Jean-Philippe Platteau

Jean-Philippe Platteau is Professor Emeritus at the University of Namur (Belgium), and an active member of the Centre for Research in Economic Development (CRED) which he founded at the same university. He has also co-founded and chaired the European Development Network (EUDN). Moreover, he has been the academic and scientific director of numerous international research projects, including Gender and Development at the World Institute of Development Economics Research (WIDER) of the United Nations at Helsinki, and, together with François Bourguignon, previously Vice-President of the World Bank, Economic Development and Institutions (EDI), financed by DFID, the British Agency for Development Cooperation.

Platteau is the author of several books, including Halting Degradation of Natural Resources – Is There a Role for Rural Communities? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) with J.M. Baland; Institutions, Social Norms, and Economic Development (Routledge, London, 2000); Culture and Development: New Insights into an Old Debate (Routledge, London, 2010); Islam Instrumentalized: Religion and Politics in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017); The Handbook of Economic Development and Institutions, (North Holland and Elsevier, 2017) with JM Baland, François Bourguignon, and Thierry Verdier; and Institutional Challenges at the Early Stages of Development: Lessons from a Multi-Country Study (Cambridge University Press) with F. Bourguignon.He has also published widely in academic journals, in both development economics and general economics journals.

His main research area is development economics and the economics of institutions. Most of his work has been concerned with the understanding of the role of institutions in economic development, and the processes of institutional change. The influence of non economic factors and other frontier issues at the interface between economics and sociology are a central focus of his work. His most important subjects are: land tenure and common property rights in poor countries, with special attention to Sub-Saharan Africa; the transformation of family structures, collective action problems in the management of village-level natural resources, informal insurance and micro-insurance programs, diffusion of technical progress, aid effectiveness, family and gender economics, the impact of statutory laws and the role of customs, and the political economy of religion. The region in which Platteau has mostly carried out his investigations is West Africa: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and, more recently, Benin. Partners in the field have been governmental agencies, international actors, and non-governmental organizations.