Shanta Devarajan on the Sri-Lankan Crisis

Welcome to another episode of Patterns and Stories. Joining us today is Shanta Devarajan, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Georgetown University. Prior to that, he was Senior Director for Development Economics and a former Acting Chief Economist of the World Bank Group.

We are your hosts, Luca Dellanna and Ismail Manik.

The AI-generated transcript was lightly edited for grammar and fluency.

Highlights

* “One distinction between the Sri Lankan crisis and all the others that I have worked on […] is that the Sri Lankan crisis was an entirely Sri Lankan, the Sri Lankans’ fault. Most of these other crises, there's usually some negative shock that

that comes up.”

* “We introduced something called a governance-linked bond, where the coupon rate on the bond will go down if the government introduces certain governance-linked policies. So, the idea there is that you have a fiscal incentive, the government has a fiscal incentive to introduce these good governance reforms.”

* “The first lesson I take from the Sri Lankan case, but it's something that I could have told you even before the Sri Lankan experience, is do not delay. You should act early.”

* “When a country is doing well and there's some deep underlying governance problems, it's very tempting to say, well, those problems aren't so serious. Right? Look, we're doing well. Look at all the indicators. And I think that's very dangerous.”

Links

* Shanta’s book

* Shanta’s Twitter

* Shanta’s LinkedIn