• CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
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  Harris Selod

  Senior Economist, The World Bank

  Harris Selod is a Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank. His current research focuses on urban development, including issues related to transport and land use, as well as land tenure, land markets and the political economy of the land sector in developing countries, with a specific interest in West Africa. His publications cover a variety of topics in urban and public economics including theories of squatting and residential informality, the political economy of transport infrastructure, the effects of residential segregation on schooling and unemployment, or the impact of land rights formalization and place-based policies. He has been chair of the World Bank’s Land Policy and Administration Thematic Group (2011-2013) and is currently leading a World Bank research program on transport. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2007, he was an associate professor at the Paris School of Economics and a researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne and graduated from the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique (ENSAE).
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  Rémi Jedwab

  Assistant Professor of Economics, George Washington University

  Rémi Jedwab is an assistant professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Paris School of Economics. He was also a visiting Ph.D. student at the London School of Economics for three years. Professor Jedwab's main field of research is urban economics, though his work also has strong development economics, economic history, trade, environmental economics and public economics themes. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, the economic effects of transportation infrastructure, and agricultural and economic development in the developing world, and Sub‐Saharan Africa in particular. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Economic Growth and the Journal of Urban Economics. Recently, Professor Jedwab’s research areas have included the phenomenon of urbanization without economic growth, and his research has been highlighted by The Atlantic's CityLab and the Boston Globe.
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  Paul Romer

  NYU Marron Institute, University Professor, NYU Director of the Marron Institute

  Paul Romer, an economist and policy entrepreneur, is a University Professor at NYU and director of the Marron Institute of Urban Management. He is also the founding director of the Urbanization Project at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business. The Urbanization Project conducts applied research on the many ways in which policymakers in the developing world can use the rapid growth of cities to create economic opportunity and undertake systemic social reform. Before coming to NYU, Paul taught at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. While there Paul took an entrepreneurial detour to start Aplia, an education technology company dedicated to increasing student effort and classroom engagement. To date, students have submitted over 1 billion answers to homework problems on the Aplia website. Prior to Stanford, Paul taught in the economics departments at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a non-resident scholar at both the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. and the Macdonald Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Ontario. Paul earned a bachelor of science in mathematics from the University of Chicago. He earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago after doing graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Queens University.
• 

  Danny Leipziger

  Professor of International Business, George Washington University, and Managing Director, The Growth Dialogue

  Danny Leipziger is Professor of International Business, George Washington University, and Managing Director, the Growth Dialogue. He is former Vice President of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (2004–09) at the World Bank. Over the course of his 28-year career at the World Bank, he has held management positions in the East Asia Region and the Latin America and Caribbean Region as well as in the World Bank Institute. Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Leipziger served in senior positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State. He also has been a Vice Chair of the independent Commission on Growth and Development (2006-2010). He has published widely on topics of development economics and finance, industrial policy, and banking, including books on Korea, Chile, and East Asia and recent volumes Globalization and Growth (with Michael Spence) and Stuck in the Middle (with Antonio Estache) and the most recent – Ascent after Decline: Regrowing Global Economies after the Great Recession (with Otaviano Canuto).

• KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
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  Jan K. Brueckner

  Professor of Economics, University of California-Irvine

  Jan K. Brueckner (AB, UC Berkeley; PhD, Stanford University) was long- time faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before coming to University of California, Irvine in 2005. Brueckner has published extensively in the reas of urban economics, public economics, housing finance, and the economics of the airline industry, with more than 125 journal articles to his credit. He is also author of an innovative new textbook, Lectures on Urban Economics (MIT Press, 2011). Brueckner served as editor of the Journal of Urban Economics for 16 years and is currently a member of the editorial boards of 6 journals. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, many of the major airlines, and other organizations.
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  Matthew Kahn

  Professor, UCLA Institute of the Environment, the Department of Economics, and the Department of Public Policy

  Matthew E. Kahn is a Professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment, the Department of Economics, and the Department of Public Policy. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Before joining the UCLA faculty in January 2007, he taught at Columbia and the Fletcher School at Tufts University. He has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard and Stanford. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He is the author of Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment (Brookings Institution Press 2006) and the co-author of Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton University Press 2009). His research focuses on environmental, urban, real estate and energy economics.

