CAROL PATON: Outside knowledge and a deep ‘sense of us’ key to SA claiming its pot of gold
Being open to fresh ideas will help us onto a better path, says Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann
Over the holidays, finance minister Tito Mboweni held an economics colloquium to which a number of our esteemed private-sector colleagues (those of whom work in banks) and the heavy hitters — cabinet ministers and officials — in government economic departments were invited. We have not yet heard the outcome of their deliberations. The important thing about any talk shop is whether anything of importance happens afterwards. While several people made presentations, Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann was the main attraction at the December session. Hausmann is a Venezuelan and a one-time member of the Harvard panel that advised the government 10 years ago on what needs to be done to get growth going. That advice was never taken and a short time later Jacob Zuma took over the ANC and then the government, with the rest being history. Now Hausmann is back, this time with a political-sociological-psychological emphasis. The theme of his recent work is the importance of “a sense of us” in t...
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