Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics 2024—The Great Incoherence: Growth and Human Development in An Era of Stagnation

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

Masood Ahmed is president of the Center for Global Development. He joined the Center in January 2017, capping a 35-year career driving economic development policy initiatives relating to debt, aid effectiveness, trade, and global economic prospects at major international institutions including the IMF, World Bank, and DFID.

Ahmed joined CGD from the IMF, where he served for eight years as director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, earning praise from Managing Director Christine Lagarde as a “visionary leader.” In that role, he oversaw the Fund's operations in 32 countries, and managed relationships with key national and regional policy makers and stakeholders.

Born and raised in Pakistan, Ahmed moved to London in 1971 to study at the LSE where he obtained a BSc Honors as well as an MSc Econ with distinction.

Ahmed is a leading expert on Middle East economics, having served on the Advisory Board of the LSE Middle East Center, as well as on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and North Africa.

Danny Quah is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics and Dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. His research interests lie in income inequality, economic growth, and international economic relations. Quah’s work takes an economic approach to world order — focusing on global power shift and the rise of the east, and alternative models of global power relations. The economic approach emerges in that Quah’s work studies the supply and demand of world order: What international system do the world’s superpowers wish to provide; what world order does the global community need? Quah’s work on income inequality sets the challenge against a broader background of social mobility and cohesion, and in so doing suggests a single narrative on the challenge of income inequality is unlikely to be correct or helpful.

Quah is Commissioner on the Spence-Stiglitz Commission on Global Economic Transformation; and serves on the Executive Committee, International Economic Association; the Executive Committee, Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs APSIA; the Advisory Council, Bennett Institute, Cambridge University; the Academic Advisory Board, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University; the Global Advisory Board, Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management; the Advisory Board, LSE IDEAS; the Advisory Council, OMFIF; the Eminent Advisory Council, UNDP Asia-Pacific; and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council for Geopolitics. He is Vice President, Economic Society of Singapore.

Quah gave the third LSE-NUS lecture in 2013, TEDx talks in 2016, 2014, and 2012, and the Inaugural LSE Big Questions Lecture in 2011. Quah’s research has been supported by the Khazanah Research Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the British Academy, the UK’s Economic and Research Council, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Quah was previously Assistant Professor of Economics at MIT, and then at LSE Professor of Economics and International Development, and Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. He served as LSE’s Head of Department for Economics, and Council Member on Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council.

Quah studied at Princeton, Minnesota, and Harvard.

Kathleen Hays is Editor-in-Chief of Central Bank Central covering Federal Reserve policy and players, and central banks around the world that are driving global markets.

Recognized as one of the top economics reporters and anchors in the country, Hays has covered the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve for more than 30 years. For the past two years she has broadened out her coverage to include the economies and central banks of Asia, travelling regularly to Japan.

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 150 articles in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Political Economy, 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.

Pritish Behuria is a political economist with a PhD from SOAS, University of London, his  work explores the intersection of development studies, comparative politics, and international political economy, focusing on late development challenges in the context of 21st-century globalization. He helds academic positions at SOAS, LSE, and currently at The University of Manchester, where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2022. Pritish research spans the politics of financial integration, state-business relations in Africa, and India's solar energy sector. He has been recognized for his teaching and advising, and he actively contributes to academic groups and journals. Additionally, Pritish consultes for international organizations and his insights have been featured in global media.

Tristan Reed is an applied economist at the World Bank's Development Research Group. His research documents how economic and political competition shape economic development. Alongside research, he provides advice to World Bank clients on sector development strategy and trade and competition policy. Prior to joining the Bank, Tristan was an associate at McKinsey & Company's Africa office. A native of California, he holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A. summa cum laude from UCLA.