• CHAIRS AND PANELISTS
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  Anthony Gad Bigio

  Adjunct Professor of Urban Climate Change, George Washington University

  Anthony Gad Bigio is Adjunct Professor of urban climate change at George Washington University’s graduate program on Sustainable Urban Planning, College of Professional Studies. He was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5th Assessment Report’s chapter on urban planning and carbon emissions, and a Technical Reviewer of the chapter on urban impacts of climate change. He retired from the World Bank in 2013 after a 20-years career as a Senior Urban Specialist, managing investments and policy reform programs across the developing world. As Urban Advisor with over 30 years of international experience, he is currently leading fieldwork on urban green growth in Cambodia for the Global Green Growth Institute. He lectures internationally on cities and climate change, and has published extensively on the topics of urban development, climate change and urban cultural heritage. He is Green Growth Advisor for The Growth Dialogue, an international policy program of George Washington University’s Business School. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the EU-funded research project POCACITO (Post-Carbon Cities of Tomorrow) and of the Columbia University-based UCCRN (Urban Climate Change Research Network). He holds a Masters degree in architecture and urban planning summa cum laude from the University of Rome.
• 

  John Carruthers

  Director, Sustainable Urban Planning Program, George Washington University

  John I. Carruthers (Ph.D., University of Washington) is the Director of the Sustainable Urban Planning Program. Prior to joining the George Washington University, John served as an Economist in the Economic Development and Public Finance Division of the Office of Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; he has previously held faculty positions at the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, and the University of Arizona. AT GWU John teaches courses in Urban and environmental Economics, and Geospatial and Econometric Methods. He has also developed a regular study abroad program, set in Seoul South Korea.
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  Michael Cohen

  Director, Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy

  Michael Cohen is an urban and development policy specialist. He worked at the World Bank from 1972 to 1999 and was responsible for much of the bank’s urban policy development during that period. Mr. Cohen has worked in 55 countries and was heavily involved in the World Bank’s work on infrastructure, environment, and sustainable development. His numerous published works include several books on urban development, Africa, and the impact of development assistance. Mr. Cohen has advised governments, NGOs, and academic institutions around the world. He was a member of the Infrastructure Panel and Urban Dynamics Panel of the US National Academy of Science. He has helped the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) prepare its Global Report on Human Settlements in 2005-2012. He is currently the director of The New School’s Observatory on Latin America.
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  Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Director of Research, World Bank

  Director of Research, Development Economics, World Bank

  Asli Demirgüç-Kunt is the Director of Research in the World Bank. After joining the Bank in 1989 as a Young Economist, she has held different positions, including Director of Development Policy, Chief Economist of Financial and Private Sector Development Network, and Senior Research Manager, doing research and advising on financial sector and private sector development issues. She is the lead author of World Bank Policy Research Report 2007, Finance for All? Policies and Pitfalls in Expanding Access. She has also created the World Bank’s Global Financial Development Report and directed the issues on Rethinking the Role of the State in Finance (2013), and Financial Inclusion (2014).
• 

  Marianne Fay

  Chief Economist, Sustainable Development Vice-Presidency, World Bank Group

  Marianne Fay is the Chief Economist of the Climate Change Cross Cutting Solutions Area of the World Bank. She co-directed the World Development Report 2010 on Development and Climate Change and led the World Bank report on Inclusive Green growth: the Pathway to Sustainable Development. She has held positions in different regions of the World Bank (Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa) working on infrastructure, urbanization and climate change. Prior to her current position, she served as the Chief Economist of the former Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank. She is the author of a number of articles and books on these topics. Marianne Fay holds a PhD in Economics from Columbia University.
• 

