In this interview with Dr Brian Wong, former Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Doojmart Otobaev talked about Central Asia’s rise as a popular region for investment from global and regional powers and the challenges it faces. He emphasized that Central Asia wants to be friend with everyone, and won’t take sides in geopolitical tensions. More importantly, the mineral-rich region wants to be competitive, rather than get free lunches from others.

In this podcast, Stefan Dercon, Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford University and former chief economist at UK Department of International Development, argues that the elites’ policies, rather than the people, are the ones that matter for economic development. He also notes, while democracies and autocracies perform similarly well in economy on average, the real difference is the variance among autocracies.