Ana Paula Cusolito is a Senior Economist currently working at the Markets, Competition & Technology Unit of the FCI Global Practice of the World Bank. Her research focuses on firm and aggregate productivity and its determinants, including foreign competition, digital-technology adoption, innovation, and corporate governance. Ana Paula has co-authored several academic papers, WBG flagship reports, and books. Her research has been published in international journals such as American Economic Review: Insights, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, Journal of Economics and Public Finance, IZA Journal of Labor and Development, and Journal of Development Effectiveness among others. She has been invited to present her work and be discussant at several international conferences, including Econometric Society, EEA, LACEA, RES, WEAI among others. Before joining the WBG, Ana Paula worked at the IADB as Country Economist for Costa Rica and the Ministry of Finance of Buenos Aires Province, UNDP program. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Master from UCEMA, and a B.A, from Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

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. Her work has also focused on 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 deep trade agreements and on corruption in customs and tax evasion.

William F. Maloney is Chief Economist for the Latin America and the Caribbean region at the World Bank. Previously he was Chief Economist for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions, and Trade and Competitiveness; he was also Global Lead on Innovation and Productivity. Prior to the Bank, he was an assistant professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1990-1997) and then Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America until 2009. From 2009 to 2014, he was Lead Economist in the Development Economics Research Group. From 2011 to 2014 he was visiting professor at the University of the Andes and worked closely with the Colombian government on innovation and firm upgrading issues.

Mr. Maloney received his PhD in economics from the University of California Berkeley (1990), his BA from Harvard University (1981), and he studied at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia (1982–83).

Christoph Trebesch is head of the Research Center International Finance and Macroeconomics at the Kiel Institute since April 2017, as well as Professor of Macroeconomics at Kiel University. Trebesch works at the intersection of international finance and macroeconomics, economic history, and political economy. He did his doctorate at the Free University Berlin and then moved to the University of Munich as assistant professor before joining the Kiel Institute. He has been a consultant and advisor for the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations, the US Treasury as well as the German Ministry of Finance. His work is regularly cited in leading international media such as the New York Times, The Economist, or the Financial Times.

A unifying theme of his work is a focus on rare events, meaning events that occur only every few years or decades, but, when they do occur, they have enormous economic consequences. This motivated his research on financial and debt crises, on the rise of extremist and populist political forces, on China’s financial ascent, and, more recently on geopolitics and great power rivalry. In 2022, he founded a new Research Initiative on Geopolitics and Economics at the Kiel Institute, which he now co-heads with Katrin Kamin, and created the widely covered Ukraine Support Tracker.

Enrico Mallucci principal economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His main research interests are: International Economics and International Finance. His research focuses on: Sovereign Defaults and International Capital Flows

Rong Qian is a Senior Economist at the World Bank in the Philippines. She leads a team that develops programs to help improve the country’s global competitiveness and resilience to natural disasters. She is also the macroeconomics and fiscal management expert behind the Growth and Productivity Report and the Philippines Economic Update, which reviews salient socioeconomic issues and provides growth forecasts twice a year.

Prior to joining the Philippine team, Rong was the country economist for Chile and Nicaragua based in Washington, DC. She specializes in fiscal policy, productivity, and growth—including green growth and its careful regard for the environment.

Rong joined the bank in September 2011. Earlier in her career at the Bank, Rong was doing research on sovereign defaults and financial crises. She was also an intern at the United States Congressional Budget Office and the International Monetary Fund, while completing her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland.

Luca Bandiera is a Lead Economist of the Global Macro and Debt Analytics in the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment (MTI) Global Practice of the World Bank. He has worked on technical, analytical and operational tasks in low and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia and Latin America. He leads the analytical work on debt sustainability in the World Bank. He has published articles and contributed chapters in books on debt, infrastructure and growth. He holds a Doctorate degree from Catholic University in Milan. 

Marcos Chamon is a Deputy Division Chief at the International Monetary Fund. He has worked on a wide range of topics related to international finance, including problems related to sovereign debt structure, and restructuring, liability denomination, indexation of debt to GDP, the international financial architecture, country insurance, methodologies to assess vulnerabilities in emerging markets and advanced economies, consumption and savings in China, currency composition of reserves, the emerging market’s policy responses to the Global Financial Crisis, the design of capital controls and macro prudential policies. Prior to joining the Fund, he obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2003.

Manuela Francisco is the Global Director for the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment (MTI) Global Practice in the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions Practice Group (GGEVP), a position she started on 1 January 2023.