  Sumila Gulyani

  Lead Urban Specialist, World Bank

  Ms. Sumila Gulyani is currently the Global Lead for Urban Development Strategy and Analytics at the World Bank. From 2012-2014, she served as Manager for Urban Development, Water Supply and Sanitation, and Disaster Risk Management in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. The unit’s active portfolio included 38 projects totaling US$4 billion. From 2008-2011, she was based in Kenya as Sector Leader for Sustainable Development for 6 African countries. From 2005-2007, Ms. Gulyani was at Columbia University in New York where she held the position of Assistant Professor and also served as the founding Director of the Infrastructure and Poverty Action Lab (I-PAL). Prior to that, she has held several other positions at the World Bank. Ms. Gulyani received her Ph.D. in Economic Development and Urban Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and also holds a graduate degree in architecture. She is the author of the book Innovating with Infrastructure and of several articles on urban development, water, electricity, transport, and slums.
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  Stephen Hammer

  Manager, Climate Change Group, the World Bank

  Stephen Hammer joined the World Bank’s Urban Development and Resilience Unit as a Lead Urban Specialist in February 2013, leading the team’s work on cities and climate change issues. He has more than 25 years of government, consulting, and academic experience on energy, environmental, solid waste, and climate change topics. Prior to joining the Bank he was on the faculty at MIT, where he taught a range of courses on energy policy and planning. He previously founded the Urban Energy Program at Columbia University, where he focused on the policy, market, and regulatory environment of urban energy systems; how climate change will affect urban and regional energy systems; and the modeling of energy demand in cities. He also co-founded and served as co-Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), a global network of researchers examining climate change from an urban perspective, and he co-edited the UCCRN’s 2011 volume Climate Change and Cities, published by Cambridge University Press. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the academic journals Urban Climate and Local Environment. Dr. Hammer holds degrees from the London School of Economics, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the University of California at Davis.
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  Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez

  Senior Director, Urban, Rural and Social Development, World Bank

  Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez is the Senior Director for the World Bank Group’s Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice. In this position, Mr. Ijjasz-Vasquez leads a team of over 600 technical experts deployed across the world, leveraging global knowledge and collaborating with partners to help tackle the world’s most complex development challenges in: social inclusion and sustainability; mainstreaming resilience in all dimensions development; territorial and rural development; and urban planning, services and institutions.
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  Stephen C. Smith

  Professor of Economics and International Affairs, George Washington University

  Stephen C. Smith is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. Smith received his PhD in economics from Cornell University and has been a Fulbright Research Scholar and a Jean Monnet Research Fellow. Smith is also an IZA Research Fellow. He serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. From 2009-2012, Smith served as Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy, where he helped create its four signature initiatives: climate adaptation in developing countries; extreme poverty; global economic governance; and the “G2 at GW” series. Smith has done on-site research and program work in several regions of the developing world including Bangladesh, China, Ecuador, India, Uganda, and Former Yugoslavia. Smith has also conducted extensive research on the economics of employee participation, including works councils, ESOPs, and labor cooperatives in developed and developing countries.
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  Michael Toman

  Research Manager, Environment and Energy Research Program, Development Research Group, The World Bank

  Michael Toman (Mike) is Lead Economist on Climate Change in the Development Research Group and Manager of the Energy and Environment Team. His current research interests include alternative energy resources, policies for responding to risks of climate change catastrophes, timing of investments for greenhouse gas reduction, and mechanisms for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through reduced deforestation. During his career Mike has done extensive research on climate change economics and policy, energy markets and policy, environmental policy instruments, and approaches to achieving sustainable development. Prior to joining the World Bank in fall 2008, he held senior analytical and management positions at RAND Corporation, Inter-American Development Bank, and Resources for the Future. His teaching experience includes adjunct positions at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the School of the Environment, University of California at Santa Barbara. Mike has a B.A. from Indiana University, a M.Sc. in applied mathematics from Brown University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Rochester.
• 

