James Alm is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.  He has also taught at Syracuse University and at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He earned his master's degree in economics at the University of Chicago and his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Alm teaches and conducts research in the area of public economics.  Much of his research has examined the responses of individuals and firms to taxation, in such areas as tax reform, the tax treatment of the family, the line item veto, social security, housing, indexation, tax and expenditure limitations, and tax compliance.  He has also worked extensively on fiscal and decentralization reforms overseas, including projects in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jamaica, Grenada, Turkey, Egypt, Hungary, China, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Uganda, and Nigeria.  He is currently an Associate Editor of Public Finance Review, Economic Inquiry, and Review of Economics of the Household.  More information and links to publications can be found at http://www.gsu.edu/~ecojra.

Philip Amis is a Senior Lecturer in International Urban Development at the International Development Department, School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. His main research interests and consultancy are in urban poverty and development, decentralization, and aid management in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. From 1996 to 1997 he was the team leader of an impact assessment of India’s Slum Improvement Projects for DFID. From 1998 to 2001 he was on the steering committee of the DFID ESCOR funded three year research project on Urban Governance, Partnership and Poverty. Since 2000 he has been the urban co-ordinator of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. 

Judy Baker is a Senior Economist at the World Bank.  She has recently joined the Transport and Urban Development Department where she is focusing on poverty issues in urban areas and the poverty reduction aspects of transport policies and projects.  In this capacity, she is leading a new thematic group in the Bank on Urban Poverty.  Prior to this position, Judy worked extensively in the Latin America and Caribbean Region where her work covered the development of country level poverty reduction strategies, improving public expenditures and programs targeted to the poor, evaluating poverty impact, and the spatial analysis of poverty and inequality.  In 2000, she completed a book entitled Evaluating the Impact of Development Projects on Poverty.

Jo Beall is a reader in Development Studies at the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN) at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she directs the Development Management Programme. She is a specialist on urban social development, urban services and urban governance and has researched these issues in South Asia and South Africa. She is co-author of Uniting a Divided City: Governance and Social Exclusion in Johannesburg, published by Earthscan and editor of A City for All: Valuing Difference and Working with Diversity. She is currently actively involved in research with the Crisis States Programme based in the Development Research Centre at the LSE where she is investigating local and metropolitan government as a site of state stabilisation in conflict situations, with a focus on KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Solomon Benjamin is a consultant and researcher on issues of urban governance and economies operating out of Bangalore in South India. With a PhD in Urban Studies from MIT, and Masters in housing policy, his areas of work have been on issues of urban governance, land policy, poverty, and employment issues. Recently, he was Sector Leader for design of the Economic and Livelihood component for Kolkata (Calcutta) Urban Services Program funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DfID). He has also been associated at a senior level with several international research projects, and a consultant to the UN, the World Bank, DfID, and the Swiss Development Cooperation. He has published in several journals and contributed chapters to books on governance and employment issues.

Djillali Benouar is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Bab Ezzouar in Algeria and Director of the Built Environment Research Laboratory.  He has worked throughout the Middle East and North Africa and published extensively on issues relating to urban vulnerability resulting from natural hazards with a particular focus on the effect of earthquakes.  He holds degrees in Civil Engineering from both the University of Algiers and Stanford University and holds a doctorate in Engineering Seismology from Imperial College London.

Cid Blanco, is an architect specialized in Urban Poverty Reduction (IHS, The Netherlands). Current staff of the Municipality of Santo André, Brazil, he has been directly involved in the development and implementation of policies and projects in areas such as housing, strategic planning, participatory budgeting, international relations and resources mobilization. He has also carried out research on housing and inner city revitalization. Mr. Blanco is coordinator of the Municipality's social inclusion indicators project.

Ellen Brennan-Galvin is currently writing a book for RAND on urban environmental and security issues. During 2001-2002 she was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Previously, she was Chief of the Population Policy Section of the United Nations Population Division. She has been a member of the Committee on the Geographic Foundation for Agenda 21 (National Research Council, U.S. National Academy of Sciences), and currently serves on the Committee on Population of the National Research Council. Dr. Brennan-Galvin is a graduate of Smith College, holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and was a Population Council Fellow at the Office of Population Research, Princeton University.

