Çağlar Özden's blog

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Amidst a cacophony of vuvuzelas, expectations for the African teams in this World Cup had never been higher. For the first time the tournament was held on African soil and many African teams had famous coaches - Sven Goran Erikson for Cote d’Iviore being one example. Most importantly, there have never been so many African players signed to the top European clubs in the world; perhaps none more famously so than Samuel Eto’o of Inter Milan or Didier Drogba of Chelsea. And yet, the African teams were knocked out of the competition in the group stages, one by one. That is, all except Ghana, the team on which all African hopes now rested.

The World Bank, jointly with Agence Française de Développement (AFD), organized the Second International Migration and Development Conference on September 10-11th. The organizing committee consisted of Caglar Ozden and Maurice Schiff of the World Bank and Hillel Rapaport of Bar Ilan University (currently visiting Harvard University). This was a follow-up of the conference in Lille, France in June 2008, after which AFD agreed to sponsor a conference every year. The next conference is scheduled to be held at the Paris School of Economics in June 2010, hosted by Francois Bourguignon, former Chief Economist of the World Bank.

The conference program included the latest papers by the leading academics and researchers addressing a wide range of issues on the development and the migration nexus. Among the topics were migration and institutions, illegal migration, link between poverty and migration, human capital formation and migration, self-selection, migrant networks and social externalities. A total of 38 papers including two keynote addresses via parallel sessions were presented.