Development and International Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century: The Role of Information Technology in the Context of Knowledge Based-Global Economy
5 May 2000
The third in a series of panels organized in connection with the high-level segment of the Economic and Social Council in 2000 on the theme of "Development and international cooperation in the twenty-first century: the role of information technology in the context of a knowledge-based global economy" was held on Friday, 5 May 2000, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Conference Room 3. The event was organized by the United Nations University.
H.E. Mr. Makarim Wibisono, President of the Economic and Social Council, chaired the panel. The panellists will be Mr. Hans van Ginkel, United Nations University; Mr. Matti Pohjola, United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economics Research; Mr. Veli-Pekka Niitamo, Nokia Group; Mr. Danny Quah, London School of Economics; and Mr. Jason Dedrick, Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations, University of California.
PROFESSOR HANS VAN GINKEL
Rector van Ginkel was born in Indonesia on 22 June 1940 and has lived in the Netherlands since 1951. There he completed his kandidaats and doctoraal exams as well as his doctor's degree (Ph.D.) at the University of Utrecht. His masters thesis was titled "The Morphology and Functions of Ancient South-East Asian Cities in the early 17th century" and focused on the urban, economic and historical geography of South-East Asia. His Ph.D. thesis was titled "Suburbanization and Recent Residential Environments." It helped define effective policies that the Dutch Government subsequently used to understand suburbanization in the highly urbanized western part of the country. He has also received an honorary doctorate from Universitatea "Babes-Bolyai" in Romania for his work in geography as well as internationalism.
From 1965 to 1968, he taught geography and history at Thomas à Kempis College, Arnhem. Since that time he has remained active in secondary education, serving as chairman of national committees responsible for the renewal of curricula and national examination programmes in geography, as the programme leader of full-time and part-time teacher training and as a member of advisory committees on programmatic links between top-level secondary schools and universities.
Since 1988, he has been the chairman of the National Science and Technology Week Foundation, which focuses on informing the general public, in particular youth, about developments in science and technology. In early 1997, this foundation merged into the National Foundation "Science and Technology, the Netherlands" of which Prof. van Ginkel serves as chairman, with Prince Claus as the honorary president.
From 1968-1985, he worked at the University of Utrecht in the Faculty of Geographical Sciences which more than doubled the number of its students from 650 to nearly 1,400 during the period 1970 to 1985. In 1980, he was appointed a full professor in human geography and planning. From 1982-1985, he served as dean of the faculty. Prof. van Ginkel became a member of the Executive Board of Utrecht University in 1985. He served as Rector from 1986 until assuming the Rectorship of UNU in September 1997.
Prof. van Ginkel's special fields of interest are urban and regional development, as well as population and housing studies. He has a strong interest in aspects of the application of geographical knowledge in society, in particular in urban and regional planning, public housing and housing markets, and public administration.
From 1988-1993 he was the independent chairman of the Regional Council of Utrecht in which Utrecht and 10 surrounding municipalities, together with representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, provincial and national authorities prepared the strategic plan for regional development. He has also served as a member of the Utrecht Network for Innovation and Economy established by the Regional Council of Utrecht in 1994.
Prof. van Ginkel has a strong interest in science policy and has served as Chairman of the Coordinating Committee of Advisory Councils on Science Policy (1991-1997) and as a member of the National Foresight Committee on Science Policy (1993-1997). Since 1997, he serves as a member of the Advisory Council on Science and Technology which provides advice to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science as well as the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands.
He has also maintained a strong interest in internationalism. Since 1986 he has served as the treasurer of the Netherlands Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education (Nuffic). He has also served a member and chairman of the governing board of the International Training Centre for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences at Enschedé. Since 1989 he has been a member of the Board of the European Association of Universities (CRE), serving as vice-president since 1994. Since 1990 he has been a member of the Administrative Board of the International Association of Universities (IAU), serving as vice-president since 1995. He is one of the founders of the CRE-Copernicus Programme, which seeks to enhance the contributions of European universities to sustainable development. He has also been the chairman of the CRE-Academic Task Force for Bosnian and Croatian universities. He was also the initiator of the CRE-Institutional Audit Programme, which is meant to stimulate a culture of quality among diverse European universities.