Alex B. Brillantes, Jr. is an Associate Professor at the National College of Public Administration and Governance of the University of the Philippines and Director of its Center for Local and Regional Governance. He has served as consultant to the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme regarding institutional development, local governance and poverty concerns. Dr. Brillantes obtained his PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of Hawaii where he was a scholar of the East-West Center. He obtained his AB (Political Science) and Master of Public Administration, and Certificate in Governmental Management from the University of the Philippines.

Warren Brown is head of ACCION International’s housing microfinance initiative, where he oversees the development and rollout of new loan and savings products to serve the housing needs of the working poor. He is responsible for expanding the number of ACCION microlending partners that offer housing finance products, coordinating the design and development of these new products based on market research and past experience, and accompanying the pilot testing and documenting the results. In addition, Mr. Brown supports the work of ACCION’s other technical specialists in market intelligence and remittances.

Jan K. Brueckner is IBE Distinguised Professor of Economics and a member of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received an A.B. from UC Berkeley in 1972 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1976. Brueckner has published over eighty scholarly papers in the areas of urban economics, public economics, housing finance, and the economics of the airline industry. He serves as editor of the Journal of Urban Economics and is a member of the editorial boards of four other journals.

Bob Buckley is the Housing Sector Advisor at the World Bank. He is a long time staff member who has been involved in project preparation and studies in over thirty-five countries, most recently Latvia, Russia and India. He has written extensively on real estate issues. His most recent book is Housing Finance in Developing Countries. Prior to joining the Bank he served at the US Dept of Housing and Urban Development's Chief Economist, and has taught at American University, Syracuse University, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania.

Marina Cacace, jurist and sociologist, is head of CERFE’s Department for Preliminary Studies. She is currently Coordinator of an organization specialized in social research in the field of gender issues (ASDO). She has carried out several researches on the different forms of women’s occupational segregation, women’s leadership and the reconciliation of professional and family life. She is expert of legal frameworks for the promotion of civil society, with specific reference to America Latin and the conflicts between different juridical systems in Central Africa. Moreover, she conducted researches on the role of the city in globalization processes and on international migrations.

Tim Campbell manages World Bank Institute’s urban program for developing capacity in cities of the Bank’s client countries. He has worked for more than 30 years in urban development with experience in scores of countries and hundreds of cities in Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. His areas of expertise include strategic planning, decentralization, urban policy, and social and poverty impact of urban development. In addition to many policy papers on decentralization, he has authored several books. "The Quiet Revolution," is an analysis of decentralization and the rise of political participation in Latin America from 1983-1995 (forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press). A second book "Leadership and Innovation" to be published by the World Bank Institute, is a collection of case studies of leading local governments in Latin America. 

Robert Cervero, Professor of Urban Planning, University of California, Berkeley, has authored five books and numerous articles on transport policy and planning. He is currently evaluating carsharing, transit joint development, and bus rapid transit programs. He is also active internationally, currently working on a waterfront redevelopment in Fortaleza, Brazil. He is a Fellow with the Urban Land Institute, a regular instructor for the World Bank Institute, serves on several editorial boards, and chairs the national advisory committee of the Active Living Policy and Environmental Studies program.

Roberto Chavezis Lead Urban Planner in the World Bank’s Transport and Urban Development Department.  He has over twenty-five years of experience with identification, preparation and implementation of projects aimed at poverty alleviation in the areas of urban development and slum upgrading, urban infrastructure and environment, cultural heritage preservation, and natural disaster reconstruction.   Other areas of expertise include, non-motorized transportation, appropriate planning and urban management techniques, post conflict planning and reconstruction, urban knowledge management, indigenous knowledge and capacity building.   Country experience includes Brazil, Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Cuba, Burkina Faso, Togo, Malawi, Angola,  Mozambique, Mauritania and Morocco. Roberto holds a B. Arch from the University of Morelos and M. Arch.A.S. from MIT.

Barney Cohen is the Director of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Population. For the past 10 years he has worked at the Academy on numerous domestic and international population-related issues. Currently, he is serving as the senior staff officer on a large Academy initiative on urban population dynamics in developing countries. He holds an M.A. in Economics from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of California at Berkeley.

Luiz de Mello is a Senior Economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund and has published extensively on issues of fiscal federalism in emerging countries and Latin America.  Mr. de Mello has a Ph.D. from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, and has previously worked at the Development Center of the OECD.