Ms. Francisco, a Portuguese national, joined the World Bank in 2005 as Country Economist in the Africa Department. She has since held various positions of responsibility in the Bank. Prior to her current position, she was the Director of Credit Risk, in the Chief Risk Officer Vice Presidency, and before that, she was the Practice Manager for MTI in the South Asia Region.

Before joining the Bank, Ms. Francisco was an Assistant Professor at Universidade do Minho, Portugal.

Ms. Francisco has a PhD in Economics, International Macroeconomics from the University of Nottingham.

Robert Cull is Research Manager and Lead Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. His most recent research is on the performance of microfinance institutions, African financial development, Chinese financial development and firm performance, and the effects of the global financial crisis on foreign banks and on bank regulation and supervision in developing economies. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals including in the Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. The author or editor of multiple books, his most recent co-edited book, “Banking the World: Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion” was published by MIT Press January, 2013. He is also co-editor of the Interest Bearing Notes, a bi-monthly newsletter reporting on financial and private sector research. 

José Scheinkman is currently the Charles and Lynn Zhang Professor of Economics at Columbia University and the Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University. He spent much of his career at the University of Chicago, where he served as department chair immediately prior to his departure for Princeton. He is best known for his work in mathematical economics (particularly dynamic optimization) and finance, oligopoly theory and the social economics of cities and crime; he also helped spur the development of work at the intersection of economics, finance and physics. Scheinkman also famously pioneered the now-ubiquitous application of academic financial theory to practical risk management of fixed incomes during a leave he took as Vice President in the Financial Strategies Group at Goldman, Sachs & Co. during the late 1980s.

Lee Seltzer is a financial research economist in Climate Risk Studies within the Financial Intermediation Policy Research Division. His research interests include examining corporate finance issues in real estate markets, in particular the effects of firm corporate finance decision-making on rental housing markets. He also studies the implications of climate risk on financial markets. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Economics and History from Rutgers University.

Manthos Delis is a Professor of Financial Economics at Audencia Business School and Member of the Board of Directors at the University of Ioannina.

His current research emphasizes the role of sustainable finance (especially bank credit) in modern societies. More than 60 of his papers are published in top-tier journals, with 10 publications in FT-listed journals (Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial & Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, Operations Research, Review of Finance), 21 in ABS 4 journals, and many other in top-field journals (European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Money, Credit & Banking, etc.).

He has been a full professor since the age of 33 and IDEAS ranks his research among the top 1% economics researchers in the world. Among other awards, on March 2019, he was externally nominated for the USERN Prize 2019 and is included in the Stanford science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators.

He is a co-founder and member of the organizing committee of the CEPR Endless Summer Conference on Financial Intermediation and Corporate Finance. He is also a member of the program committee of the Swiss Winter Conference on Financial Intermediation, and a member of the scientific committee of the Hellenic Finance and Accounting Association (HFAA). He serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Stability and the International Review of Finance. 

Claudio Raddatz is pofessor at the University of Chile. Previously, he was the  Director of the Financial Policy Division at the Central Bank of Chile, he also worked at the World Bank, after earning a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Raddatz’s research focuses on the interactions between macroeconomics, finance, and development.

Sergio Schmukler is the Research Manager of Macroeconomics and Growth in the World Bank's Development Research Group. His research area is international finance and international financial markets and institutions. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997, when he joined the World Bank's Young Economist and Young Professionals Programs. He currently teaches financial development at Columbia University. He is a member of the Money and Finance Research (Mo.Fi.R) group and Treasurer of LACEA, the Latin America and Caribbean Economic Association (since 2004).

Dr. Andrew Steer is the President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund.

Andrew joined the Bezos Earth Fund from the World Resources Institute, where he served as President & CEO for over eight years. Prior to this, he served as the World Bank’s Special Envoy for Climate Change from 2010 - 2012. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Director General at the UK Department of International Development. This followed 10 years in East Asia, where he was Head of the World Bank in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Dr. Steer is a Global Agenda Trustee for the World Economic Forum, a Commissioner of the Energy Transitions Commission, a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), co-chair of the Greening the Belt and Road Coalition, and board member of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet. He is also a member of the Advisory Committees of the Asian Development Bank and on the leadership council of Concordia.

