Ricardo Hausmann

Drawing on his Economic Complexity framework, Hausmann explains growth through a powerful and accessible lens: economies prosper by accumulating capabilities — the productive know-how embedded in people, institutions, and networks — not simply by exploiting resources or attracting capital. Through concrete country examples and data visualizations developed at the Growth Lab, he reveals what actually drives productive capacity, why the gap between rich and poor economies persists despite decades of conventional development policy, and what realistic strategies look like for countries and regions determined to break out of structural stagnation. Essential for sovereign wealth fund forums, multilateral institution events, and any senior audience with a stake in emerging market growth.

The global decarbonization transition is not just a climate challenge — it is a structural economic shift that will redraw comparative advantage, relocate industries, and create new paths to prosperity for countries and regions with the right endowments and capabilities. In this keynote, Hausmann presents his concept of powershoring — the logic of moving energy-intensive industries to where clean energy is abundant and cheap — and demonstrates how countries can use the Growth Lab's Greenplexity tool to identify their most promising positions in the green value chains of solar, wind, batteries, EVs, green steel, and more. A forward-looking framework for leaders in energy, finance, sovereign wealth, and industrial policy who want to understand where the next wave of economic geography is forming.

Why do countries with abundant resources, talented populations, and real capabilities sometimes fail so catastrophically? Drawing on decades of research and case studies including Venezuela, Argentina, and others, Hausmann analyzes the structural and institutional forces behind economic collapse: fiscal mismanagement, policy credibility failures, overdependence on narrow commodity sectors, currency mismatches, and the political economy of reform paralysis. The talk offers a clear analytical framework for understanding how fragility accumulates before it becomes crisis — and what institutional and policy choices create genuine resilience. Directly relevant for risk officers, institutional investors, and policymakers operating in or exposed to emerging market environments.

For decades, industrial policy was treated as a relic of failed statism. That consensus has collapsed — replaced by a global wave of active government intervention from the US CHIPS Act to European green industrial strategies to emerging market diversification programs. In this timely keynote, Hausmann examines what the evidence actually says about when and how industrial policy works, how it differs from old-style protectionism, and what the structural conditions are for governments to guide economic diversification effectively without distorting the market signals that make it possible. Drawing on his 2025 research with Bruegel and the OECD Climate Club, this is a rigorous, non-ideological framework for leaders navigating the return of the state to center stage in economic strategy.

Emerging markets account for the majority of global growth potential — but they also carry structural vulnerabilities that are poorly understood by those relying on conventional financial metrics alone. In this keynote, Hausmann applies his Growth Diagnostics methodology to help senior audiences distinguish genuine opportunity from superficially attractive traps: why some economies with strong fundamentals on paper persistently underperform, how to identify the binding constraints that actually limit growth, and what institutional and productive conditions are necessary for investment returns to materialize at scale. A practical, evidence-based framework for any organization with significant exposure to the developing world.

Rather than offering short-term market forecasts, this keynote provides a structured framework for interpreting the major structural shifts reshaping the global economy: geopolitical fragmentation, the reordering of global value chains, protectionism and tariff escalation, the decoupling of great powers, and the implications for emerging market growth strategies. Drawing on his most current research and commentary, Hausmann helps leaders separate cyclical noise from the deeper structural trends that will define economic geography over the coming decade — and think more clearly about strategic positioning in an era of persistent uncertainty.