Uwe Deichmann is a Senior Environmental Specialist in the Development Research Group and coordinator of its Spatial Analysis Team. His research interests are in the geographic aspects of development. He is currently working on approaches to information-based urban management in rapidly growing cities and on poverty-environment linkages. Prior to joining the World Bank he worked for the UN Environment Programme and the UN Statistics Division. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Nick Devas is an economist and urban planner, specialising in issues of urban and local governance, urban development, and public and local government finance. He has worked in a number of African and Asian countries, as well as in central/eastern Europe. He is a staff member of the International Development Department of the School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, England. He recently led the DFID-funded research project on Urban Governance, Partnerships and Poverty in ten cities.

T. R. Dilip is a demographer with an MSc in Demography from Kerala University, M.Phil in Population Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University and PhD in Population Sciences from International Institute of Population Sciences. He currently a Research Officer at the Centre for Enquiry Into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT), Mumbai and is engaged in research on Health Policy and Financing Issues. During last 6 years he had worked on Quality of Family Welfare Services in India, Morbidity and Utilisation of Health Care Services in Kerala, Health and Development in Maharashtra, Need for Public Health Care services in Urban India.

David Dowall is Professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley and a Visiting Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Until recently he served as the Chair of the UC Berkeley Faculty Senate. His research and professional work centers urban land markets and infrastructure policy. He frequently consults for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Program, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. He has served as a policy advisor to local and central governments and businesses in over 40 countries. He holds a B.S. in economics from the University of Maryland and both a master's degree in urban and regional planning and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Colorado.

Alex Ezeh is the Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), based in Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to joining APHRC in November 1998, he worked at Macro International Inc. for six years where he provided technical expertise to governmental and non-governmental institutions in several African countries in the design and conduct of demographic and health surveys (DHS). At APHRC, Dr. Ezeh oversees the centre’s research, dissemination, data utilization, and research-capacity strengthening initiatives.  He also works to establish and maintain linkages with other research institutions, donor agencies, policymakers, program managers, and collaborators within and outside the region.   His research interests include health inequity, health consequences of third-world urbanization, gender and reproductive outcomes, and domestic violence, all topics on which he has written extensively. He is currently directing the Nairobi Reproductive Health and Poverty Project, which is a program of investigation, action, and research aimed at clarifying the nature of the urban reproductive health crisis in Africa and testing viable options for improving health and well-being of the urban poor.  He received his Ph.D. in demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993.

John Flora is Director of the Department responsible for the Transportation, Urban Development and Disaster Management and Mitigation Sectors in the World Bank’s central vice-presidency for Finance, Private Sector and Infrastructure and has over thirty-seven years’ experience in policy, planning, design, and operations.  He began his career in municipal government responsible for urban transport planning and operations.  He subsequently worked for twelve years as a consultant in transportation and urban development to public and private sector clients throughout the United States, Europe, East and South Asia, and Latin America.  He has served as principal investigator on US Department of Transportation research studies, and developed and taught urban transport/urban development training courses in the US and other countries.  He joined the World Bank in 1982.  He is an Urban Planner and Registered Professional Engineer.

Mila Freire is Sector Manager for the Urban Unit in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).  She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and has held different positions in Africa, Latin America and Caribbean Regional units of the World Bank as well as in the World Bank Institute where she was dealing with issues of structural adjustment, public finance, decentralization and urban management.  Mila served three years in the Resident Mission in Brazil and in 1992 took an external assignment as Managing Director of Caixa Geral de Deposits, the largest bank in Portugal.  In 1998 she joined WBI as Regional Coordinator for the LAC program and director of the Urban and City Management course.  Mila has published extensively in the fields of public financing, decentralization, and urban management.

James L. Garrett co-leads a research program on urban food security and nutrition in developing countries. For the past several years, James has collaborated closely with CARE, the international NGO, assessing the impact and operations of programs intended to improve urban livelihood security. Current work includes preparation of guidelines for urban livelihood security assessments; support of program design, operation, monitoring, and evaluation in Bangladesh and Mozambique; and case studies of community kitchens in Peru and public works in Ethiopia. He is also interested in the politics of the food and nutrition policymaking process and the use of research information by policymakers. James joined IFPRI in 1994. A citizen of the United States, he received his Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University. He also earned a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and an A.B. in politics from Princeton University.

