Prof Philippe Burger
Photo: Sonia Small

Philippe Burger is Professor of Economics and Head of Department at the University of the Free State. From February 2018 he is also acting dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Free State. He is a 2016/17 Fulbright Exchange Scholar at the Center for Sustainable Development, Earth Institute, at Columbia University, where he wrote a book on South Africa’s low growth and high unemployment problem entitled “Getting it right: a new economy for South Africa) (publication expected August 2018). From September 2012 to October 2014 he was President of the Economic Society of South Africa. He was also a member of the South African Statistics Council, which oversees the work of Statistics South Africa. His publications include three books and numerous academic articles on fiscal rules and fiscal sustainability, public private partnerships and macroeconomic and economic development policy. Together with IMF staff he also co-authored two IMF working papers.

In 2009 the IMF also invited him to spend a month at the IMF as a visiting scholar. For two months each in 2007, 2010 and 2012 he was seconded to the OECD in Paris to work on public private partnerships and capital budgeting, while in October 2011 he joined an OECD mission to Indonesia to conduct a regulatory review of Indonesia. He was a member of the Panel of Experts of the South African National Treasury, in which capacity he recently co-authored a 20-year review of South African fiscal policy since 1994.