Professor Antonio Andreoni

Antonio Andreoni is Professor of Development Economics at the Department of Economics of SOAS University of London and Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainable Structural Transformation (CSST).

He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London (UCL), UK. He also holds an ASN National Habilitation to Full Professor in Economics in Italy.

At SOAS, Antonio is Convenor for Research and Knowledge Exchange for the College of Development, Economics and Finance (CODEF) and Chair of the SOAS Knowledge Exchange Committee. He previously served as Head of Research for Department of Economics and Research Director of the Anti-Corruption Evidence Consortium (SOAS-ACE). For over a decade Antonio has acted as an advisor to several international organisations – including UNIDO, UNCTAD, ILO, UNDP, World Bank, OECD – and national governments in industrial policymaking, including the EU Commission, UK, Germany, Finland, Portugal, South Africa, Mauritius, Tanzania and Uganda. In 2023 he was an advisor to the EU Commission’s Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW).

Antonio is a co-Editor of Competition and Change and of the European Journal of Development Research. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Italian Economic Journal and of the Journal of International Business Policy.

Antonio's research aims at understanding how value is created, captured, and distributed within and across different sectoral value chains, industrial ecosystems, and institutional political economy contexts. His research blends ‘productionist’ and political economy perspectives to disentangle processes of development and structural transformation in an age of ecological and social crises. His research focuses on how production, technological and organisational capabilities develop, as well as how industrial ecosystems innovate, diversify and become more sustainable. He studies how large corporations and digital platforms shape markets and industries, and how financialisation, rents capture and corruption processes destroy the productive fabric of the society. 

His research has given particular emphasis to the role of the state, including regional governments, with a focus on industrial policy design and implementation. As co-Director of CSST Antonio focuses on four inter-linked research areas – energy transition, mineral resources, reorganization of the international supply chain, and construction of new infrastructure – as well as two cross-cutting themes, that is, industrial policy and new business models, including the role of venture capital. Antonio’s research has received funding from DFID, Hyundai Motor Group, Gatsby Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, TLcom Capital, African Climate Foundation and UNU-WIDER.

Antonio has held affiliations at Cambridge University (Institute for Manufacturing), Columbia University (Initiative for Policy Dialogue), Tsinghua University (Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance) Grandes Ecoles (Institut Mines-Télécom Business School), University of Bologna (Faculty of Economics), LUISS, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (Potsdam) and AIR-Net Academic Industry Research Network. Antonio holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and he is Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge.

• Sustainable structural transformation
• Industrial policy
• Political economy
• Production
• Industrial ecosystems
• Global value chains
• Digitalisation
• Financialisation
• Institutional change
• Competition policy