Alan Gilbert has a degree in social sciences from Birmingham University, a doctorate from the London School of Economics and was recently awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of London. He is currently Professor of Geography at University College London. He has published extensively on housing, poverty and urban problems in developing countries and particularly those in Latin America. He has authored or co-authored nine books, edited four others and written more than one hundred academic articles. His most recent books are The Latin American city (1998) and In search of a home (1993). He is currently working on housing subsidies in Chile, Colombia and South Africa; on the influence of Washington on the diffusion of knowledge about development policy; on information flows among asylum seekers in the UK; on secondary housing markets in Colombia and South Africa; on the impact of globalisation on urban life in Latin America; and on rental housing in informal settlements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He has acted as an adviser to several international institutions over the last ten years including the Inter-American Development Bank (1993-4, 2000 and 2002); United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (HABITAT) (1993, 2000; 2001) United Nations University (1993-5), UNESCO (1994) and United Nations Population Fund (1996), the Woodrow Wilson Center (1999) and the World Bank (2000; 2001; 2002). He is currently a member of the Health Consequences of Population Change panel of the Wellcome Trust. In the past he has served on various committees of the Economic and Social Research Council.

Arnaud Guinard is currently Regional Coordinator for Disaster Management in the Latin America and Caribbean Region at the World Bank. He joined the Bank in 1980 and has worked extensively on urban projects and major infrastructure operations in the Middle East, East Asia and Africa. From 1989 to 1991, he was seconded to the Ministry of Finance of Sri Lanka as an Advisor to design and implement a reconstruction program. He also served as Chief of the Bank's Regional Mission in Thailand from 1994 to 1997. Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Guinard worked as an urban planner in a consulting firm. He holds a Masters of Business Administration from Paris-Dauphine University in France and a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning from Cornell University.

Ken Gwilliam is a consultant to the World Bank having recently retired from the position of the World Bank’s Transport Economics Adviser, a role in which he was responsible for providing transport economics and policy advice within the Bank and to its client nations.  Having authored the World Bank’s Transport Sector Strategy in 1996, he has recently completed a further significant analytical piece, the Urban Transport Strategy Review (2002).   He has been involved in transport policy and project preparation in numerous countries on behalf of the World Bank including; Argentina, Bangladesh, Barbados, Brazil, Jamaica, Korea, Lao PDR, Peru, the Philippines, Russia and Venezuela.  From 1967-1988 he was professor of Transport Economics and Director of the Institute of Transport Studies at the University of Leeds.  From 1989-1992 he was Professor of Economics & Logistics at Erasmus University.  Other major activities have included appointments as Director of the British National Bus Company and subsequently of a privatised regional bus operation, Advisor to the British House of Commons Transport Committee and Specialist Transport Adviser on the Greater London Development Plan.  For ten years he was the joint editor of the Journal of Transport Economics and Policy.

John Harris is Professor of Economics at Boston University.  Throughout a distinguished career he has conducted significant research and published widely on a number of issues, most notably migration theory, monetary economics, and regional and urban economics.  In addition to holding teaching positions at MIT and the Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, he served as Employment Advisor to the Government of Indonesia.  Professor Harris has a doctorate from Northwestern University.

Robert Hecht is Sector Manager for Health, Nutrition and Population in the Human Development Network of the World Bank.  Mr. Hecht, a US national, joined the World Bank in 1981 as a Young Professional and held various assignments, before being selected as Chief, Human Development Network Operations. From 1998-2001, Mr. Hecht was on external service with the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in Geneva.

A.H.J. (Bert) Helmsing is a Professor of Local and Regional Development at Institute of Social Studies in The Hague a position he has held since 1999. Prior to this, Mr. Helmsing held a series of academic institutions including the University of Utrecht, University of Zimbabwe and the Universidad de Los Andes. Mr. Helmsing serves on the editorial and advisory boards of a number of journals including Revista Territorios, Revista EURE and is the Managing Editor of the Review of Rural and Urban Planning in Southern and Eastern Africa. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies and the Centre for Latin American Studies, Amsterdam. Mr. Helmsing holds a Masters degree in Social Sciences from the Institute of Social Studies and a Doctorate in Economics (cum laude) from the Catholic University Tilburg amongst other academic qualifications.

