Zavareh Rustomjee
Independent Consultant and Development Economist
Zavareh@Rustomjee.co.za
About: Zavareh Rustomjee is an independent consultant and development economist with extensive experience in the development and implementation of industrial, trade, energy and infrastructure policy; private and public sector strategy development as well as having served on the boards of a number of South African Development Finance Institutions. Zavareh researched and contributed to the development of industrial and trade policy in South Africa between 1990 and 1999, during which he also served for 5 years as the Director General of the DTI.
Research Interests: Industry, Infrastructure, Minerals Energy
Area Interests: South and Southern Africa
Education: PhD Economics (SOAS, University of London), MPhil Development Economics (University of Sussex), MSc.Industrial Engineering (University of the Witwatersrand), BSc.(Hons)Chemical Engineering (University of Surrey)
Work Experience: (Current) Independent Consultant, (2002 – May 2005) Executive Director: Southern Africa Energy, BHP Billiton South Africa, (2001- August 2002) Consultant. Special Advisor (part-time) to the Minister of Trade and Industry and Minister of Minerals and Energy, (1994-1999) Director-General, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), (1993-4) Coordinated the ANC Department of Economic Planning’s Trade and Industry Desk, (1990-4) Completed policy-oriented research on the South African minerals, energy and engineering sector, (1980-88) 9 years professional engineering work experience in South African industry, including the petroleum, industrial gas and process plant design and contracting sectors
Selected Publications: Fine, B., and Rustomjee, Z., 1996, The Political Economy of South Africa: From Minerals-energy Complex to Industrialisation, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers
Ben Fine
Professor, SOAS, University of London
bf@soas.ac.uk
About: Ben Fine has been Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London since 1994. Before that he was Professor of Economics at Birkbeck College, also University of London.
Research Interests: All aspects of political economy and political economy of development and their implications for economic and social policy and interdisciplinarity. Previous and continuing research includes history of economic thought, Marxist economics, the British coal industry, privatisation, the political economy of consumption, especially food and public provision, industrial policy, social policy, financialisation, social capital, South Africa’s political economy, development economics and the role of the World Bank as knowledge bank, neoliberalism, and the critique of mainstream economics for its lack of history of thought, adequate methodology, tolerance for alternatives and removal from realities.
Area Interests: South Africa and developing economies
Education: BA Mathematics and BPhil Economics (Oxford) and Phd Economics (London School of Economics, University of London)
Work Experience: Visiting Senior Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand and Senior Research Fellow attached to the South African Research Chair in Social Change, University of Johannesburg. Contributing editor to the Greater London Council’s London Labour Plan and London Industrial Strategy; contributing co-editor of the MERG Report (LINK), and served as an international expert advisor on the President Mandela’s Labour Market Commission. Has advised the ANC in various capacities as well as working for varieties of UN agencies and trade unions. He currently sits on the Social Science Research Committee of the UK’s Food Standards Agency for which he chaired the Working Group on Reform of Slaughterhouse Controls (at the time of the horsemeat scandal). His research has been funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the British Academyy, and the European Union for a major programme on reform of finance, FESSUD.
Selected Publications:
Fine, B. and Rustomjee, Z., 1997. South Africa's Political Economy: From Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialisation.
Fine, B. and Milonakis, D., 2008. From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the Social and the Historical in the Evolution of Economic Theory. Routledge. (Awarded the 2009 Gunnar Myrdal Prize)
Fine, B. and Milonakis, D., 2009. From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries Between Economics and Other Social Sciences. London; New York: Routledge. (Awarded the 2009 Deutscher Prize)
Fine, B. and Saad Filho, A., 2010. Marx's 'Capital', fifth edition. London: Pluto Press.
Fine, B., 2010. Theories of Social Capital: Researchers Behaving Badly. Pluto. (IIPPE)
Contributing editor to:
Bayliss, K. and Fine, B., eds., 2007. Privatization and Alternative Public Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Delivering on Electricity and Water. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bayliss, K., Fine, B. and Van Waeyenberge, E., eds., 2011. The Political Economy of Development: The World Bank, Neoliberalism and Development Research. London: Pluto Press.
Saad Filho, A. and Fine, B. and Boffo, M., eds., 2012. The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics. Cheltenham: Elgar.
Chang, K.S., Fine, B. and Weiss, L., eds., 2012. Developmental Politics in Transition: The Neoliberal Era and Beyond. Palgrave MacMillan. (International Political Economy Series)
Fine, B., Saraswati, J. and Tavasic, D., eds., 2013. Beyond the Developmental State: Industrial Policy into the 21st Century. London: Pluto.