6th Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Research Conference

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS

Harris Selod

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.

Rémi Jedwab

Rémi Jedwab is an associate professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University and an Affiliated Scholar of the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Professor Jedwab's main fields of research are development and growth, urban economics, labor economics and political economy. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, the relationship between population growth and economic growth, the economic effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of institutions, human capital and technology in development. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the World Bank-GWU Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference and the Washington Area Development Economics Symposium. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Urban Economics. Finally, he is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Urban Economics and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Nora Libertun de Duren

Nora Libertun de Duren is a Senior Specialist in the Urban Development and Housing Sector at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where she leads the research and knowledge agenda. Recently, she has led the Sector Framework Document that establishes the IDB's priorities for its analytical work and its loans in Housing and Urban Development. Nora holds a PhD in Urban Planning from MIT, a Master's Degree in Urban Design from Harvard University and a Master's degree in Architecture from the University of Buenos Aires. Previously, she has been the Director of Urban Planning for the City of New York and has taught urban planning and urban design at Columbia University, the MIT and Harvard University. Nora's analytical work focuses on urban sustainability, housing policies, and public space in Latin American cities. Her articles have been published in prestigious academic journals, including Cities, Urban Studies, Housing Policy Debate, International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, International Journal of Housing Policy, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and City & Community, among others. Nora has been the editor of the MIT Journal of Planning, and Rapid Urbanization and Development in China and Latin America and has co-authored the book Cities & Sovereignty. Nora’s has been the recipient of numerous competitive awards, counting a Fulbright Fellowship, an MIT presidential Scholarship, a Rodwin Fellowship in environmental sustainability, a Harvard University merit scholarship and a University of Buenos Aires Award for highest achievement, and others.

Juan Pablo Chauvin

Juan Pablo Chauvin is a Research Economist at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank. He is also an associate at the Center for International Development at Harvard University. His research focuses on the economic development cities and regions, with a focus on understanding the connections between labor markets, housing markets, and the industry composition of places. In the past, he has been a consultant with the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GiZ), the World Bank, the OECD and the private sector; advising local and national governments in South America, Asia, the MENA region and South East Europe. He has also been an instructor at the Harvard Kennedy School and at Ecuadorian Universities. He holds a PhD in Public Policy and a Master in Public Administration - International Development from Harvard, a Master in Public Policy from FLACSO - Ecuador, and B.A.s in Sociology and Economics from Universidad San Francisco de Quito.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Leah Platt Boustan

Leah Boustan is a Professor of Economics at Princeton University, where she is also a faculty associate of the Industrial Relations Section. Her research lies at the intersection between economic history, labor economics and urban economics. Her book, Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (Princeton University Press, 2016) was the recipient of the Allan Sharlin award from the Social Science History Association and the Alice Hanson Jones award from the Economic History Association. Her recent work has been on the mass migration from Europe to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Professor Boustan is co-director of the Development of the American Economy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She also serves as co-editor at the Journal of Urban Economics and on the editorial board of the American Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Professor Boustan was named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 2012 and was the recipient of the Young Labor Economist Award from the IZA - Institute of Labor Economics in 2019.

PANELISTS

Felipe Alessandri

Current mayor of Santiago, Chile. A lawyer with a master in Corporate Law, Alessandri has a long trajectory in the public and private sectors. His first role in politics was in 2004, when he was elected Councilmember of Santiago, a position for which he was reelected in 2012. As mayor, his administration has focused on three main pillars: Clean, safe and organized Santiago; Santiago as a model city; and Santiago for all. Through these pillars he has promoted integral policies that aim to build an inclusive city.

Diane Davis

Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Development and Urbanism and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Before to moving to the GSD in 2011, Davis served as the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where she also had a term as Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. Trained as an urban sociologist, Davis’s research interests include the relations between urbanization and national development, urban governance, informality, and the growth and structure of cities, with a special emphasis on Latin America.