James F. Hicks joined the World Bank in October 1985 and retired in December 2000. Since 1997, he was Lead Specialist for Decentralization and Local Government of the Africa Region, and over his Bank career he also worked on issues of decentralization in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and East Asia. Prior to joining the Bank, he lived for 12 years in Brazil, with work including Department Head of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Planning Advisor to the Secretary of Transportation of the State of Rio de Janeiro and consulting. Currently, consultant to the World Bank, primarily in the Africa Region. Ph.D., City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Master, Regional Planning, Harvard University.

Ali S. Huzayyin is Prof. of Transport and Traffic Engineering & Planning, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University and Executive Manager of the Transportation Programme (TP), DRTPC of Cairo University. He is Vice President of CODATU (cooperation for urban mobility in developing world) organizing conferences/training in developing countries. He is member of the Steering Committee, WCTRS (World Conference on Transport Research Society), organizing comprehensive World conferences on all transport fields. He conducted many research/consulting projects with DRTPC-TP solely or in cooperation with international firms. He is Chair/member of national transport committees/agencies in Egypt and holder of the State Award in Engineering Sciences.

Pratima Joshi graduated from the School of Architecture and Planning, in Anna University, Chennai in (1986). She then moved to London, England and completed her Masters Degree in Building Design for Developing Countries at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning in 1987. Shelter Associates was founded in 1993 in Pune, India. As the Director of Shelter Associates, Pratima initiates and coordinates various Shelter projects within the municipality and outlying regions. These projects have included the Dattawadi housing rehabilitation, the design and construction of numerous community toilets, and the inception and completion of the GIS-based Sangli slum directory. She is currently coordinating the ongoing Shelter Associates GIS-based Pune slum census.  

Christine Kessides is the Senior Urban Advisor to the Urban Development Unit, Transportation and Urban Development Department, The World Bank.  She is responsible for policy analyses and analytical support to Bank operations and policy dialogue on cross-sectoral issues regarding urban development, such as poverty, infrastructure, public sector reform and private sector development, and local economic development.  Christine Kessides has been a principal author of a number of leading institutional publications.  She was a member of the Core Team for the World Development Report 2003: Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World:  Transforming Institutions, Growth and Quality of Life and authored Chapter 6; she was also co-author of the Urban Poverty chapter of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Sourcebook (World Bank, 2002), and principal author of the World Bank’s Urban and Local Government Strategy (Cities in Transition) (2000). She holds a Masters in Public Affairs (International Development) from Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University and a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University.

Annette M. Kim is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at M.I.T. She has served as a consultant to the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, the World Bank, African and Asian governments, as well as community-based NGOs in the United States and overseas in the areas of project evaluation, urban land market analysis, and institutional development in transition economies. Current research interests include comparative analysis of urban development in European and Asian transition cities and the relationship between spatial and institutional change. Her educational degrees are from Wellesley College, Harvard University, and U.C. Berkeley in the fields of planning, public policy, and visual art.

Elena G. Klepikova is Vice-President of the US-Russia Investment Fund, Adviser to the President, acting member of the Board, Retail & Consumer Finance Head, Commercial Bank "DeltaBank". E. Klepikova graduated from the Moscow State University, Faculty of Economy and is a specialist in the field of housing finance with the focus on residential mortgage lending. E. Klepikova is one of the six founders and member of the Advisory Board of the one of the first Russian non-profit public policy research institutes "The Institute for Urban Economics". E. Klepikova works with the Federal Government of Russia on problems related to the real estate market development. She was one of the principal author and manager for the development of a Federal Program "Governmental Housing Certificates", that was adopted in 1998 by the Government. As the Vice-President of the US-Russia Investment Fund she developed the Fund’s project on residential mortgages including setting the full operating mortgage bank. The Fund’s mortgage loan products, introduced as a pilot test during Fiscal 1998, is now being offered by DeltaCredit bank in partnership with several banks in Moscow, Moscow oblast, St. Petersburg. Mortgage sales resulted in creating and servicing the 35 million USD portfolio of high quality standard residential mortgage loans. She also participated in new financial products development.