  Sameh Wahba

  Practice Manager, Urban, Rural and Social Development, World Bank

  Sameh Wahba is Sector Manager, Urban Development and Resilience Unit, World Bank, where he is responsible for the Bank’s urban policy, strategy, and analytics at the global level. Prior to this position, Wahba was the Brazil Sector Leader of the Sustainable Development Department at the World Bank’s Latin America and the Caribbean Region, where he was responsible for coordinating the bank’s investment program and policy advisory/analytical services in Brazil in the areas of urban development, infrastructure, disaster risk management, and social development, as well as coordinating the bank’s portfolio in several states including Sao Paulo. Since joining the World Bank in 2004, he has worked on urban development, housing, and infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa Regions. While at the World Bank, he has managed numerous investment and technical assistance activities related to housing, land and urban upgrading policy, infrastructure, local economic development, municipal/urban development issues, and disaster risk management in several countries. Prior to joining the bank, he worked at the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) in Rotterdam and at the Harvard Center for Urban Development Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• DISCUSSANTS
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  Antonio Bento

  Professor of Public Policy and Economics, University of Southern California

  Antonio M. Bento is a professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics of the University of Southern California. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a research fellow of the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. Currently, he serves as the Director of the Graduate Programs in Public Policy at the Sol Price School.
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  Gilles Duranton

  Professor of Real Estate, Wharton School

  Gilles Duranton is professor of real estate and holds the Dean’s Chair in Real Estate. He joined the Wharton School in 2012 after holding academic positions at the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics. A graduate from HEC Paris and Sorbonne University, he obtained his PhD in economics jointly from the London School of Economics and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales in Paris. His research focuses on urban and transportation issues. His empirical work is concerned with urban growth and the estimation of the costs and benefits of cities and clusters. He is also interested in the effects of transportation infrastructure on urban development and the evaluation of local policies. He also conducts theoretical research to gain insight about the distribution of city sizes, the skill composition, and sectoral patterns of activities in cities.
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  Somik Lall

  Lead Economist, The World Bank

  Somik V. Lall is a Lead Economist for Urban Development at the World Bank's Urban Development and Resilience Unit in the Sustainable Development Network. He is the lead author of a World Bank report on urbanization "Planning, Connecting, and Financing Cities Now: Priorities for City Leaders." He was a core team member of the 2009 World Development Report "Reshaping Economic Geography", and recently Senior Economic Counsellor to the Indian Prime Minister's National Transport Development Policy Committee. Somik currently leads a World Bank program on the Urbanization Reviews, which provides diagnostic tools and a policy framework for policymakers to manage rapid urbanization and city development. His research interests span urban and spatial economics, infrastructure development, and public finance. He has over 40 publications featuring in peer reviewed journals, edited volumes, and working papers. Somik holds a bachelors degree in engineering, masters in city planning, and doctorate in economics and public policy.

• PRESENTERS
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  Shlomo Angel

  Senior Research Scholar, NYU Stern Urbanization Project

  Angel is Professor of City Planning at NYU's Marron Institute. He is also the director of the Urban Expansion program at the NYU Stern Urbanization Project. Angel is an expert on urban development policy, having advised the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). He currently focuses on documenting and planning for urban expansion in the developing world. Angel earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a doctorate in city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley.
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  Alain Bertaud

  Adjunct Professor, Marron Institute

  Alain Bertaud is an Adjunct Professor at the Marron Institute and a senior research scholar at the NYU Stern Urbanization Project. At the moment, he is writing a book about urban planning that is tentatively titled Order Without Design. Bertaud previously held the position of principal urban planner at the World Bank. After retiring from the Bank in 1999, he worked as an independent consultant. Prior to joining the World Bank he worked as a resident urban planner in a number of cities around the world: Bangkok, San Salvador (El Salvador), Port au Prince (Haiti), Sana’a (Yemen), New York, Paris, Tlemcen (Algeria), and Chandigarh (India).
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  Paul E. Carrillo

  Associate Professor of Economics and International Affairs, George Washington University