Ingrid Gould Ellen

Ingrid Gould Ellen is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Faculty Director of the NYU Furman Center. Her research centers on neighborhoods, housing, and residential segregation. Ingrid is author of Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration (Harvard University Press, 2000) and editor of The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates about Housing, Segregation and Opportunity (Columbia University Press, 2019) and has published articles in such journals as the Journal of Urban Economics, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of the American Planning Association, and Housing Policy Debate. Ingrid teaches courses in microeconomics, urban economics, and urban policy research. Ingrid has held visiting positions at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. She attended Harvard University, where she received a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics, an M.P.P., and a Ph.D. in Public Policy.

Sumila Gulyani

Sumila Gulyani is currently the World Bank’s Program Leader for Infrastructure and Sustainable Development in India. In this role, she coordinates the Bank’s work in seven practice areas—water, energy, transport, environment, agriculture, urban and social development—that together have an investment portfolio of about $23 billion in 80 projects. Prior to that she was Global Lead for Urban Development Strategy and Analytics. From 2012-2014, she served as Manager for Water and Urban Development in Europe and Central Asia, overseeing a portfolio of $4 billion in 21 client countries. From 2008-2011, she lived in Kenya and worked on infrastructure and urban projects in 6 African countries. From 2005-2007, Gulyani was at Columbia University in New York as Assistant Professor and also served as the founding Director of the Infrastructure and Poverty Action Lab (I-PAL).

Eric Parrado Herrera

Eric Parrado Herrera is Chief Economist and General Manager of the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) since March 2019. Before joining the IDB, he was a professor of economics and finance at the ESE Business School of the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile. Mr. Parrado is a visiting professor at Oxford University and the Central European University, and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Financial and Monetary Systems. During his career he has focused on monetary, fiscal and financial policy, advising central banks on managing inflation targeting regimes and implementing sovereign wealth funds in several countries. He has also written several academic articles on monetary policy, fiscal policy and sovereign wealth funds. Mr. Parrado, a Chilean national, has a degree in commercial engineering from the University of Chile and holds a master's and doctorate in economics from New York University.

Anthony Venables

Tony Venables is Professor of Economics at Oxford University where he directs a programme of research on urbanisation in developing countries and the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the Regional Science Association and the British Academy, a member of the steering group of the International Growth Centre and chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the IFO Institute. Former positions include chief economist at the UK Department for International Development, professor at the London School of Economics, research manager of the trade group in the World Bank, and adviser to the UK Treasury. He has published extensively in the areas of international trade and spatial economics, including work on trade and imperfect competition, economic integration, multinational firms, economic geography, and natural resources. Publications include The spatial economy; cities, regions and international trade, with M. Fujita and P. Krugman (MIT press, 1999), and Multinationals in the World Economy with G. Barba Navaretti (Princeton 2004).

Edlam Abera Yemeru

Edlam Abera Yemeru is currently the Chief of the Urbanization and Development Section at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). In this capacity, she leads the delivery of technical assistance to African member States in support of policies and strategies to leverage the potential of urbanization for economic diversification and inclusive growth. This involves strengthening linkages between spatial planning and economic, national and sector policy priorities and investments, including through long-term program and project prioritization. A particular focus of this work aims to better connect urban and industrial policies in Africa. Previously, she led a number of normative and operational programs to promote sustainable urbanization at UN-Habitat, where she also co-authored several editions of the Global Report on Human Settlements. Edlam holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Human Geography from the University of London.

CHAIRS

Juan Pablo Bonilla

Juan Pablo Bonilla is the Manager of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Climate Change and Sustainable Development Sector (CSD). Previously, he served as Chief of Staff to the Executive Vice President of the IDB. Dr. Bonilla has worked on environmental sustainability, climate change and energy for more than 20 years, leading the IDB's Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Initiative, a major strategic step for integrating climate change and sustainability as a priority for the Bank. Before joining the IDB, he worked as Senior Specialist at the World Bank, and was a member of the United Nation's CDM Executive Board. In Colombia, after serving as the Executive Director of a new think tank Fundesarrollo, and as National Environmental Manager of ANDI, Dr. Bonilla launched new initiatives such as the National Climate Change Policy and the National Biotechnology Policy as principal advisor to the country's Vice President. Dr. Bonilla served as Deputy Minister of Environment, and acting Minister of Environment, Housing and Territorial Development. Dr. Bonilla obtained a B.A. in Civil Engineering from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, and then received a M.Sc. in Engineering Management and Systems Engineering and a Ph.D. in Environmental and Energy Management from George Washington University.

