Carmelo Mesa-Lago

Carmelo Mesa-Lago "Regional Advisor on Social Security and Development at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in 1983-84. Author of 73 books and about 240 scholarly articles/chapters in books, most of them dealing with social security, published in eight languages in 33 countries.... Currently he is working on a major book in English on pension and health care reforms in the 20 countries of Latin America. Mesa-Lago has been a lecturer in 36 countries in Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, as well as a consultant on social security for International Labor Office, International Social Security Association, United Nations Development Program, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, UNCTAD, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Inter-American Foundation, USAID, Pan American Health Organization, Asian Development Bank, Wharton Econometrics Forecasting, GTZ, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. He has conducted research and advising on social security in all Latin American countries, as well as in Bahamas, Barbados, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, Jamaica and Thailand. In 1991 he completed a comparative study of social security in Asia and Latin America for the GTZ; in 1995 did a study for UNCTAD comparing and evaluating social safety nets in Africa and Latin America; in 2002 was a major speaker in a seminar on social protection in Asia and Latin America organized by the IADB and the ADB.

"He has been awarded research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Ford, Rockefeller, Mellon, Tinker, Kellogg and Heinz Foundations, the Fulbright Program and Japan Foundation, and has received prizes from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (outstanding research on social security), the Arthur Whitaker Prize (best book of the year), the Hoover Institution (best scholarly article of the year), the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Senior Research Award, Choice (outstanding book on social security), and the Iberoamerican Organization of Social Security and the Inter-American Committee on Social Security (on life work on social security)." 


 * Cuba Expert, Cuba Study Group
 * Editorial Board 1996, Institute of the Americas