Hans Timmer is the World Bank's Chief Economist for South Asia. He assumed this position on January 1, 2019. Before that, he was the Chief Economist for the Europe and Central Asia region of the World Bank.  Under his management in ECA, a series of regional reports, most recently, Toward a New Social Contract and Critical Connections, and a series of regional economic updates are produced.  Prior to these positions, Timmer was Director of the World Bank's Development Prospects Group.

Timmer is a quantitative international macroeconomist and econometrician with 30 years of management experience in leading teams of modelers, forecasters, and policy analysts. His experience ranges from long-term structural analyses of the economic impact of environmental policies, trade policies, and tax reforms, to short-term monitoring of the business cycle and analysis of monetary and fiscal policies.

Before joining the World Bank in 2000, Timmer was head of international economic analysis at the Central Planning Bureau in the Netherlands. In this role, he oversaw global scenario studies and supervised the development of two world models. He has vast experience working with the European Commission, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as with the Indian Planning Commission and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He holds a Master’s degree in econometrics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and was a researcher at the University of Lodz in Poland and at the Netherlands Economic Institute.