Inequality and inclusion have topped the agenda at this year's Global Labor Market Conference in Riyadh this week. I sat down with Nobel Prize-winning economist James Robinson to talk about his research into the root causes of global inequality and the pivotal roles of institutions.
James, great to see you. Thanks very much indeed for joining us.
First of all, this is a new conference. It's fairly well attended for one so young, I suppose. How important do you think meetings like this are for the world economy?
Well, you know, I don't know the answer to that. I think this meeting is fascinating in the sense that what's been going on in this country in the last decade is a kind of transformation in the labor market which is unique, I think, by world historical standards. Think about the changing role of women in this country and the massive increase in female labor force participation. That's something dramatic and really fascinating to study.
And a lot of your work has been around the issue of inequality and where that sits within the whole scheme of things. How high do you find that being on the agenda here, informally or formally?
Well, I think everyone is a bit — it is on the agenda. I think everyone is a bit obsessed with AI for all the obvious reasons. It's the kind of flavor of the year, or the month, or something. And so I think there's a lot of discussion of inequality, labor market issues, but obviously AI feeds into that because many people are thinking about how AI will lead to transformation of work and the demand for labor and employment, and how to make it complementary with a kind of an economy of shared wealth and prosperity.
I've heard it mentioned, or even complained about here, that a lot of the world's economies are still in their own silos in terms of policy as well as in terms of how they operate. I mean, is there still a need for people, cooperation and partnership to be encouraged and increased?
Yeah, I think so. And there's a lot of scope for learning. I think what's interesting about this country, and I think most of the countries in the Arabian Peninsula, is there's just been a huge sort of thirst for learning and a demand for learning — like trying to understand what did other people do, how did they do it, what lessons are there, could we do that here, is that going to work here? And so I think that's an important role of meetings like this. You know, there's a lot of people from all over the world with different skills and expertise, and there's a lot of curiosity about what other people know. So I think that role is important.
Have you been impressed by that in the conversations you've had here?
What about the two other terms I've heard a lot of in the last couple of days — upskilling and inclusion — which play into that notion of equality, I suppose, but they're both being nominated, if you like, as being skills that we need to pay attention to, or issues that we need to pay attention to going forward. Would you agree with that?
Yes. I mean, I think inclusion is absolutely fundamental. You know, if people ask me — I work a lot in sub-Saharan Africa — and if you ask me what's the biggest problem for Nigeria, I'd say wasted talent. That's not even a sentence, it's two words: wasted talent. Those people are not included. People are not included; they don't have opportunities, they don't have a bank account, they don't have proper education, they don't have access to services, their lives are insecure. They're just not included in the kind of opportunities that someone like me took for granted when I was growing up in England. And so inclusion is absolutely critical.
And these are the countries, of course, where huge proportions of the population are in the first quarter of their life, or in the first quarter of a century. Absolutely. Yes, that's something that is still an elephant in the room, or is that something that people are appreciative of — the whole demography?
I don't know. I mean, it has all sorts of consequences. I think in the West we're living in countries with aging populations, and I suppose one solution to that is to allow migrants to come, but that's politically infeasible, certainly at the moment. But I think there's all sorts of potential in those countries with those very young societies.
It's just that the impression one gets, particularly following so soon after the meetings in Davos, is that the advanced economies are all readdressing the culture of opportunity and the culture of learning and the culture of education, talking themselves about huge winds of change being brought through by digitization and AI and all the rest of it, and then in the global South you've got economies that are just starting on some of those journeys but having to deal with those same issues.
Yeah, partially, you know. But what's the proportion of people in Nigeria or Sierra Leone who have access to a computer? I think you find it's less than 5%. There's enormous challenges with electricity, basic infrastructure. I teach at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka in the summers, and there's no internet, there's no power, there's no running water. I mean, there's just —
So what does that tell you?
