Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics 2022: Recovery, Reform, and Business Environment

Carmen M. Reinhart is the Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. Assuming this role on June 15, 2020, Reinhart provides thought leadership for the institution at an unprecedented time of crisis. She also manages the Bank’s Development Economics Department. She is on public service leave from Harvard Kennedy School, where she is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System. Previously, she was Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director at the International Monetary Fund and held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns. She also serves in the Advisory Panels of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the International Monetary Fund. Reinhart has been listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, and Thompson Reuters' The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds. In 2018 she was awarded the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics and NABE’s Adam Smith Award, among others. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Steven J. Davis studies business dynamics, hiring practices, job loss, the effects of economic uncertainty and other topics. His research appears in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics and other leading scholarly journals. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, senior academic fellow with the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research, advisor to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, senior adviser to the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and past editor of the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. He is also an elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists.

Ana Margarida Fernandes is a Lead Economist in the Trade and International Integration Unit of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. She joined the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002. Her research examines the consequences of openness to trade and FDI for firm-level productivity, innovation and quality upgrading, and more broadly the determinants of firm performance, including the role of the business environment. Her work has also covered the impact evaluation of trade-related policy interventions such as export promotion and customs reforms around the globe (Albania, Serbia, Madagascar, Tunisia). Since 2011 she has been managing the Exporter Dynamics Database project and studying the links between exporter growth and dynamics, development, policies, and shocks. She is currently working on corruption in customs and tax evasion.

Gertler is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Economics at New York University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He received his PhD.  at Stanford University. He has published widely in macroeconomics and monetary economics. Among his co-authors are former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Vice Chairman Richard Clarida.  Gertler currently serves as a Co-Director (with Pete Klenow) of the NBER’s program on Economic Fluctuations.and Growth. He is also a past Co-Editor of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the NBER Macro Annual. Among professional honors, Gertler is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2021, Gertler was awarded the BBVA Frontier of Knowledge Award, along with Bernanke, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and John Moore. He was also recently named a University Professor ay NYU.

Steven Pennings is a Research Economist in the Macroeconomics and Growth Team of the World Bank Development Research Group. His research interests include fiscal policy (especially fiscal transfers), economic growth, political economy, exchange rate pass-through, and monetary policy. He also a co-leads the World Bank’s Long Term Growth Model Project. He has published in a number of academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics and the European Economic Review. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia and Save the Children (Vietnam). He holds a PhD in Economics from New York University and a Bachelor of Economics (Hons.) from the Australian National University.

Marcela Eslava is Professor and Dean of Economics at Universidad de Los Andes, in Bogotá, and a research affiliate of LACEA and the IPA’s SME program. She holds a PhD degree from University of Maryland at College Park. Her current research interests include the effect of the COVID19 crisis on the labor market and firms in developing economies; the relationship between firm dynamics and regulations; the relationship between business growth and the evolution of productivity vs. demand at the firm; the effect of credit constraints on business performance and aggregate productivity, and the policy alternatives to address financial restrictions to businesses. Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics; the Review of Economic Dynamics; the Journal of Public Economics; and the Journal of Development Economics. She has been awarded the Global Development Network’s Medal for Research on Development, and the Latin American Econometric Society’s Mario Henrique Simonsen Memorial Lecture. She was also chief co-editor for Economia, the journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, LACEA. Marcela is also a voting member of the Latin American Standing Committee of the Econometric Society; and member of board of Trustees of the Research Institute for Development, Growth and Economics, RIDGE.

Gabriel Ulyssea is an associate professor in the economics department at UCL and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is also a Research Fellow at IZA and a Research Affiliate at CEPR. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and his main research interests include economic development and labor economics. His current work focuses on firms and informality, the labor market effects of labor regulation and trade, and the relationship between migration and economic development.

Dorothe Singer is a Senior Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist, Europe and Central Asia Region at the World Bank where she most recently co-authored the 2021 Fall Economic Update on Competition and Firm Recovery Post-COVID-19. She previously worked as an Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Research Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Her research interests include access to finance and the role of institutions in international finance. She is part of the Global Findex team and a co-author of the upcoming 2021 Global Findex report as well as numerous policy notes related to the Global Findex database. She joined the World Bank in 2009 and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

Xiaohan Yang is a Ph.D. candidate at the National School of Development, Peking University, China. His research fields are development economics and digital economics. His current research focuses on e-commerce, entrepreneurship, and SMEs in China. He has been working closely on the Enterprise Survey for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in China (ESIEC) and the Online Survey for Micro-and-small Enterprises (OSOME).

