Paul Smoke
Professor of Public Finance and Planning
Paul Smoke, Professor of Public Finance and Planning and Director of International Programs, teaches courses on public finance, development planning, and governance in developing countries. His research and policy interests include urban and regional development and the political economy of fiscal reform and public sector decentralization. He previously taught in the International Development Program and chaired the Master in City Planning Program at MIT, and he worked as a resident policy advisor with the Harvard Institute for International Development in Kenya and Indonesia.
His research and policy work has covered various regions and multiple countries, including Cambodia, Uganda, South Africa, Vietnam, India, Ethiopia, Palestine, Yemen, Brazil, Nepal, Egypt, and the USA. He has worked with various international organizations, including the World Bank, UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), UN Development Program (UNDP), UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), UN Center for Human Settlements (UNCHS), US Agency for International Development (USAID), UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the British Department for International Development (DFIF), the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), and GTZ (German Aid Agency). Recent efforts include helping to develop a World Bank comparative analysis of decentralization in East Asia, serving as research director for a USAID-financed municipal financial reform project in South Africa, and coordinating an ADB review of intergovernmental transfer systems in selected Asian countries.
He has published in numerous journals, including World Development, Public Administration and Development, International Journal of Public Administration, Third World Planning Review, Regional Development Dialogue, Public Budgeting and Finance, Economic Development Quarterly, and Journal of Developing Areas. He has written or edited several books, the most recent of which (edited with Eduardo Gomez and George Peterson) is Decentralization in Asia and Latin American: Towards a Comparative Interdisciplinary Perspective (Edward Elgar, 2007). Professor Smoke received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