Amal Kumarage obtained his Ph.D. in Transportation Planning & Engineering from the University of Calgary, Canada. He serves as Professor in the Transportation Engineering Division of the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka. He is presently on secondment to the Ministry of Economic Reforms in Sri Lanka to develop reforms and a regulatory structure for bus transport. Professor Kumarage has published over 25 research papers both in Sri Lanka and internationally in areas of traffic engineering, road safety, public transport planning, transport policy and urban planning. He has also been instrumental in several important policy and strategy studies in recent years and is closely associated with a number of Government agencies in advisory, management and consultative capacities.

Somik V. Lall is an Economist in the Infrastructure/Environment team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. His current research interests include examining (a) how local government finances can be enhanced to improve provision of basic services, (b) the contribution of infrastructure and urban amenities to economic productivity, and (c) the effects of urban concentration on efficiency and inequality within countries. He has recently initiated a policy research program to work with local governments in rapidly growing urban areas for promoting public disclosure of credible information to offset costs imposed by weak institutions and improve the effectiveness of public programs. Somik holds a B.S. in Engineering, Masters in City and Regional Planning, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy.

Jean O. Lanjouw is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, Washington, DC. She is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley, and a Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Lanjouw obtained her A.B. in Mathematics and Economics (summa cum laude) from Miami University; attended the Masters Program in Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, India; and received both her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics, UK.

Peter Lanjouw, a Dutch national, is a Senior Economist in the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank, and Fellow of the Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam. He completed his Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics in 1992. From September 1998 until May, 2000 he held the appointment of Professor of Economics at the Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has also taught in the Masters in Development Economics program at the University of Namur, Belgium. To date his research has focused on various aspects of poverty and inequality measurement, as well as on rural development issues.

Aprodicio Laquian is currently a resident scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, where he is writing a book on the planning and governance of Asia's mega-urban regions. In 2001-2002, he was acting director of the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) and visiting scholar at MIT where he taught courses in basic housing and urban services for the urban poor in developing countries. From 1991-2000, Laquian was director of the Centre for Human Settlements and professor of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He also worked with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as chief of evaluation and country representative for China and the South Pacific (1982-1990). Laquian has written a dozen books on urban development, including: Slums are for People (1969), Basic Housing (1978) and Housing Asia's Millions (1979).

Le Bach Duong is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Vietnam National Center for Social and Human Sciences. He received his MA in human geography at the Hanoi Teacher College (Vietnam) and PhD in sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton (USA). Presently he is the Deputy Director of the Center for Social Development Studies in Hanoi and the Country Manager of the ILO-IPEC Mekong Sub-regional Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women. For many years he has worked intensively as a researcher and consultant on migration, urban studies, human resource development, education and skill development, civil society, trafficking in humans, child labor, and community development, gender, and sexuality for Vietnamese government, universities, and international organizations.

Lindsay Lowell is Director of Research for the Pew Hispanic Center of the University of Southern California, a position he previously held at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, and the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform where he was also Assistant Director for the Mexico/U.S. Binational Study on Migration. He worked as a Labor Analyst at the U.S. Department of Labor, and has taught at Princeton University and the University of Texas at Austin. He has published over 80 articles, reports, papers, and edited volumes on his research interests in immigration policy, labor force issues, economic development, U.S. Latinos, and global high skilled mobility. He received his Ph.D. degree in Sociology as a Demographer from Brown University.

Peter Mackie is Professor of Transport Studies at the Institute for Transport Studies,University of Leeds UK. He has researched and published widely in the fields of transport sector appraisal and regulation.He is a member of the UK Government's Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA). He is currently working for the World Bank to create a toolkit of transport appraisal guidance,including assessment of poverty impacts. He would be interested to hear from participants with experience of distributive analysis in relation to transport. Contact details pmackie@its.leeds.ac.uk.

Neil MacLeod is the Executive Director of Water Services for the eThekwini Municipality (Durban), South Africa an organization of over 3,000 staff and an annual turnover in excess of R1.8 billion.  Mr. MacLeod is also the Director of MIIU, a private company formed to promote private sector partnerships in the provision of municipal services.  He serves as Chairperson of the National Free Basic Water Task Team and has presented numerous papers at regional, national and international seminars and conferences.  Mr. MacLeod holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and an MBA.