Andrew was educated at St Andrews University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cambridge University. He has a PhD in international economics and finance. He is married to Dr. Liesbet Steer and is the father of Charlotte and Benjamin.

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak is the Jerome Kasoff ’54 Professor of Management and 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).

Mobarak has several ongoing research projects in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sierra Leone. He conducts field experiments exploring ways to induce people in developing countries to adopt technologies or behaviors that are likely to be welfare-improving. He also examines the complexities of scaling up development interventions that are proven effective in such trials. For example, he is scaling and testing strategies to address seasonal poverty using migration subsidies or consumption loans in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Indonesia. His research has been published in journals across disciplines, including Science, Nature, Econometrica,  American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, BMJ, the American Political Science Review, PNAS, Marketing Science, and Demography, and covered by the New York Times, The Economist, NPR, BBC, NBC, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Science, Nature, and other media outlets around the world. He received a Carnegie Fellowship in 2017 and was named to the inaugural Vox list of 50 “scientists working to build a more perfect future” in 2022.

Joana Silva is a Senior Economist at the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. Since joining the World Bank in 2007 as a Young Professional, Joana published several books and articles on a broad set of issues related to economic development, including labor economics, education/skills, social safety nets, poverty, inequality, political economy of economic reforms, firm dynamics and international trade. Her research has been published in professional journals such as the Journal of International Economics, Economics Letters, Review of World Economics and IZA Journal of Labor Policy. Book titles authored or coauthored by Joana include “Sustaining Employment and Wage Gains in Brazil: a Skills and Jobs Agenda”,  “Inclusion and Resilience: The Way Forward for Social Safety Nets in the Middle East and North Africa” and “Striving for Better Jobs: The Challenge of Informality in the Middle East and North Africa”. While at the Bank she authored thematic Flagship Reports (e.g. as Task Team Leader for the 2013 MENA Development Report, the Brazil Skills & Jobs report), managed cross-sectorial lending projects and advisory activities (e.g. Task Team Leader for innovative labor and social protection projects), and contributed to a range of analytical studies on design and evaluation of social welfare systems, labor markets, political economy, international integration and investment climate. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Nottingham. Prior to joining the World Bank, she also worked for the Globalization and Economic Policy Research Center at the University of Nottingham and the Inter-American Development Bank. She is fluent in Portuguese, French, English, and Spanish.

Norbert Schady, a German national, is Chief Economist for Human Development in the World Bank Group. Previously, he was Principal Economic Advisor, Social Sector, at the Inter-American Bank (2010-2021), Senior Economist in the Development Research Group (2003-2010), Economist in the Poverty Group of the Latin America region of the World Bank (2000-2003), and a Young Professional at the World Bank (1998-2000). Mr. Schady has also taught at Georgetown University and Princeton University. He received his PhD from Princeton University and his BA from Yale University.

Mr. Schady has published extensively in academic journals, including in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Applied, American Economic Journal: Policy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Human Resources, and Journal of Development Economics, among many others. He is also the author of numerous flagship reports, including The Early Years: Child Well-Being and the Role of Public Policy, Conditional Cash Transfers: Reducing Present and Future Poverty, and Closing the Gap in Education and Technology. Mr. Schady’s main research areas include early childhood development, teacher quality, cash transfer programs, and the effects of economic contractions on the accumulation of human capital.

Mamta started as Vice President for Human Development at the World Bank on July 1, 2020. In this role she oversees the Global Practices for Education; Health, Nutrition, and Population; Gender; Social Protection and Jobs –as well as the Human Capital Project.

Mamta has held many leadership positions at the World Bank, including as Director of Operations Policy (2019), Director of Strategy and Operations in Infrastructure (2018), Director of Strategy and Operations in the Africa Region (2015-2018), and Regional Country Director for the EU, based in Brussels (2012–15).  

