Global Development and the Middle-Income Trap

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. He brings to the role a broad combination of leadership, expertise, and practical experience working with governments on macroeconomic imbalances, growth, poverty, institutions, conflict, and climate change.

Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, Gill served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he played a key role in shaping the Bank’s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program.

Gill is widely regarded for his contributions to development economics. He spearheaded the influential 2009 World Development Report on economic geography. His pioneering work includes introducing the concept of the “middle-income trap” to describe how countries stagnate after reaching a certain level of income. He has published extensively on key policy issues facing developing countries—among other things, sovereign debt vulnerabilities, green growth and natural-resource wealth, labor markets, and poverty and inequality.

Gill has also taught at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago

Torbjörn Becker has been the Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden since 2006 and is a board member of several economics research institutes in Eastern Europe, including the Kyiv School of Economics. Prior to this, he worked for nine years at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where his work focused on international macro, economic crises and issues related to the international financial system. He holds a Ph.D. from the Stockholm School of Economics and has been published in top academic journals and has contributed to several books and policy reports focusing on Russia and Eastern Europe.

Mats Hårsmar is deputy managing director at the Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA) where he coordinates evaluations and studies of relevance for Swedish development cooperation.

Before joining the EBA, he headed the Swedish Embassy in Burkina Faso where he also led the Swedish development cooperation program. Previously he has among other also served as chief analyst for development issues at the Swedish MFA. In that position he also served as head secretary for the Swedish government’s international advisory Expert Group on Development Issues (EGDI). His research background include rural development, as well as wider development issues, with a particular focus on West Africa. Based at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, he served as researcher and research leader for several years.

Norman Loayza is Director of the Global Indicators Group at the World Bank. He currently supervises the flagship data and reports, Women, Business and the Law, Enterprise Surveys, Global and Subnational Business Ready, the successor to the discontinued Doing Business. 

Previously, he was a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group and managed the Asia hub of the Research Group, based in Malaysia. He was director of the World Development Report 2014, Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development. His research has dealt with various areas of economic and social development, including macroeconomic management, economic growth, microeconomic flexibility, private and public saving, financial depth and stability, natural disasters, and crime and violence. His advisory experience at the World Bank has also ranged across different topics in various regions and countries. A few examples include business environment and economic performance in Latin America; informal and formal labor markets in the Middle East and Northern Africa; public infrastructure gaps in Pakistan and Egypt; savings for macroeconomic stability and growth in Sri Lanka, Georgia, and Egypt; and pro-poor growth in Indonesia and Peru. On external service from the World Bank, he was a Senior Economist at the Central Bank of Chile (1999-2000), where he advised on financial and monetary policy.

Elina Scheja is the Chief Economist of Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). She leads Sida’s analytical efforts at country level with a goal to improve living conditions for people living in poverty and under oppression. Her current areas of focus are multidimensional poverty analysis, financing for development, and green transition. Ms Scheja serves also as the co-chair of OECD DAC Community of Practice on Poverty and Inequalities.

Prior to joining Sida in her new role, Ms Scheja was working as Senior Specialist in Employment and Poverty Diagnostics at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) with a focus on the economic and employment impacts of climate change and Just Transition. Ms Scheja has previous experience working for the World Bank at Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) and at Operations Policy and Country Services (OPCS). Altogether she has 20 years of experience in development cooperation from various roles including managing projects on productive employment and market development in Rwanda, and working with policy support, inclusive growth and private sector development with bilateral development agencies in Sweden and Finland. Ms Scheja holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Sussex, M.Sc in Economics from Helsinki School of Economics, and M.Sc. in Development Studies from the University of Helsinki, and she has research experience from several international universities and research institutions.

Haishan Fu is Chief Statistician of the World Bank and Director of the World Bank’s Development Data Group. In these capacities, Haishan leads and coordinates the development, standard-setting, and implementation of the World Bank’s development data agenda. This includes oversight of key data public goods, such as the World Development Indicators, the Statistical Performance Indicators, the Living Standards Measurement Study, the International Comparison Program, the Debtor Reporting System, the World Bank’s Development Data Hub, Open Data catalogue, Microdata Library, WITS, Specialized Data Management Services (DataBank), API Services, Survey Solutions, the Development Data Partnership, and the World Bank Data Blog. Haishan likewise provides leadership and guidance on operational data and statistics issues at country, regional, and global levels. She serves as Co-Secretary of the World Bank’s data governance architecture, and co-chairs the Bank’s Data for Countries and Global Priorities working group. She oversees the World Bank-hosted Global Data Facility, the World Bank’s trust fund mechanism designed to support data and statistics capacity building, institutional strengthening, and innovations.