Philippe Burger
Professor of Economics and Head of Department, University of the Free State (South Africa)
Philippe Burger is Professor of Economics and Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Poverty, Inequality and Economic Development at the University of the Free State. He is a 2016/17 Fulbright Exchange Scholar at the Center for Sustainable Development, Earth Institute, at Columbia University, where he wrote a book on South Africa’s low growth and high unemployment problem entitled “Getting it right: a new economy for South Africa” (published August 2018). From September 2012 to October 2014 he was President of the Economic Society of South Africa. He was also a member of the South African Statistics Council, which oversees the work of Statistics South Africa. His publications include three books and numerous academic articles on fiscal rules and fiscal sustainability, public private partnerships, macroeconomic and economic development policy. Together with IMF staff he also co-authored two IMF working papers. In 2009 the IMF invited him to spend a month at the IMF as a visiting scholar, and for two months each in 2007, 2010, and 2012 he was seconded to the OECD in Paris to work on public-private partnerships and capital budgeting. In October 2011 he also joined an OECD mission to Indonesia to conduct a regulatory review of Indonesia. He was a member of the Panel of Experts of the South African National Treasury, in which capacity he co-authored a review of fiscal policy covering the first twenty years of democracy in South Africa.