Francisco H. G. Ferreira

Francisco H. G. Ferreira is Senior Adviser and Acting Director in the World Bank’s Development Research Group, where he oversees the Bank’s research programs on poverty and inequality. He was formerly the Bank’s Chief Economist for the Africa Region, and has also served as Deputy Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, and as co-Director of the World Development Report 2006, on Equity and Development. Francisco is also a non-resident Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn). He has published widely in the fields of poverty and inequality in developing countries. He is a co-editor of the World Bank Economic Review and has served as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Economic Inequality and of Economía, the journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economics Association. Francisco has taught at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and at the Paris School of Economics. He was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Tatiana Gallego Lizon

Tatiana Gallego Lizon is the Division Chief for Housing and Urban Development at the Climate Change and Sustainable Development Sector of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). She previously worked at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) where she held various positions, including as Director of the Urban Development and Water Division of the Southeast Asian Department, where she pioneered agendas on urban climate change resilience, cross-border economic zones and corridor town development. She has also worked in the Private Sector and in Research. Gallego holds a PhD and a MEng in Environmental Engineering from Imperial College, London and a PGD in Policy Studies from the School of African and Oriental Studies.

James Foster

James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at the George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University and holds a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (Mexico). Professor Foster's research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in México. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu.

Aart Kraay

Aart Kraay is the Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 1995 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1995), and a B.Sc. in economics from the University of Toronto (1990). His research interests include international capital movements, growth and inequality, governance, and the Chinese economy. His research on these topics has been published in scholarly journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of the European Economic Association. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics, and co-editor of the World Bank Economic Review. He has also held visiting positions at the International Monetary Fund and the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and has taught at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Sameh Wahba

Sameh Wahba is the Global Director for Urban and Territorial Development, Disaster Risk Management and Resilience at the World Bank Group’s Social, Rural, Urban and Resilience Global Practice, based in Washington D.C, where he oversees the formulation of the World Bank’s strategy and the design and delivery of all lending, technical assistance, policy advisory activities, and partnerships at the global level. Prior to this, he was Practice Manager for the Urban and Disaster Risk Management unit in Africa and the Global Urban and Resilience Unit, and he served as Acting Director of Operations and Strategy for the Global Practice. He also worked as Sustainable Development Sector Leader for Brazil, based in Brasilia, and worked as an urban specialist focused on housing, land, local economic development, and municipal management and service delivery in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa Regions. Prior to joining the Bank in 2004, he worked at the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies in Rotterdam and at the Harvard Center for Urban Development Studies.

Anna Wellenstein

Anna Wellenstein is the Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Bank’s Sustainable Development Practice Group. Ms. Wellenstein is responsible for the World Bank’s agriculture, climate, disaster risk management, environment, land, social, urban, and water portfolios in the region. Prior to this, Ms. Wellenstein was Director for Strategy and Operations of the World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice, where she oversaw $25 billion in lending to developing countries in over 200 projects, 325 studies and technical assistance projects. She was a key member of the Global Practice’s senior management team that set strategy for analytics and financing in areas such as disaster risk reduction, urban renovation, and geospatial technology. She also oversaw partnerships with bilateral, United Nations, and regional organizations. Anna has over 20 years of experience in urban development and infrastructure. She has led efforts to design and finance investments, facilitate policy reforms, and build capacity to help developing countries reduce poverty and boost equity. She has been responsible for technical oversight of new projects financed by the World Bank, the portfolio quality of ongoing projects, and setting sector and country strategies. She has developed strong partnerships with governments in countries ranging from large middle income to small island states, as well as development agencies and academia.

