Professional Affiliation

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development

Expert Bio

Colin Bradford is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington and of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Canada. He is director of the Brookings-CIGI global governance reform project in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. He and Johannes Linn have edited a Brookings Press 2007 book, Global Governance Reform: Breaking the Stalemate, based on a Brookings-CIGI seminar series and conference. As part of his work on governance reform, Dr. Bradford has written a recent paper on “World Energy Needs, Climate Change and Governance”.

From 1998 to 2004 he was Research Professor of Economics and International Relations and Distinguished Economist in Residence at American University. Between 1994 and 1998, Mr. Bradford was a presidential appointee in the Clinton administration serving as Chief Economist of the United States Agency for International Development where he was also the senior official in charge of US relations with other donors, playing a leadership role in developing the International Development Goals (IDGs) which were precursors of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From 1990 to 1994, Mr. Bradford was Head of Research at the Development Centre of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

Prior to serving with the OECD, he was the senior staff member for two years in charge of the international economic outlook work of the Strategic Planning Division of the World Bank. From 1978 to 1988, Dr. Bradford was Associate Director of the Yale Center for International Studies and taught international and development economics in the M.A. Program in International Relations, which he directed, and in the School of Management, where he was Associate Professor in the Practice of International Economics.

Previously, he was for ten years in Washington as the first Associate Fellow at the Overseas Development Council, senior economist at the Inter-American Committee for the Alliance for Progress, legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Lawton Chiles (D-Fla) and director of the Office of Multilateral Development Banks at the U.S. Treasury Department in the Carter administration. He is author of numerous articles on international economic policy and development issues and is editor of ten conference volumes on major international challenges. Colin Bradford received his B.A. degree in History from Yale University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Columbia University.