An economist by training, she has had technical roles in Social Protection and Labor (1996-2004) and Education (2006-10). She was Deputy Director of the World Development Report on Development and the Next Generation in 2006. During 1998-2000, Mamta was MacArthur Fellow for Poverty and Inequality at King’s College, Cambridge.

David Evans is the Principal Economic Advisor for the Social Sector at the Inter-American Development Bank. He was previously a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a visiting professor at the Center for Development Economics at Williams College, and a lead economist at the World Bank. Most of his research falls within the categories of education, health, gender, social protection, early childhood, and impact evaluation. David wants good research to inform policy.  He has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University (2005). 

Dr. Rachel Glennerster has been appointed as the next President of CGD. She has distinguished background in international development; well-known for her groundbreaking work in academia and public service on both sides of the Atlantic. Her wealth of knowledge, innovative mindset, managerial acumen, and proven ability to secure funding will undoubtedly move CGD forward. Currently serving as an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, Rachel has leveraged randomized trials to address critical issues spanning democracy, health, education, and women's empowerment, and pioneered ways to shape markets to promote innovation to address global challenges including pandemics and climate change. Her tenure as Chief Economist at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and its predecessor the Department for International Development, alongside her executive leadership at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), underscores her commitment to evidence-based policymaking and poverty reduction.

Ashwini Deshpande is Professor and Head, Department of Economics, and Founding Director, Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at Ashoka University, India. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of “Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011 (Hardcover) and 2017 (Paperback); and “Affirmative Action in India”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Oxford India Short Introductions series, 2013. She has edited several volumes, the latest of which is “Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action” (Springer Major Reference Works). She is a Fellow of the International Economic Association. She received the EXIM Bank award for outstanding dissertation (now called the IERA Award) in 1994, the 2007 VKRV Rao Award for Indian economists under 45 and SKOCH Award for Gender Economics in 2022.

Raquel Fernández holds a Silver Professorship in the Department of Economics at NYU. She is a member of the NBER, the CEPR, IZA, BREAD, and of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group. She has previously been a tenured professor at the London School of Economics, Boston University, and Oslo University. She was awarded the Carlos Diaz Alejandro Prize in 2024 and is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the recipient of numerous National Science Foundation grants. She has served as the Director of the Public Policy Program of the CEPR, as Vice President of the American Economic Association, and as President of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA). She is the Founding Director of WELAC (Women Economists in LAC) — a standing subcommittee of LACEA that monitors and advances the status of women in the economics profession. She is co-director of the NBER’s Inequality and the Macroeconomy group and a member of the advisory and scientific committees of various institutions including the International Economics Association, the Barcelona School of Economics, UNU-WIDER, UBS Zurich, and RIDGE. Fernández has broad research interests that span sovereign debt, culture and economics, development and gender issues, macroeconomics and inequality, and political economy. She is a leading pioneer in the area of culture and economics and has published extensively in the major journals.

Karen Macours is a chaired professor at the Paris School of Economics (PSE), and senior researcher (directrice de recherche) at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). Her research focusses on agricultural productivity and rural poverty reduction in developing countries, impact assessment related to agricultural R&D, the evaluation of programs addressing households’ productive and human capital investments (early childhood, health, nutrition, education) and related measurement and methodological questions. 

She is co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics, and associate editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and co-organizer of the Virtual Development Economics Seminar Series: VDEV/CEPR/BREAD.

She is a board member of JPAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab) and serves as co-chair of JPAL's health sector and the Learning for All Initiative, is a member of the board of directors of BREAD (Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development) and the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Market Risk and Resilience, a member of the Weiss Fund committee, and until recently was chair of the CGIAR’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA). She is a research fellow of CEPR (Center for Economic Policy Research) and affiliate of EUDN (European Universities Development Network).  

