Dr Miguel Nino-Zarazua

Miguel Niño-Zarazúa is a Reader in Development Economics at SOAS University of London and a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research.

He is a leading international scholar in the area of social protection and welfare institutions in the Global South, with extensive research in the areas of political economy of taxation and redistribution; Measurement and development impacts of poverty, social exclusion inequality and polarization; informality and labour market policies in low and middle income countries; the economics and social impacts of microfinance, and the intersection between foreign aid and economic and social development with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South and Southeast Asia. He has published extensively in World Development, Population and Development Review, Review of Income and Wealth, Journal of Economic Inequality, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of International Development, Economic Letters, among other journals. His most recent book, ‘The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa’ (2019) is open access and published by Oxford University Press.

Miguel has led multidisciplinary and multi-country research teams in the past, including more recently a comparative study on the emergence of welfare institutions in subSaharan Africa funded by the Swedish Governmental Committee Expert Group of Aid Studies (EBA) (2020-2022); a comparative study on the effects of international democracy aid funded by EBA (2019-2020); a study on the inequality reducing effects of development projectsfunded by the Agence Francaise Développement (AFD) (2019- 2022), and a large study on the Economics and Politics of Taxation and Social Protection Systems in the Global South funded by UNU-WIDER (2014-2018). He currently coordinates research in the area of Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Africa under the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) collaborative Research programme, and serves as External Examiner in the field of Public Sector Economics as part of the AERC-supported Collaborative Masters Programme (CMAP) and Collaborative PhD Programme in Economics for sub-Saharan Africa.

Miguel has served as consultant to the World Bank, UNICEF, the International Labour Organization, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and provided advisory support to donor agencies including Sida, Danida, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, and governments in Latin America and Africa. He also served as Associated Editor and member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Development (2010- 2020), and prior to joining the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London, he taught at the Helsinki School of Economics at Aalto University, in Finland, the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield in the UK, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Social protection and welfare institutions in the global south, Informality and labour market policies, Poverty, Social exclusion, Inequality and polarization, Tax policy and redistribution, Economics of microfinance, Aid and development, Political economy of State capacity.