As the Rector of the Utrecht University, he developed North-South academic cooperation programmes between his university and universities in Africa, South-East Asia, and South and Central America. In 1991, he initiated the Utrecht-Unitwin Network, linking several universities in Europe (Lund, Bochum, Oporto) with the southern African universities of Maputo (Mozambique), Harare (Zimbabwe), Windhoek (Namibia) and Western Cape (South Africa). He also extended these links to South-East Asia and Latin America, bringing such universities as Gadjah Mada (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), Hassanudin (Ujung Pandang, Indonesia), Chulalongkorn (Bangkok, Thailand), Cochabamba (Bolivia), Georgetown (Guyana), Paramaribo (Suriname), Heredia (Costa Rica), León, (Nicaragua), and Guatemala (Guatemala) into the Utrecht University network.
Rector van Ginkel has also contributed to the work of various international educational organizations: since 1992 he has been a UNU Council Member and in 1996 he was appointed to a UNESCO Steering Committee to help guide the 1998 "World Conference on Higher Education."
Prof. van Ginkel is an active author in his fields of interest, including geography, and more specifically, urban, population and housing studies. He has published widely in the field of geography and has also written a number of articles on internationalization and university management.
Rector van Ginkel is a member and officer in several professional associations and organizations. He is currently: · Chair of the Board of Governors of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute; · Chair of the National Priority Programme in Demographic Research; and · Member of the Core Group Ethical Platform of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
Rector van Ginkel has received several awards of honour from his country. In 1992, he was made a member of the Social Sciences Council of the Royal Netherlands' Academy of Arts and Sciences. And in 1994 he was awarded the Knight in the Order of the Netherlands' Lion-one of the country's higher distinctions.
Rector van Ginkel is married to Bep Teepen. They have two children: one son and one daughter.
MR JASON DEDRICK
Jason Dedrick is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO), at the University of California, Irvine. He holds a Masters Degree from the Graduate School of International Relations/Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
Mr Dedrick's research is focused on the globalization of information technology (IT). He is particularly interested in the economic and policy factors influencing IT diffusion in individual countries and regions, and on the impacts of IT on economic growth and productivity. He has been studying the Asia-Pacific region for the past nine years and has recently completed case studies on Mexico and Brazil. He is now working on new studies involving globalization and the impacts of electronic commerce in the personal computer industry.
Mr Dedrick is co-author, with Kenneth L. Kraemer, of Asia's Computer Challenge: Threat or Opportunity for the United States and the World? New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. He is also author of numerous journal articles, book chapters and other publications.
PROFESSOR MATTI POHJOLA
Matti Pohjola is Principal Academic Officer and Acting Director of the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), The United Nations University, and Professor of Economics, Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. He holds a PhD Degree from the University of Cambridge.
Pohjola has contributed to a number of research areas in economics, ranging from game theory, labour economics, and environmental economics to information technology and economic growth. He has recently edited for UNU/WIDER a volume entitled "Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth: Implications for Economic Development". His current research focuses on the impacts of the digital economy on production, employment, and income distribution. PROFESSOR DANNY T. QUAH
Danny T. Quah
Danny T. Quah is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He serves on the Academic Panels of HM Treasury and the Office for National Statistics in the UK. In July 1998 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded him a grant for continuing study of the weightless economy and the economics of information technology. Quah's academic research has been further supported by awards from the British Academy, the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, and the MacArthur Foundation. In economics Quah has made contributions in a number of areas, ranging from time-series econometrics, business cycles, inflation, and international income inequality to, most recently, technology and economic growth. He also contributes to public understanding of economics, especially on technology, by writing a regular column in CentrePiece and commenting on economic developments in newspapers and on radio and television.
Veli-Pekka Niitamo
Education:
University of Technology, Helsinki
MS (Industrial Engineering) MA (Psychology) Phd Candidate
Work History:
Nokia, 1995 - present, Helsinki Director of Global Resourcing
UN Secretariat - 1990 - 1995, New York City OHRM Officer
Jaakko Poyry Consulting - 1982 - 1990, Helsinki Technology Transfer of Forest Industry for developing countries
Presentation of Speakers (PDF Format)