Deon Filmer is Director of the Research Group at the World Bank. He has previously served as Acting Research Manager in the Research Group, Co-Director of the World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise, and Lead Economist in the Human Development department of the Africa Region of the World Bank. He works on issues of human capital and skills, service delivery, and the impact of policies and programs to improve human development outcomes—with research spanning the areas of education, health, social protection, and poverty and inequality. He has published widely in refereed journals, including studies of the impact of demand-side programs on schooling and learning; the roles of poverty, gender, orphanhood, and disability in explaining education inequalities; and the determinants of effective service delivery. He has recently co-authored the following books: Making Schools Work: New Evidence from Accountability Reforms, Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and From Mines and Wells to Well-Built Minds: Turning Sub-Saharan Africa's Natural Resource Wealth into Human Capital. He was a core team member of the World Bank's World Development Reports in 1995 Workers in an Integrating World and 2004 Making Services Work for Poor People, and a contributor to 2007’s report Development and the Next Generation. He holds a PhD and MA from Brown University and a BA from Tufts University.

Teresa Molina is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Research Affiliate at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Research Fellow at UHERO, and Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Health Economics. Teressa received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California and her undergraduate degree from Stanford University. 

Teresa works primarily on topics in development, health, and labor economics. Her research page contains a list of her publications and working papers. 

Shalini Roy is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. Her research focuses on the relationship between households’ economic behavior and social protection, nutrition, agriculture, gender, and early childhood development. Much of her work is based on impact evaluations of development programming, with a particular interest in how programs both affect and are affected by intrahousehold dynamics. Her work spans South Asia (with a regional focus in Bangladesh), Africa, and Latin America. Shalini’s recent research includes comparing impacts of food and cash transfers on food security, nutrition, gender dynamics, and early childhood development in Bangladesh and Uganda; evaluating impacts of large-scale cash transfer projects in Mali, Brazil, and Mexico; and assessing gender- and nutrition-related impacts of agricultural projects in Bangladesh. Shalini has been at IFPRI since 2009 and holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Kehinde Ajayi is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, working on gender equality, education, and social safety nets. Previously, Ajayi was at the World Bank, where she coordinated research initiatives on women’s economic empowerment, youth employment, social protection, and childcare in the Africa Gender Innovation Lab. Before joining the World Bank, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University, a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Fulbright Fellow. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations from Stanford University.

Eeshani is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development; prior to this, she was a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank.  She was born and raised in India and has a PhD from the University of Illinois and a BA from Macalester College.

Maria Caridad Araujo is Chief of the Gender and Diversity Division at the IDB, where she leads efforts to improve access to quality services, economic opportunities, and strengthen the voice and representation of women, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ. + community. As chief economist in the IDB's Health and Social Protection Division, she worked on child development and poverty reduction programs. She was a professor at Georgetown University and worked at the World Bank. Maria Caridad has a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth. He was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016. Between 2003 and 2006, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund.

Dr. Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development. The books he has written include Breaking the Mold: Reimagining India's Economic Future with Rohit Lamba,  The Third Pillar: How the State and Markets hold the Community Behind 2019 which was a finalist for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year prize and Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, for which he was awarded the Financial Times prize for Business Book of the Year in 2010.

Pamela Jakiela is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Williams College and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development. She is also affiliated with BREAD, IPA, IZA, and J-PAL.

S Anukriti is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group (Human Development Team) of the World Bank. She is an applied micro-economist, with interests in the fields of development economics, economics of gender and the family, and political economy. Her research examines the underlying causes of gender inequalities in developing societies, and explores mechanisms that can bring about gender equity. More broadly, she is interested in the role of social norms, formal and informal institutions, and public policy in affecting social change. Dr. Anukriti received her PhD in Economics from Columbia University, MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and BA (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Prior to joining the World Bank in July 2020, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston College. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA).

Nishith Prakash is a Research Fellow at CESifo, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), HiCN Households in Conflict Network (HiCN), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Network Researcher, Global Labor Organization (GLO), and Member of Insights on Immigration and Development (INSIDE-SPAIN). He is also currently serving in the Editorial Board of the journal PLOS ONE and Associate Editor at the Journal of Development Economics.

Born and raised in Bihar, India, he earned a B.A. (honors) in economics from Shivaji College, an M.A. in economics from Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University (India), and a Ph.D. in economics from University of Houston, TX. He was a post-doctoral research associate at Cornell University, NY from July 2010 – December 2011. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Yale, Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, and Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School.