  Paul E. Carrillo is an Associate Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. His research interests are in applied microeconomics including applications in urban economics and development economics. His research has been published and/or is forthcoming in leading academic such as Review of Economics and Statistics, International Economic Review, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Journal of Housing Economics. He currently serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Regional Science. Paul received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Virginia in 2006.
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  Klaus Desmet

  Altshuler Professor of Cities, Regions and Globalization, Southern Methodist University

  Klaus Desmet is the Altshuler Professor of Cities, Regions and Globalization at Southern Methodist University and a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He holds an MSc in business and engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. His research focuses on regional economics, international trade, economic growth and diversity. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Theory and the Journal of Development Economics.
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  Ejaz Ghani

  Lead Economist, The World Bank

  Ejaz Ghani, an Indian national, has worked at The World Bank on Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Corporate Strategy. He won the World Bank Best Research Award in 2015. He has written several books including Reshaping Tomorrow--Is South Asia Ready for the Big Leap?; The Poor Half Billion in South Asia; The Service Revolution in South Asia, Accelerating Growth and Job Creation in South Asia; Promoting Economic Cooperation in South Asia;and Growth and Regional Integration. Prior to joining The World Bank, he taught economics Oxford University and Delhi University. He is an Inlaks scholar.
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  Walker Hanlon

  Assistant Professor at UCLA

  Walker Hanlon is an Assistant Professor at UCLA, a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER, and a Research Associate at the California Center for Population Research. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2012. He is currently pursuing two main lines of research. The first seeks to better understanding the forces driving innovation and economic growth over the long term using novel historical data sources. Much of his work in this area takes advantage of the economic shock to the British economy causes by the U.S. Civil War. Using this event, he explores how the sudden shortage in cotton caused by the U.S. Civil War on innovation in the British cotton textile industry, and whether the temporary recession in cotton textile cities had a long-term impact on the trajectory of city growth. His second line of research looks at the long-run impact of pollution on urban economies, with a particular focus on industrial pollution linked to coal use in the cities of 19th century Britain. In this line of research, he investigates both the health effects of pollution, as well as the impact of pollution on long-run city growth and population sorting.
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  Shareen Joshi

  Assistant Professor of International Development, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service

  Shareen Joshi is Assistant Professor of International Development at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Non-Residential Research Fellow in Quantitative Research at ICRW. She has a PhD in Economics from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Economics from Reed College in Portland Oregon. Her research focuses on examining the impact of poverty-alleviation policies on the well-being of families. Much of her work has a strong focus on issues of gender and long-term investments in human capital. Recent work has explored the relationship between pollution and child mortality in India, the impact of India's Janani Suraksha Yojana (Safe Motherhood) program on health-care provision in India, the impact of women's self-help groups on women's collective action and the long term consequences of a family planning programs in Bangladesh.
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  Guy Michaels

  Associate Professor, London School of Economics

  Guy Michaels is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a research associate at Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the LSE. He is also a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), an affiliate at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and an external research associate at the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (OxCarre). He also serves as a member of the editorial board of the Review of Economic Studies. His research interests include labor economics, economic development, and economic geography. His research focuses on urbanization, labor market inequality and resource-rich economies. He has received a B.Sc. in Mathematics, magna cum laude, from Tel-Aviv University in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006.
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  Adam Storeygard

  Assistant Professor of Economics, Tufts University

  Adam Storeygard joined Tufts after receiving his PhD from Brown University in 2012. His research interests are in development and urban economics, and particularly in urbanization, transportation, and the economic geography of sub-Saharan Africa. Before graduate school he worked at Columbia University developing and analyzing spatial datasets related to health and development. Professor Storeygard's work has appeared in journals including the American Economic Review, Nature, and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. His prior degrees are an A.B. in Physics from Harvard University and an M. Phil. in Environment and Development from Cambridge University.

Recent World Bank Publications

• Urban Flooding of Greater Dhaka in a Changing Climate: Building Local Resilience to Disaster Risk