Abstract

Speaker: Ugo Gentilini Title: “What Are We Learning from 2,500 Years of Cash Transfers?” Time: 12 May 2025, 18:00-19:30 Location: The Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College.

The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Cambridge Judge Business School.

Talk Overview: Cash transfers, or the provision of money to people by the state, reach hundreds of million people worldwide. But when did they start, and how did they spread over countries and centuries? How did past practices look like, and how did they evolve? Why, despite compelling evidence, are policymakers sometimes skeptical about cash transfers? Drawing from Ugo Gentilini’s new book Timely Cash. Lessons from 2,500 Years of Giving People Money (OUP), the talk explores those questions by tracing cash transfers over history, codifying diversity in experiences, and identifying recurrent patterns. In doing so, the volume helps illuminate the roots of modern cash transfer dilemmas and reveals how the past can offer surprising lessons for contemporary debates

Speaker Overview: Ugo Gentilini serves as Lead Economist for Social Protection and Jobs at the World Bank. With 25 years of professional experience, his work combines empirical inquiry and policy design in countries across the income spectrum. Ugo’s numerous publications explore the intersection between social protection systems and a wide range of themes, such as labor markets, human development, crisis preparedness and response, food security and nutrition, urbanization, and humanitarian assistance. Before joining the World Bank, he spent a decade with the United Nations World Food Programme. Ugo holds a PhD in Development Economics and produces a weekly newsletter on social protection reaching a wide global audience (www.ugogentilini.net).