Carlos Braga

Visiting Professor

Carlos Braga is a visiting professor. His areas of special interest include macroeconomics, international trade, foreign direct investment, regulatory policies, economics of innovation, intellectual property rights, sovereign debt, global and corporate governance and development economics.

He is also Adjunct Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral, Brazil, Managing Director of Ouchy Consultoria Empresarial Ltda, São Paulo, Brazil, and a visiting professor at El Colegio de México.

From 2015 to 2020, he was the Expedition Leader for the IMD EMBA Discovery Expeditions to Brazil, and from 2012-15 he was Professor of International Political Economy at IMD and Director of the Evian Group@IMD, an international coalition of corporate, government, and opinion leaders united by a common vision of enhancing global prosperity by fostering an open, inclusive and equitable global market economy.

Before joining IMD in September 2012, Braga was the Special Representative and Director for Europe, External Affairs (EXT) Vice-Presidency at The World Bank (2011-12), where he was also Director of Economic Policy and Debt (2008-10) and, in 2010, the Acting Vice President and Corporate Secretary of the World Bank Group and Acting Executive Secretary of the Development Committee.

His other responsibilities at the World Bank included anchoring strategic relationships with key shareholder groupings (e.g., G7/8, G20, G24, APEC, ASEM) and with institutions such as the IMF, Commonwealth Secretariat and OECD, Senior Adviser of the International Trade Department (2003-06), responsible for dialogue on international trade issues with European-based institutions, including the OECD, the EC, UNCTAD and the WTO, Senior Manager of the Informatics Program at the Information Solutions Group (2001-03), and Director of the Development Gateway, a web-based initiative for sharing information on development-related topics. From 1997 to 2001, he was the Manager of infoDev (the Information for Development Program).

Prior to joining the World Bank in 1991, Braga served as a consultant to the Organization of American States (1990). He was a Fulbright Scholar (1988/89) at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University where he also taught as a visiting professor (1988-98). Prior to that, he was Assistant Professor of Economics at University of São Paulo (USP) and Senior Researcher at FIPE, São Paulo, Brazil. He received a degree in mechanical engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (Brazil) and an MSc in economics from USP. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

His most recent publications include: “Confronting Deglobalisation in the Multilateral Trading System,” Trade Law and Development XIV (Summer 2022), co-authored with Sait Akman et al.; “Covid-19 and Global Sea Transport,” co-authored with D. Lippoldt, Policy Brief #14, IIT/University of Adelaide, 2021; “O administrador em tempos de pandemia,” Dom Contexto , 2021; “A Adesão à OCDE: Muito Barulho Por Nada?” Revista Tempo do Mundo” (abril 2021); “Cold War 2.0: Implications for Middle Powers,” Policy Brief, Institute of International Trade, University of Adelaide, 11 February 2021; “The Shape of Things to Come: Trade and Foreign Policy in the Biden Administration,” Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, December 2020; “The Perfect Storm: Interventionism, Inequality, Decoupling and Zombies,” Policy Brief, Institute of International Trade, University of Adelaide, 2020.

Academic publications
Insight for Executives
Article
Investment and development: How to leverage FDI

This paper discusses how a developing country can best attract FDI, the importance of adopting a holistic developmental perspective encompassing trade, investment, movement-of-labor, and knowledge ...

Emerging Market Finance
1 November 2015
Article
Real depreciation in Brazil

What a difference a year makes! For visitors to Brazil, a steak lunch in a top restaurant would have cost USD $120 per capita in October 2014 (not including caipirinhas or wine). Today the same mea...

Economics
29 October 2015
Article
Greece and the Eurozone: A sinful cocktail of debt and denial

The future of the Greek economy and its place in the Eurozone are back in the headlines. The new government in Athens has adopted a confrontational strategy, building upon the anti-austerity stance...

Economics
26 February 2015
Article
The HR manager's dilemma

In the late 1990s, I was the manager of the Information for Development (InfoDev) programme at The World Bank. Those were the early days of the Internet "revolution," and conferences about the dram...

Organizational Behavior Technology Management
21 February 2014
Article
Cai o castelo de cartas de Eike: Entenda a crise no Grupo EBX

No Brasil, o mês de outubro terminou com um estrondo. O imperio de Eike Batista (Grupo EBX), que estava sob pressao finaneira ha mais de um ano, enfrentou uma nova crise com a falência da OGX, sue ...

Strategy
29 November 2013
Article
A surpresa de outubro

25 October 2013
Article
Business as usual

Political developments, both on the domestic and international fronts, have dominated Brazilian headlines in the last few weeks. President Rousseff informed the White House that she was cancelling ...

Geopolitics
26 September 2013
Article
The third act

The good news is that the Brazilian Central Bank has adopted appropriate policies to increase the predictability of the exchange rate by offering $500 million currency swaps per day plus weekly off...

Performance Management
29 August 2013
Article
Mixed feeling

The contradictions of the current Brazilian economic model are becoming quite evident. The ability of the government to steer growth by relying on credit expansion in the context of a consumer-driv...

Growth Geopolitics
9 August 2013
Article
Brazil: A work in progress

Tom Jobim, the famed Brazilian musician and one of the “fathers” of the Bossa Nova, once said: “Brazil is not for beginners.” The developments of the last few weeks underscore his wisdom. Over the ...

Performance Management
19 July 2013
Article
Defusing the EU and China's explosive trade dispute

The EU-China solar panel dispute could conceivably fizzle out. Alternatively, it could escalate into a major trade conflict between two of the world’s three economic giants. Obviously one hopes for...

Economics China
11 June 2013
Article
Determining Chavez's impact will take time

The death of Hugo Chávez elicited very different political reactions around the globe. In economic terms, however, Venezuela's caudillo (military dictator) was a terrible manager.¦First, the reacti...

Geopolitics
20 March 2013