2009 to 2018 and is also Professor of Development Economics at the University of Copenhagen.

Professor Tarp is a leading international expert on issues of development strategy and foreign aid, with an interest in poverty, income distribution and growth, micro- and macroeconomic policy and modeling, agricultural sector policy and planning, household and enterprise development, and economic adjustment and reform as well as climate change, sustainability and natural resources.

More than 130 articles in internationally refereed academic journals — including top journals such as The Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, European Economic Review, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, World Development, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Land Economics, Food Policy, Review of Income and Wealth, Journal of Economic Geography, Feminist Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Development Studies, and Climatic Change as well as regional journals including for example Journal of African Economies, South African Journal of Economics, Journal of Asian Economics, and China Economic Review — alongside six books, 30 edited book volumes/special journal issues, 71 book chapters with leading international academic publishers plus, a very large number of research reports and other studies and publications.

In addition to his university positions, Finn Tarp has held senior posts and advisory positions within government and with donor organizations, and he is member of a large number of international committees and advisory bodies. They include the European Union Development Network (EUDN) and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC). From 2013 - 2016 he also served as a member of the World Bank Chief Economist’s 15 member ‘Council of Eminent Persons’ advising the Chief Economist and he has been awarded the Vietnamese Government Medals of Honour for ‘Support to the Planning and Investment System’ and the ‘Cause of Science and Technology’.

On 20 November 2015 Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark awarded Finn Tarp with the Order of the Dannebrog.