My great friend Theo Kocken is doing enormous good for the world’s poor by organizing risk sharing across emerging countries. Theo previously appeared on Economics Matters — The Podcast on December 15, 2022, and I am delighted to have him back to describe his numerous highly successful and ingenious efforts to reduce the financial, exchange rate, and real risks facing the poorest nations in the world. These days, when so many successful people are intoxicated by their wealth and interested only in accumulating more, it is deeply reassuring that there are Theo Kockens devoting their extraordinary talents to helping others.
About Theo
Theo Kocken is a wonderful and extraordinary person. He’s an economist, a highly successful entrepreneur, and an incredible, in-kind philanthropist. In-kind philanthropy means using your human talents to devise novel ways to raise and help address intractable problems. This includes focusing Dutch society on intergenerational equity when it comes to their pension system, making a terrific movie, together with Monty Python’s Terry Jones, on financial booms and busts, developing a soon-to-be-released movie on global aging and its solutions, and, most importantly, developing new risk-sharing arrangements for Africa. These arrangements are operating on a daily basis with the support of most major international development institutions and making a major difference to the daily lives of a multitude of Africans. Indeed, Theo, who is virtually unknown to those outside the area of development finance, appears to be a one-man World Bank. He’s pulling off real economic change that makes one wonder what the development banks have been doing and waiting for all these years.
Theo’s exciting career and thrilling current development work is laid out in full detail in this captivating podcast. Here’s his bio, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Theo Kocken is Professor of Risk Management at VU University Amsterdam, founder of the Anglo-Dutch pension investment & risk management firm Cardano and chairman of the Cardano Development Foundation. He is also an extraordinary professor at NWU University (South Africa).
Before founding Cardano in 2000, he worked in the banking sector between 1990 until 2000 and was amongst other positions head of Market Risk at ING and Rabobank. He graduated in Business Administration (1990) and Econometrics (1993) and received his PhD at VU University Amsterdam (2006).
Over the past 25 years, Theo has published multiple books and articles on risk management, pension fund design, and financial markets. He also uses alternative media. Together with Monty Python’s Terry Jones, Theo produced the documentary “Boom Bust Boom” on financial crises and endogenous financial instability. He is currently working on an international documentary about the worldwide increase in longevity and how to cope with it.
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