Bio
Tito Cordella is Vera and Stefano Zamagni Chair in Development Economics at SAIS Europe
Tito Cordella joined SAIS Europe as the Vera and Stefano Zamagni Chair in Development Economic. Tito started his professional career as an academic, teaching at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and at the University of Bologna. He then had a long stint at Bretton Woods Institutions where, alternating operational and research activities, he gained an extensive policy experience on a wide range of issues (monetary and fiscal policies, financial crises, banking, finance, growth, sovereign debt and debt restructuring, financial products, among others). At the IMF, Tito was a member of the Asian crisis team and then joined the Research Department where he focused on how to reform the international financial architecture. At the World Bank, he was the Brazil Lead Economist, the Deputy Chief Economist for LAC region, and an adviser to the World Bank Chief Economist. He is an honorary member of LACEA, a member of the LTI@UniTO Scientific Committee, and an advisory editor of the
Latin American Journal of Central Banking. Tito has published widely in banking, international finance/development, and trade. An Italian national, he holds a PhD in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium (European Doctoral Program). For a full list of publications,
click here.
Courses
- Development Finance: Economics, and Geopolitics
This course examines how developing countries obtain external finance, whether that finance promotes development, and how it is used as an instrument of geopolitical influence.
The course begins with the puzzle of why capital does not flow more readily from rich to poor countries. It then examines how the composition of development finance has changed over the past thirty years; it digs into the debate over aid effectiveness, design and evaluation of assistance, sovereign debt and debt relief, and finally looks at the rise, retrenchment, and changing composition of Chinese lending. The emphasis is on economic intuition, empirical evidence, and policy applications rather than formal modeling.