My most recent assignment is working as economist with the IMF responsible for the fiscal policy and debt sustainability issues. Under the role I have primary responsibility over Fund program design and discussion with the authorities. Previously, I have worked as economist with the World Bank in the MTI where I worked on lending operations and numerous analytical products. I have also worked previously with the Government of Kenya as Economist at the National Treasury.

Jesica Torres is an Economist in the Investment Climate unit of the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice at the World Bank Group. Her analytical work has focused on understanding how special provisions (for example, size-dependent regulations, simplified tax regimes, or preferential labor regulations) distort the behavior of firms, and how that ultimately affects the allocation of resources in the economy. More recently, she has studied the determinants of the entry of high-growth firms, and has led or co-authored numerous reports analyzing the effect of the pandemic on the private sector using the COVID-19 Business Pulse Surveys. Before joining the World Bank, Jesica worked at the Inter-American Development Bank, the Mexican federal government, and Tecnologico de Monterrey. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2013.

Valeria Perotti is the Program Manager of the Business Enabling Environment unit. She joined the team in December 2019, after holding several positions within the World Bank. As a Senior Economist with the Enterprise Surveys team, she led the implementation of the survey in several countries in East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, and she analyzed firm-level productivity in conjunction with skills and training issues. Valeria also worked in the former Human Development Network of the World Bank, where she managed the Russia Trust Fund survey to develop methods for measuring financial capability. Before joining the World Bank in 2010, Valeria worked on the design and analysis of labor force surveys at ISFOL in Italy. She holds a PhD in Econometrics and Empirical Economics from Tor Vergata University in Rome, and her research has focused on firm productivity, skills, labor market regulations, informality, life expectancy and applied microeconometrics.

Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics and International Trade at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He is also a research fellow at the IZA (The Institute for the Study of Labor) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam.   His current research focuses on issues of industrial upgrading in China, inequality dynamics, and economic growth and structural change.

Roberto N. Fattal Jaef is a Senior Economist in the Macroeconomics and Growth team of the World Bank’s Research Department. His research interests cover various areas of macroeconomics, with a special emphasis on economic growth. Current and recent research topics include: 1) understanding the role of market distortions for firm level behavior, entrepreneurship, and long run macroeconomic outcomes; 2) investigating the micro and macro patterns of transition growth paths, 3) studying the role of credit for the business cycle. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked at the International Monetary Fund’s Research department (2011-2013). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA. 

Eduardo Montero is an Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Originally from Costa Rica, his broader interests relate to development economics and political economy in Central America and Central Africa. Eduardo received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2018. He is a Faculty Research Fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and an affiliate with the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). 

Bob Rijkers is a Senior Economist in the Trade and International Integration Unit of the Development Research Group. He is interested in political economy, trade and labor market issues. Since joining the World Bank full-time in 2008, he has worked in the Poverty Reduction Anchor of the PREM network, the Macroeconomics and Growth Unit of the Development Economics Research Group and the Office of the Chief Economist of the Middle East and Northern Africa region. He holds a BA in Science and Social Sciences from University College Utrecht, Utrecht University and an M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford.

Mushfiq Mobarak is a Professor of Economics at Yale University with concurrent appointments in the School of Management and in the Department of Economics. Mobarak is the founder and faculty director of the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE).

Xavier Gine is a Lead Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group. He is currently a BREAD affiliate and Associate Editor for the Journal of Development Economics. Since joining the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002, his research has focused on access to financial services and rural financial markets. In recent papers he investigated the macroeconomic effects of a credit liberalization; the relationship between formal and informal sources of credit in rural credit markets; indigenous interlinked credit contracts in the fishing industry and the impact of microfinance services such as business training and financial literacy, microinsurance and microsavings. Prior to joining the Bank he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Manaswini is a Postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Economics, University of California San Diego. Her research interests span the broad areas of development economics and economic growth. She studies the judiciary examining how judicial capacity affects local firms and markets. She also works on collective action and coordination in natural and agricultural resource management. She graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2020 with a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Davide Del Prete is an associate professor of economics at the University of Naples Parthenope (IT) and a research affiliate with the FAO of the UN. Davide’s research interests lie between international trade, development economics, and econometrics. For his projects, Davide has collaborated with several international organizations, such as the UNCTAD, ITC, World Bank, FAO, and numerous governments. The most recent research activities use unique firm-level datasets to investigate the effects of conflicts, global market power, and supply-chain resilience.