Rachel Heath is an associate professor in the department of Economics at the University of Washington. Her research interests are in development and labor economics. In particular, much of her research focuses on increased labor market opportunities for women in developing countries (such as the garment industry in Bangladesh). Rachel studies how these new job opportunities are changing women's lives, the factors that influence women's decisions to join the labor force, and how firms make hiring decisions.

Somik Lall is Staff Director of the World Bank’s 2024 World Development Report, which examines the challenges of economic growth in middle-income countries. He is also an Economic Adviser in the Office of the World Bank Group Chief Economist. Previously, he headed the climate economics and policy team in the World Bank’s Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions vice presidency, where he developed and supervised high-quality research programs on resilience and economic development, the macro-criticality of climate change, and innovations for the low-carbon transition. His other roles include Global Lead for territorial and spatial development and Lead Economist for the World Bank’s Urban, Disaster Risk, Resilience, and Land Global Practice. Dr. Lall also teaches at Johns Hopkins University and has been a Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.

He has advised senior policymakers in national and city governments on key policy issues in over 25 countries—including Brazil, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. He is widely published in academic and policy journals. His 2021 book, Place, Productivity, and Prosperity, examines the spatial dimensions of productivity growth in developing nations, and provides a new analytic framework to help policy makers arrive at a disciplined view of a place’s economic potential. His 2017 book, “Africa's Cities: Opening Doors to the World,” has over 100,000 downloads and 3 million social media views. He has developed a novel data-driven approach to help city mayors rapidly respond to protect their citizens from the ravages of COVID 19. Listen to his Monocle podcast.

Oyebola Okunogbe is an Economist in the Human Development team of the World Bank Development Research Group. Her research interests are in governance and political economy, including policies on public finance, nation building, education, employment and gender. Oyebola obtained her PhD in Public Policy and MPA in International Development from Harvard University, and her B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College. She was born and raised in Nigeria.

Thomas Ginn is a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he studies migration and displacement. His current research focuses on aid for refugees in lower-income countries, including projects on labor market access, housing, and host community attitudes. Prior to joining CGD, Thomas worked with the World Bank on a survey of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraqi Kurdistan and with Innovations for Poverty Action in Kenya. He received his PhD in economics from Stanford University, where his dissertation evaluated camps for Syrian refugees, and his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Isaac M. Mbiti is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Prior to his appointment at the Batten School, Mbiti was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University and also served as a Martin Luther King Visiting Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  His research has focused broadly on African economic development with particular interests in examining the role of education policies such as free primary education and teacher performance pay programs, as well as the potential for new technologies (especially mobile phones) to spur the development process. His ongoing research projects in East and West Africa evaluate various policies that aim to improve the livelihoods of African youth through training programs.

His research has been supported by numerous agencies including the National Science Foundation, The National Institutes of Health, the International Impact Evaluation Initiative, USAID and the World Bank. He is a research affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT and was previously selected as a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow.  His publications have appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and Journal of African Economies. He has also authored several policy reports for the Kenyan Government, the World Bank and NGOs, such as the International Rescue Committee. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Brown University.

Owen Ozier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Williams College. He was previously a Senior Economist in the World Bank's Development Research Group, Human Development Team. He received his M.Eng. and B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999, and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2010. His current research projects focus on health, education, and economic decisions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tamar Manuelyan Atinc is a development professional with over 30 years of experience in the analysis and implementation of development policies and programs. She is currently a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution where she has worked since 2013. During her long career at the World Bank, Manuelyan Atinc was Vice President for Human Development and served in three regions, including Europe and Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, and Africa working to advance country policy and programs to foster human development, reduce poverty, and improve economic management. Her recent research has focused primarily on scaling up early childhood development, social impact bonds, and data and accountability for better education outcomes.

Manuelyan Atinc is a member of the the Board of the Graduate Institute of International Relations and Development Studies in Geneva since October 2017, a member of the Board of ChildFund International, and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Queen Rania Foundation since October 2018. She started her career working in Geneva at the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. A Turkish national, Ms. Manuelyan Atinc has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.