In 1973, he completed his doctoral dissertation under supervision of Professor Jan Tinbergen, the first Nobel laureate in economics.
In October 2007 he launched the blog Ideas4development alongside Josette Sheeran, Donald Kaberuka, Kemal Dervis, Pascal Lamy, Abdou Diouf and Supachai Panitchpakdi, in which the authors share their visions, doubts and hopes for international development.