Rogier van den Brink

• Comment: In accordance with Wikipedia's Conflict of interest guideline, I disclose that I have a conflict of interest regarding the subject of this article. Rogier44 (talk) 09:45, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

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Rogier van den Brink is a development economist who spent most of his career at the World Bank, working on agricultural, land reform, governance and macroeconomic policy in Africa, East Asia and Europe.

Education

Van den Brink received an ingenieur (Ir.) degree in agrarian sociology from Wageningen University & Research in 1983 and a PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1990. His doctoral thesis was titled Pastoralism, Property Rights, and Credit: Three Essays on Indigenous Economic Institutions in West Africa.

Career

Before joining the World Bank, he was a research associate at the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program and an associate expert with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working in a participatory rural development project in Kaya, Burkina Faso.

While serving as the World Bank's deputy resident representative in Zimbabwe, Van den Brink became involved in the debate about the country's worsening economic situation. In October 2000, contemporary reports quoted him on Zimbabwe's impending World Bank non-accrual status and its possible economic and social consequences. The Times reported comments by Van den Brink in his capacity as the World Bank's deputy representative in Harare. Correspondent Jan Raath wrote that Van den Brink had "come close to calling for an end to President Mugabe's 20-year rule". Van den Brink argued that "a successful political transition, as illustrated by restoration of law and order and a more pluralistic political dispensation, is also a key to a successful economic stabilisation and recovery."

In February 2000, The Washington Post quoted Van den Brink in a report on Zimbabwe's racially unequal land distribution. Van den Brink also participated in many formal and informal policy dialogues on Zimbabwe's land reform with scholars such as Sam Moyo.

Van den Brink subsequently served as the World Bank's senior country economist in South Africa. During debates about land reform, he argued that extreme inequality in land ownership was a "ticking time bomb" if the issue was not resolved peacefully.

In 2008, Van den Brink moved to the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region. He served as lead economist for Mongolia, where he worked on fiscal rules to manage its booming mining revenues.

In support of this policy agenda, Van den Brink was an executive producer of the Mongolian film Amka and the Three Golden Rules, directed by Babar Ahmed. The film was screened at international film festivals, including the New York Indian Film Festival, and received the Special Jury Award for Bridging Cultures at the Arizona International Film Festival. The film also received independent critical coverage, including a review in The Village Voice. It was later discussed in the World Bank's World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law in connection with Mongolia's debates over fiscal policy and natural-resource revenues. The WDR discussed the film as an example of using a family film to increase public understanding of the need for prudent management of mineral revenues.

Rogier van den Brink subsequently moved to the Philippines, where he worked on economic growth, employment, poverty reduction and governance. As the lead economist for the World Bank, Van den Brink commented publicly on the structural reform agenda needed to accelerate inclusive growth. In 2014, The Philippine Star reported at length on a lecture in which he argued that the country had a limited window of opportunity to undertake reforms aimed at creating more and better jobs, including improvements in the business environment and broader institutional reform.

In 2015, The Philippine Star quoted Van den Brink as saying that, if annual growth of around 6 percent were sustained and growth continued to reduce poverty at the prevailing rate, poverty in the Philippines could be eliminated within a generation.

In his later World Bank career, Van den Brink worked on economic and institutional issues affecting European Union member states. The findings of the 2019 World Bank report Including Institutions: Boosting Resilience in Europe, which Van den Brink co-led, were subsequently discussed at policy workshops involving the European Central Bank, the European Commission and government institutions in Central and Eastern Europe.

He co-authored the 2017 study Lessons from Poland, Insights for Poland: A Sustainable and Inclusive Transition to High Income Status, and co-authored its chapter on governance. The findings were presented in Warsaw in March 2017. In 2019, Krytyka Polityczna discussed the report in the context of competing interpretations of Poland's post-1989 economic transformation and the legacy of the reforms associated with Leszek Balcerowicz.

His work in this period also included analysis of agriculture and the Common Agricultural Policy in EU member states. In 2019, Van den Brink presented findings from the World Bank report Thinking CAP: Supporting Agricultural Jobs and Incomes in the EU at the Delphi Economic Forum.

Publications

“The Economics of Cain and Abel: Agro-pastoral Property Rights in the Sahel” (1995)

Co-authored with Daniel W. Bromley and Jean-Paul Chavas, this article examined conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in the Sahel through the economics of property rights. It made the economic case for flexible property-rights arrangements in high-risk settings. The article received the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize for the best article published in The Journal of Development Studies in 1995.

“The Microeconomics of an Indigenous African Institution: The Rotating Savings and Credit Association” (1997)

Co-authored with Jean-Paul Chavas, this article examined rotating savings and credit associations as indigenous financial institutions. It formally derived the relatively robust conditions under which these associations can thrive even in the presence of well-functioning formal markets.

Agricultural Land Redistribution: Toward Greater Consensus (2009)

Van den Brink co-edited, with Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize and Camille Bourguignon, the 2009 World Bank publication that examined the economic and institutional issues surrounding redistributive land reform. It considered the conditions under which land redistribution can improve productivity and equity, as well as the difficulties involved in designing and implementing reform programs.

Lessons from Poland, Insights for Poland: A Sustainable and Inclusive Transition to High Income Status (2017)

Van den Brink was one of the three team leaders, with Enrique Aldaz-Carroll and Emilia Skrok, of this World Bank study of Poland's remarkably rapid transformation from a middle-income to a high-income economy. The report examined the institutional and economic factors behind Poland's growth and the policy challenges involved in sustaining further convergence with higher-income European countries.

References

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