In his presentation Hernando De Soto discusses why the dramatic and apparently irreversible entrance of developing and former Soviet nations into the global economy (or international division of labor) is not new. It has occurred before and fizzled out because sustainability of international competitiveness requires much more “knowing powers” than is evident at the beginning of the boom.
The economic globalization of the west did not just happen. It was possible only because westerners are endowed with the “knowing powers” required to conceptually model the world and nail down identities, information, and contracts across the globe.
Mr. De Soto reveals what these “knowing powers” are, how they work and how – over the last 150 years – they have gradually and inadvertently grown out of legal innovations generated by the Industrial Revolution which most countries of the world have not yet developed.
Hernando De Soto is the President of the ILD (Institute for Liberty and Democracy) a think tank in the field of development, headquartered in Lima. He has served as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, as President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization (CIPEC), as CEO of Universal Engineering Corporation (Continental Europe’s largest consulting engineering firm), as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank.
Together with his colleagues at the ILD, Hernando is designing and implementing capital formation programs to empower the poor in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and former Soviet Nations. Some 30 heads of state have invited him to carry out these ILD programs in their countries.
He also co-chairs with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright the Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor.
Among the prizes he has received are The Freedom Prize (Switzerland), and The Fisher Prize (United Kingdom). In 2002, he received, The Adam Smith Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education (USA), and The CARE Canada Award for Outstanding Development Thinking (Canada). In 2003, he received the Downey Fellowship at Yale University and The Milton Friedman
Prize.
In 2006, he received the 2006 The Economist’s Innovation Award for outstanding work in economics and the following year received The PODER BCG BUSINESS AWARDS 2007, granted by Poder Magazine and the Boston Consulting Group, for the “Best Anti-Poverty Initiative”.
In November of the same year he was awarded the 2007 Humanitarian Award in recognition of his work to help poor people participate in the market economy. The anthology Die zwölf wichtigsten Ökonomen der Welt (The World’s Twelve Most Influential Economists, 2007) included his profile in a list that begins with Adam Smith.
