Wheeler Institute for Business and Development

We create impact by identifying big challenges, applying business insights to help solve these challenges, and forging communities of learning and practice to implement large-scale and enduring change.

Institutional independence and social media

Providing real-time, market-based evidence on threats to institutional independence With the rise of political polarisation and populism in recent election cycles, attacks on national and international independent institutions (Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation) have increased. Analysing market-implied expectations around attacks by political leaders allows assessment of the credibility and severity of…

Education for all, occupational choice and business formation in Africa

Examining the success of school expenditure in terms of economic payoff Africa has witnessed an unprecedented increase in access to education in the past decades. Nonetheless, manufacturing employment is tiny, innovation is weak and many large corporations ‘complain’ that there is a skill shortage. Thanks to large-scale school construction throughout the continent, many more children…

The reaction to the Coronavirus crisis will have more consequences and touch more lives than the trigger

How much of an impact is COVID-19 going to have on the world? Elias Papaioannou, Professor of Economics at London Business School and Academic Director of the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development was joined in conversation with Moisés Naím, an internationally-syndicated columnist and best-selling author, including The End of Power, as well as Venezuela’s…

The need for accurate economic data is on a par with having accurate medical data during the pandemic

How can we quickly and accurately measure the macroeconomic shock brought about by COVID-19? Elias Papaioannou, Professor of Economics at London Business School and Academic Director of the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development was joined in conversation with Paolo Surico, Professor of Economics at London Business School, to discuss the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Economists are reliant on household consumption data to provide insights related to the impact of…

Hunger could kill more people than COVID-19

Elias Papaioannou, Professor of Economics at London Business School and Academic Director of the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development was joined in conversation with Oriana Bandiera, Italian economist and academic and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, specialising in development economics, to discuss how her research in Bangladesh relating to the Ebola outbreak might have lessons for other developing economies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity for us to decide what sort of world we want to build

Kamalini Ramdas, Professor of Management Science and Operations; Deloitte Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship was joined in conversation with Professor Muhammad Yunus, Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, economist, and civil society leader and ”the world’s banker to the poor”, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and founder of the Grameen Bank.

Economic information theory can help policymakers prioritise testing and understand the costs of taking the wrong action during the COVID-19 pandemic

Elias Papaioannou, Professor of Economics at London Business School and Academic Director of the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development was joined in conversation with Andrea Galeotti, Professor of Economics at London Business School, and co-author, with Paolo Surico, of “The economics of a pandemic: the case of COVID-19”, to discuss the optimal testing strategy for countries across the world.