Daniel Li Chen is the Lead Principal Investigator, DE JURE (Data and Evidence for Justice Reform) at the World Bank, Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Collaborator at Harvard Medical School, advisor at NYU Courant Institute for Mathematics Center for Data Science. He is the founder of oTree Open Source Research Foundation and Data Science Justice Collaboratory and co-founder of Justice Innovation Lab. Chen was previously Chair of Law and Economics at ETH and tenure-track assistant professor in Law (primary), Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University. Chen received his BA and MS from Harvard University in Applied Mathematics and Economics; Economics PhD from MIT; and JD from Harvard Law School. He has attained prominence through the development of open source tools to study human behavior and through large-scale empirical studies — data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning — on the relationship between law, social norms and the enforcement of legal norms, and on judicial systems.

James Dzansi is a Country Economist at the International Growth Centre, LSE. He works with researchers and policymakers to promote evidence-based policy. Before joining the IGC, James worked for the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change where he led several analyses to inform UK energy policy. Previously, he served as a Lecturer at the Jonkoping international Business School. His research interests are in development economics, tax policy, corporate governance, and energy policy. James holds a PhD, MSc and BA in Economics, and LLM in Petroleum Taxation and Finance.

Pierre Bachas is an economist in the Development Research Group (DECRG) at the World Bank. He works on issues of public finance in developing countries, and on financial inclusion. He received a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley in 2016.

Silvia Muzi is Program Coordinator in the Enterprise Analysis Unit-Development Economics Vice-Presidency. She has more than 15 of years of professional experience as an economist with a long track record of projects implementation and analytical work. Silvia is currently responsible for coordinating the implementation of Enterprise Surveys projects worldwide. Enterprise Surveys provide the world's most comprehensive firm-level data for emerging markets and developing economies. She also leads the development of analytical work and diagnostic tools to support private sector development. Her research interests include women participation in the private sector, innovation, and digitalization. Silvia holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Rome La Sapienza.

Professor Chen LIN is the Chair of Finance and Stelux Professor in Finance at HKU Business School. He also serves as Associate Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange), Director of Centre for Financial Innovation and Development, and Associate Director of HKU-SCF FinTech Academy. 

Leonardo Iacovone is a Lead Economist in the Trade, Investment and Competitiveness (TIC) Global Practice at the World Bank Group. After having joined the World Bank as Young Professional in 2008, Leonardo has worked in the Development Research Group, the Financial and Private Sector Development Unit of the Africa Region, and the Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Global Practice. Before joining the World Bank Leonardo worked as economic advisor in Latin America and Southern Africa for UNDP, WTO, UNIDO, USAID, EU, and the Government of Mozambique. Leonardo was trained at Bocconi University of Milan, Italy, University Torquato di Tella of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and received a PhD in Economics from University of Sussex. 

Adam Osman is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the co-Scientific Director of J-PAL MENA. Much of his work utilizes randomized experiments to improve our understanding of which policies and interventions work best in improving the lives of the poor. His work covers several topics including access to finance, private sector development, youth employment, international trade and transport frictions. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2014.

David McKenzie is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit. He received his B.Com.(Hons)/B.A. from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. Prior to joining the World Bank, he spent four years as an assistant professor of Economics at Stanford University. His main research is on migration, enterprise development, and methodology for use with developing country data. He has published more than 100 articles in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Economic Journal, American Economic Journal: Applied Micro, Journal of Econometrics, and all leading development journals. He is currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Development Economics, the World Bank Economic Review, and Migration Studies. He is also a co-founder and regular contributor to the Development Impact blog.

Jing Cai is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2012. Her research areas are development economics and household finance. Her current research examines the growth of micro-enterprises and SMEs, impacts of tax incentives on firm behavior, and diffusion and impacts of financial innovations in developing countries. Dr. Cai is a Co-Chair of the firm sector of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). She currently serves as an associate editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, and the Economic Development and Cultural Change. 

Claudia Ruiz is an Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group. She joined the Bank in September 2011. Her research has focused on understanding the impact that access to finance has on individuals and firms, and the role that financial services have in promoting economic development. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA.

Luis Franjo is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Alicante since 2017. Prior to joining the University of Alicante, he was a postdoc fellow from 2013 at the Chair of International Finance in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). His research focuses on Macroeconomic aspects of Growth, Development and Housing. He holds a Bachelor and a PhD in Economics from University Carlos III of Madrid.

