News & Blogs

Research Report Sheds New Light on Economic Impacts of Tourism in Colombia

Bogota – Against the backdrop of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Medellin, MasterCard released a new analysis of foreign tourist spending in Colombia based on research conducted in collaboration with the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University. The analysis reveals rare insights on the economic benefits of tourism, and the role of payment acceptance in driving more inclusive growth.... Read more about Research Report Sheds New Light on Economic Impacts of Tourism in Colombia

Uncovering New Insights For How Business ‘Knowhow’ Impacts Economic Growth

MasterCard data helps reveal how ‘knowhow’ moves around the world

Cambridge, MA – A unique research collaboration between the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University and the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth is uncovering new insights on the dynamics of global business travel and its impact on economies. Through the first-ever MasterCard grant of commercial insight data, researchers at CID are working to understand the flow and accumulation of business ‘knowhow,’ a key driver for inclusive economic growth.

Inclusive Growth: Our Vision, the Symposium, and What's Next

Author: Alfredo Guerra

Our vision on Inclusive Growth
Inclusive Growth is broadly understood as output growth that is sustained over decades, that is broad-based across economic sectors, creates productive employment opportunities that a great majority of the country’s working age population can access, and reduces poverty.

We believe Inclusive Growth is about increases in human productivity that are broadly accessible to members of a society, allowing them to participate and to share in the benefits of...

Re-Inventing the Corner Store

Q&A with Busi Radebe

Busi is the founder of iShipa, technology that will allow small business owners in South Africa to keep track of their sales and inventory management information.

What was your inspiration?

When I started working on this project the focus was pretty much from a South African context, but when I looked at the request for proposals, it gave me the view that the problem I’m trying to solve is not unique to South Africa.... Read more about Re-Inventing the Corner Store

Geolocation-Based Public Information System

Q&A with Ashish Rana

Ashish Rana is the software developer behind Qbila - a geolocation based public information platform that connects government organizations with people living in the region they are serving.

What was your inspiration?

It started when I was living in Delhi, near the place where the rape incident of December 16^th happened in 2012. The most disturbing part for me was that that place was just two streets beyond where I was living, but I was not able to know it from the local source, but from the news agencies, the national news agencies. So it showed how disconnected we are from our localities.... Read more about Geolocation-Based Public Information System

Visibility into Human Potential to Increase Diversity of Talent Markets

Q&A with Gretchen Phillips

Gretchen Phillips is exploring the opportunity for tools and technologies to drive inclusive growth by creating more efficient, effective and diverse talent markets. She believes these tools will revolutionize talent markets by enabling companies to hire more productive employees in an objective, merit–based and cost effective manner.

What inspired you to submit your proposal?

My motivation in being here is two-fold. One is, I recognize what we are doing in the Philippines is very exciting, I think it has enormous potential, but I also recognize that me, we, all the people involved, can’t do it alone. So I was particularly keen to come here and connect with other people, organizations that had tried similar things in the past to learn what had gone well or what challenges did they face… what could we learn?

Breaking Barriers to The Labor Market

Q&A with László Juhász

Laszlo Juhasz leads the Budapest office of the Boston Consulting Group. The Integrom Program is a social experiment initiated by The Boston Consulting Group, bringing together the civil and corporate sector to build the missing bridge between Roma job seekers and the corporate labor market.

What inspired you?

We submitted the proposal because we are very passionate about helping the Roma population in Hungary get corporate jobs because the issue with this population in Hungary is that they are not integrated into a society at all. [...] We know it’s impossible to change this in one step, but we believe the program is one step in the right direction.

Democratizing Incubation: Creating a Virtual Startup Ecosystem

Q&A with Stefanie Bauer

Stefanie Bauer leads the Africa work of Intellecap's Business Consulting and Research team. She discusses her vision to build a virtual ecosystem that provides startups from across the world with capital, advice and networks.

Why did you submit your proposal for the Symposium?

We have been working on Startup Wave for the last one and a half years [...] We really wanted to discuss it with a larger audience, with other practitioners that have similarly great ideas [...] but also make it known and also potentially scale it up to other regions. We have been doing it in India; we now want to do it in Africa. We want to bring Startup Wave as a solution to other regions in the world, so getting feedback from a larger audience and other innovators who have similarly developed something great was really the objective.... Read more about Democratizing Incubation: Creating a Virtual Startup Ecosystem

How Adding Mobile Subscribers Will Drive Inclusive Growth

Q&A with David Michael

David Michael, Senior Advisor of the Boston Consulting Group and Professor of Practice at UC San Diego's Graduate School of Global Policy and Strategy, believes better policy objectives, further investment, and coordinated action by governments, technology providers and multilateral agencies can advance deployment of wider mobile access.

What is the focus of your proposal?

Our proposal focuses on the deployment of advanced mobile networks across the world. It’s something that we take for granted, we assume that it’s happening, but what we point out is that in many emerging markets [...] the most advanced networks are not being deployed at a sufficient rate. And so our proposal really is a call to action to establish a score card, evaluating governments around the world on their true rate of progress in deploying the most advanced mobile networks which really the modern global economy needs and that people need to become part of an inclusive growth model.... Read more about How Adding Mobile Subscribers Will Drive Inclusive Growth

Improving Savings by Reducing Investment Mistakes

Q&A with Ugo Panizza

Ugo Panizza, Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, believes a process of financial education can have a large effect on the welfare of middle-class households in advanced economies.

What was your inspiration?

If you study economics, people keep asking you, 'How should I invest my money?' So I always thought at some point I should write down the answers. And then I read a paper saying that the differences in investment strategies contribute to income inequality, so I thought I could sort of kill two birds with one stone, write down my paper explaining to people how they should invest their money and at the same time find a way to reduce income inequality by improving investment strategies.