In Memoriam: Professor Giovanni Andrea Cornia From Richard Jolly and Frances Stewart, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex and Oxford University

Professor Giovanni Andrea Cornia, the brilliant Italian economist, died in July, aged 77.  Andrea, as he was known, was our long-term colleague and dear friend. He was a global economist – he worked in Geneva, New York, Helsinki and Italy, as well as numerous countries in Latin America and Africa. He collaborated with like-minded economists from all over the world. Despite this, it was clear that his heart was in Italy and he spent the last part of his career as Professor at the University of Firenze, while his first job was at the FIAT Economic Research Centre in Turin. In between, he worked in the UN’s Economic Commission for Europe, in UNCTAD, as Chief Economist at UNICEF, as Director of the Economic and Social Research Programme in UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre, and as Director of the World Institute for Development Economics (WIDER).

While Andrea had a superb and creative mind, making significant contributions to both theoretical and empirical analysis of developing countries, his outstanding feature was his strong moral compass. He did not seek knowledge for its own sake, but because it would reduce inequality and help improve the wellbeing of the poor. He was also a creative, systematic and efficient administrator, which, again, he used in the service of his overall mission. Examples abound. At UNICEF, in 1984 (appropriately?), he and Richard Jolly co-authored and edited The Impact of the World Recession on Children, the first work to report on the significant deterioration in the conditions of children associated with the world recession. This was followed by the two volume study, Adjustment with a Human Face, which we co-authored. The volumes reported on the further deterioration in the circumstances of children throughout Africa and Latin America, associated not only with recession, but with the widely prevalent IMF and World Bank stabilization and adjustment policies. The work testified to the complete failure of these institutions and of many governments to take action to protect children in dire need. Positively, the study suggested policies that would help protect children during adjustment, drawing on country examples. Due to political conditions and the overwhelming predominance of neo-classical economics, this was one of the very few studies to draw attention to the totally unacceptable situation. With the support of UNICEF’s communication and outreach, strongly supported by Andrea, Richard and Jim Grant, then executive director of UNICEF, the work had a major impact on world opinion, and was an important consideration behind the protective programmes that were introduced in a few countries. It also contributed to the new focus on poverty and human development that emerged in the 1990s.

In 1995, after a period directing economic and social research at UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre, Andrea Cornia became director of WIDER, the United Nations University’s centre for research on economic development in Helsinki. There he used his considerable administrative and leadership skills to develop and support a wide variety of research programmes, all ultimately aimed at improving the conditions of poor countries and poor people by raising incomes and reducing inequality.  The programmes covered macroeconomics, income inequality, demographic and mortality crises of countries in transition, and social assistance and safety nets. Probably his most important and lasting contribution was the initiation of the WIDER database on inequality worldwide, which has become an invaluable resource for research on inequality. Although he was director for only four years, he succeeded in raising the intellectual level, greatly improving the funding, administration and morale, and setting WIDER’s research in new directions.

After WIDER, Andrea returned to his beloved Italy and in 2000 became Professor of Economics at the University of Florence, continuing his research on inequality. He was among the first to note that inequality fell in many Latin American countries in the 2000s and explored the factors responsible, including education, unionisation, a rising minimum wage and cash transfers to the poor. He also investigated trends in inequality in sub-Saharan African countries, compiling a new data set. He found a mixed picture with some countries reducing inequality and others facing rising inequality, but data deficiencies prevented definitive findings.

The need for an alternative approach to macro-economic theory and policy in developing countries was a major concern of Andrea (and others) especially in light of the disastrous impact of the conventional policies, which the IMF and World Bank had compelled countries to follow in the 1980s, as shown in Adjustment with a Human Face. Andrea’s last major project was to tackle this issue. In 2020, he published The Macroeconomics of Developing Countries: an Intermediate Textbook. This book suggests that the uncritical application of macroeconomic models routinely adopted in advanced countries may lead to wrong conclusions and serious policy mistakes if applied to developing countries It presents a framework for alternative approaches to macroeconomic analysis that take into account the structural characteristics of low-income countries. As in all his work, his aim was to develop a framework which would be associated with effective policies that promoted growth, stability and poverty reduction in the South, while being realistic in its assumptions and in the policies recommended. The book is an important first step, but it demands follow-up in advocacy and application and further theoretical development. It is very sad that Andrea himself will not be here to do this. We must hope that the many colleagues and students that admired and worked with Andrea will carry this forward.