Rachel Cassidy is an economist at the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab. Her research focuses on impact evaluations of initiatives that seek to reduce women’s barriers to accessing finance, labor force participation, autonomy over marriage and contraceptive decisions, and schooling. Her work has been published in outlets including the Journal of Development Economics and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rachel received her PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford. In her personal capacity, Rachel is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development, an international research associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a research associate at the University of Warwick’s CAGE Research Centre, and an affiliate of the University of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of African Economies.

Roman David Zarate is an Economist in the Trade and International Integration Team in the Development Research Group. His research lies at the intersection between international trade and development economics. In particular, he studies how different forms of market integration across and within countries impact welfare, aggregate productivity, and growth in developing countries. Methodologically, his research combines quasi-experimental variation with structural evaluations. He holds a Bachelor and Masters in Economics from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mary Hallward-Driemeier is a Senior Economic Adviser in the Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation (FCI) Global Practice at the World Bank Group, overseeing the analytical agenda on issues of private sector development, technology and productivity.  A Canadian national, she joined the World Bank in 1997 as a Young Professional. She has published widely on entrepreneurship, firm productivity and firm dynamics, the impact of financial crises, and women's economic empowerment.  She has served as an advisor to the Chief Economist of the World Bank, a co-manager of the Jobs Group, the Deputy Director for the World Development Report 2005:  A Better Investment Climate for Everyone and is a founding member of the Microeconomics of Growth Network. Her latest book is Trouble in the Making? The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development. Mary received her M.Sc. in Development Economics from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar and her Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T.

Chang-Tai Hsieh is the Winkelried Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Siddharth Sharma is a Senior Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for South Asia at the World Bank. He specializes in the micro economic analysis of firms and labor markets. Since joining the World Bank as Young Professional in 2010, Siddharth has worked on a range of analytical and operational projects in support of productivity and job growth in Africa, Europe and Central Asia, and South Asia. His research has been published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, and he has also contributed chapters to several World Bank policy reports, including the 2017 World Development Report on “Governance and the Law”. Siddharth has a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.

David Koll is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Mannheim and a Research Associate at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. He obtained a PhD in Economics from the EUI in September 2020. David Koll works on topics in macroeconomics, labor and public economics. In particular, he is interested in the effect of family policies on individual behaviour, inequality and redistribution, the effect of Covid on gender inequality in the labor market, and the effect of technological change on jobs and workers. His work has been published in the NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2021. 

Namrata Kala is an Assistant Professor in the Applied Economics group at MIT Sloan. Her research interests are development economics, environmental economics and organizational economics. She holds a PhD from Yale University, a MA and MPhil from Yale University, and a BA (hons) degree from Delhi University. She is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Affiliate at Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and a Research Affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Prior to joining MIT, she was a Prize Fellow at Harvard University and a postdoctoral fellow at J-PAL.

Francisco Buera is the Sam B. Cook Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis and a consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, where he was previously a visiting scholar and a senior economist. Francisco was also a senior economist and research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He has taught at Northwestern University and the University of California at Los Angeles. Francisco received a B.A. in economics from the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on macroeconomics and macroeconomic development and has addressed topics such as the rise of the service economy, financial markets’ role in development, and the diffusion of technologies across countries.

Francisco is an associate editor of the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. His work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economic Studies

Mikko is a PhD candidate at Harvard University. His research focuses on issues at the intersection of education policy and labor economics. Prior to beginning his PhD he conducted research at the VATT Institute for Economic Research and the OECD and studied at Tufts, Oxford, and Helsinki universities.

Marco Sanfilippo is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Torino, an Affiliate at the Collegio Carlo Alberto, and a Programme Associate and Visiting Researcher with the Global Governance Programme at the European University Institute. His current work tries to understand the drivers of private sector development in low-income countries using firm and individual level data. On these issues, he regularly consults with national and international organisations, including so far UNICEF, UNIDO, UNU-Wider, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the African Development Bank (AfDB), ILO, the World Bank and the IMF. 

Laura Alfaro is the Warren Alpert Professor of Business Administration. At Harvard Business School since 1999, she is also a Faculty Research Associate in the NBER International Finance and Macroeconomics Program and the International Trade and Investment Program, CEPR IFM program, member of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Economic Advisory Board, the Latin-American Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF), Faculty Associate at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies’ (DRCLAS) policy committee, among others. She served as Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy in Costa Rica from 2010-2012, taking a leave from HBS. In 2008, she was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Professor Alfaro is the author of multiple articles published in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of International Economics, and of Harvard Business School cases related to the field of international economics and in particular international capital flows, foreign direct investment, sovereign debt, trade, and emerging markets.