 I'm an institutional economist. I research things like governance, the state, property right reforms, anti-corruption. And I want to talk a little bit about what institutional economics is, because it's not a very common part of the economics portfolio. But it's an extremely important set of questions. And institutional economics is at the heart of much of the debates you will have heard in the media about the structure of international institutions, the European Union, anti-corruption in developing countries, the role of industrial policy, does tariff protection work, and under what conditions does it work? These are tremendously important questions for countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, which are moving from low levels of economic development to higher levels of economic development, and face many questions about the appropriate governance structures and what they should be doing to accelerate and sustain their economic and social development. So what is institutional economics about? It actually asks some really big questions about how societies are organized, because it becomes very obvious once you look at the historical evidence that societies that do well are actually well-organized societies. They're not only well-organized in terms of overall social discipline, they're also well-organized in terms of how their organizations work, organizations like firms, like universities, hospitals, schools, and of course, the biggest and most important set of organizations, the state, how different ministries and agencies work. So why is it that some societies appear to be very well-organized and others appear to be very badly organized, and why is it that some societies find it so difficult to organize themselves? Well, these are the really big questions that institutional economics addresses. So we look at firms, we look at states, we look at politics, democracy, political organizations, and we ask these sorts of questions. And as you would expect, there is a huge amount of controversy and debate about what countries need to do to become better organized, more efficient, and more dynamic. And these are debates that I feel very passionately about. I engage with them. I'm one of the people who is participating in a lot of these international debates. And essentially, the debate is between those who argue that developing countries need to become more rule following and democratic and have what is called good governance in very big quotation marks. And if developing countries achieve that, then they will become more like advanced, disciplined, organized countries, but also develop faster. That is a very powerful view and has many powerful adherents and supporters. And on the other hand, there are people like myself and many others who argue that that is where societies end up. But if you look at the process through which societies actually develop, they have to have many other governance capabilities, many other types of institutions, which take them in the direction of becoming more organized, but they can't become more organized before they have become developed. And that is a very important debate, because if you look at how Japan developed, how South Korea or Taiwan developed, or China developed, it's very difficult to argue that they first had stable property rights, a good rule of law, and properly working democracies, and then they developed. Rather, they had lots of other governance capabilities and institutional structures and organizational capabilities, which allowed them to develop, and some of them are gradually moving towards what we recognize as more rule-following advanced societies. So that is a very important set of debates, which people feel very passionately about. There's a lot of historical evidence that we look at, and we interpret that historical evidence in different ways. And this has very important practical implications in terms of the advice that we give to developing countries and policymakers on what to do about anti-corruption, what to do about democratization, decentralization, devolution, industrial policy. All of these questions turn out to be linked to big philosophical positions people take and how they interpret the evidence on these big social transformations. I did a very big research program out of SOAS on anti-corruption evidence, which is funded by the Department for International Development in the UK. And we are looking at how to do feasible anti-corruption in developing countries, which helps their development. And it turns out how you do that depends very much on your position on these big questions. And increasingly, the alternative views of incremental change and of working in very adverse political contexts is becoming part of the mainstream way of thinking about how institutions will change in developing countries. So overall, I think I certainly think that institutional economics is one of the most exciting areas of economics. We have a lot of strength in that at SOAS, and we are leading some very big international research programs based on our knowledge of countries, based on our knowledge of institutional economics. And come to SOAS, this is where it's happening.