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CHAIR

Keith Nurse, Director, Shridath Ramphal Centre for International Trade Law, Policy & Services, University of the West Indies, Barbados ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

The current financial, economic and ecological crisis is not just a blip on the curve of what would otherwise be described as business as usual. The current crisis relates to the fact that the global economy has been in a phase of massive structural changes, with a myriad of imbalances (e.g. global warming, credit crunches, housing and technology bubbles, rising trade deficits, decline of the US$ as the world reserve currency). Economic historians suggest that the contemporary challenges are similar to the systemic transformations that accompanied the economic crises of the 1820s, 1870s, and the 1930s. However, periods of crisis are not bad for everyone or every place. The countries that have been able to expand their share of global value –added are those that have been able to amass the requisite human and technological resources to capture market shares in new leading sectors. What is the appropriate innovation and technology governance strategy for small and developing economies in the emerging global economy? Which countries and sectors are the winners and losers and from where will the new sources of world demand and consumption come are some of the key questions that this panel aims to address.