Abstract: This talk presents the context of a crisis in economics in explaining technological capabilities in economic development. It discusses the need for attention to the concept of Institutional Variety from an institutional and evolutionary economics perspective to address the rise of technological capabilities. The talk then briefly presents heuristics as combinatorial and intermediate methods that attend to Institutional Variety with application areas in health analysis among other domains
About the speaker: Smita Srinivas specializes in economic development with a focus on economics theory and practice including in technological innovation, industrial policy, knowledge and culture. Her current interests combine institutional and evolutionary economics and its overlap with older systems of reason and logic from Nyāya śāstra to address combinatorial problems in the use of heuristics. As a higher education faculty member, advisor, director, co-founder of programs or chair of committees in multiple countries, she has designed or led economic development programs with a sustainability and health focus. She has had an extensive consulting and collaboration portfolio. https://technologicalchangelab.org/
She is the recipient of the Joan Robinson Prize (formerly Myrdal Prize) in 2015 by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) for her book Market Menagerie: Health and Development in Late Industrial States (Stanford University Press, 2012). She was also recognized as the 2021 Clarence E. Ayres Scholar from the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE), USA, “[..] to an international scholar for outstanding work in the area of institutional economics.”
With a Ph.D. from MIT in economic development and technology planning and numerous fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, she has over 3 decades of experience teaching students in the world’s leading universities, and in multiple departments and research centers.
Smita Srinivas has held full-time Professor, Fellow, or Visiting and Honorary Faculty appointments in the world’s leading universities in diverse schools and centres. These include at Columbia University, Harvard University, the Innogen Institute, the Open University UK, the London School of Economics and Political Science, University College London, the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR), the Indian Institute of Science, the MIT Industrial Performance Centre, and multiple think tanks. She has been an advisor to global Fortune 500 companies, global councils and foundations, non-profits, government and multilateral and international development agencies. She serves on the Advisory council for the Review of Evolutionary Political Economy and as an Editor for Innovation and Development. Her work has been published in diverse scholarly and policy-facing formats.