PRESENTERS

Rafael Dix-Carneiro

Rafael Dix-Carneiro is an associate professor of economics at Duke University. He works on topics related to international trade, labor markets and economic development. His research focuses on the labor market adjustment process in response to globalization and trade liberalization, including i) the dynamics of adjustment to trade and ii) the margins of adjustment to trade. Additional research includes how trade-oriented firms respond to exchange rate fluctuations and the impact of economic shocks on crime.

Edward Glaeser

Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1992. He regularly teaches microeconomics theory, and occasionally urban and public economics. He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He has published dozens of papers on cities economic growth, law, and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1992.

Matthew Kahn

Matthew E. Kahn is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business at Johns Hopkins University and the Director of JHU's 21st Century Cities Initiative. He is the author of Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment (Brookings Institution Press 2006) and the co-author (joint with Dora L. Costa) of Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton University Press 2009). He is also the author of Climatopolis (Basic Books 2010), Fundamentals of Environmental and Urban Economics Amazon Kindle), and Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China (joint with Siqi Zheng published by Princeton Press). His research focuses on urban and environmental economics.

Gabriel Kreindler

Gabriel Kreindler studies issues in urban transportation in developing countries, relying on randomized and natural experiments and digital urban mobility data sources. He is a Prize Fellow at Harvard University (2019-2021), and will join the economics department at Harvard University as an Assistant Professor in 2021. He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 2018.

Diego Puga

Diego Puga is Professor of Economics at CEMFI, in Madrid, Spain. His research interests include urban economics, economic geography and international trade. Born in Spain, where he completed his undergraduate degree in Economics, Puga obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics in 1997. His publication include articles in American Economic Review, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economic Studies, and have been cited over 4,000 times in articles included in Web of Science. His research is currently funded by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. In 2008 he received the Fundación Banco Herrero Prize (awarded annually to a Spanish researcher under the age of 40 for outstanding contributions to economics or social sciences). He previously held academic positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Toronto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and IMDEA Social Sciences.

Alex Rothenberg

Alexander D. Rothenberg is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Syracuse University and a Senior Research Associate in the Maxwell School's Center for Policy Research. Prior to joining Syracuse University, Professor Rothenberg was an economist at the RAND Corporation, and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His ongoing research evaluating the effects of different urban transport policies on commuting outcomes in Jakarta, the long-term growth and development outcomes of a place-based policy in Indonesia's outer Islands, the impacts of a rural migration program on diversity and identity, and how transport improvements affect firm entry and employment. Professor Rothenberg received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012.

Nick Tsivanidis

Nick is Assistant Professor of Real Estate and Economics at University of California, Berkeley and Co-Director of the Cities Research Program at the International Growth Centre. His research uses new sources of data to understand the process of urbanization in emerging economies. His recent research includes: examining the impact of Bus Rapid Transit on productivity and inequality in Bogotá, using satellite imagery and AI to understand the dynamics of slums in Mumbai, and understanding the impact of the refugee influx on Amman.

DISCUSSANTS

Leah Brooks

Leah Brooks is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration and Director, Center for Washington Area Studies. After receiving her PhD from UCLA in 2005, she taught at the University of Toronto and McGill University, and worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Her research interest is urban political economy. Her work to date has examined Business Improvement Districts to understand the resolution of collective action problems, and the Community Development Block Grant program to analyze the political economy of grant giving at the municipal and sub-municipal levels. She has documented the existence and analyzed the impacts of municipally-imposed tax and expenditure limits, studied the premium required to assemble land, analyzed the long-term effects of streetcars on urban form, and is hard at work examining the impact of containerization on cities.

Louise Fox

Dr. Louise Fox was USAID’s Chief Economist. In this role, she guided the Agency on economics-based decision making and was responsible for keeping USAID’s economists on the cutting edge of ideas in development economics.

Mariaflavia Harari

Mariaflavia (Nina) Harari is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, specializing in urban economics and development economics. Her research agenda is centered on urbanization in developing countries. Her current projects focus on urban structure in India and slums in Indonesia. She holds a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. and a M.Sc. in Economics and Social Sciences from Bocconi University.