William F. Maloney is Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) of the Latin America and Caribbean region. Dr. Maloney has published on issues related to international trade, the impact and sequencing of liberalization, speculative attacks on currencies, developing country labor markets and issues of innovation. Before joining the Bank permanently, Mr. Maloney was a Professor of International and Development Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1990-1997). He also served as a consultant for the Bank on Mexico (1994-95) and Nigeria (1986) and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (1982). Mr. Maloney received a B.A. degree from Harvard University (1981), where he studied economics.

Tamar Manuelyan Atinc is Sector Manager for Poverty Reduction and Lead Advisor for PRSPs in the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank. Her recent professional interests have focused on issues related to poverty, inequality and labor markets in East Asian countries. She is currently managing analytical work on household level vulnerability, including arising from trade liberalization. She holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from JFK School of Government at Harvard University.

Gordon McGranahan is currently Director of the Human Settlements Programme at the International Institute for Development. Trained as an economist, he spent the 90s at the Stockholm Environment Institute, where he directed their Urban Environment Programme and coordinated an international study of local environment and health problems in low and middle income cities. He has also worked for the World Bank and Brookhaven National Laboratory. He has published widely on urban environmental issues, and was the first author of a recent book entitled "The Citizens at Risk: From Urban Sanitation to Sustainable Cities" (Earthscan, 2001). In urban water and sanitation field, he has recently co-authored case studies of low-income settlements in Buenos Aires and Nairobi, as well as a forthcoming UN-Habitat report (to be published by Earthscan) on Water and Sanitation in Cities.

Diana Mitlin is presently a Senior Research Associate at the International Institute for Environment and Development and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. She is an economist working on issues related to urban poverty in the South. Diana has a particular interest in issues related to social development (particularly neighbourhood improvements, community development and poverty reduction) and to civil society (grassroots organizations and NGOs).

Caroline Moser is a social anthropologist/social policy specialist with thirty years’ experience on social policy and development. Her research has focused on urban poverty, gender and development, informal sector, urban violence, social capital and household vulnerability/coping strategies. She is currently Senior Research Associate, Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Adjunct Professor, New School, New York. From 1990-2000 she worked at the World Bank, first in the Urban Development Division, and then as Lead Specialist Social Development in the Latin American Department. Previously she was Lecturer in Social Planning in Developing Countries, London School of Economics. Recent research includes participatory urban appraisals of urban violence and exclusion in Colombia, Guatemala and Jamaica, research on urban poverty in the context of adjustment in Ecuador, Zambia, Philippines, and Hungary.

Nolbertio Munier, living in Canada, holds an Engineering degree from an Argentine University, and has authored eight books. He is the Managing Director of TEAMIC International - Canada, a company involved in environmental reporting and urban issues, and with a portfolio of 34 reports completed in 22 countries, for the Canadian Federal Government. Spearheaded the development of a methodology to make the best possible uses of scarce resources, when several criteria are specified. The methodology can be used advantageously to determine the best possible use of funds when directed to the urban poor in providing basic and post basic infrastructure.

Gobind Nankani is Vice President & Head of Poverty Reduction & Economic Management (PREM) Network of  the World Bank. As the Head of the PREM Network, he focuses on developing further the Bank’s strategic work on poverty reduction in both low- and middle-income countries. He is also the focal point for the Bank’s overall interactions on poverty reduction matters with key partner institutions - including the IMF, the regional development banks and the European Union.

Deepa Narayan is Senior Adviser in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank. In that capacity she works on issues of participation, social capital and empowerment as related to poverty reduction. She is the lead author and team leader for the Voices of the Poor initiative. The research findings have been published in a three-part World Bank book series by Oxford University Press.

Giok Ling Ooi is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies where she works on housing and urban policy issues, civil society and inter-ethnic relations. She is also an Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the National University of Singapore. Her previous appointments include being Director of Research at the Ministry of Home Affairs. She serves as member in a number of committees formed by organisations in the public, private and NGO sectors, among which are the advisory panel to the UNDP’s Urban Governance Initiative. Giok Ling is also one of the advisors to the urban environmental programme of the Far Eastern University in Manila. Her publications Model Cities – Urban Best Practices, Vols. I and II (Urban Redevelopment Authority and Institute of Policy Studies, 2000) which she edited and City and the State – Singapore’s Built Environment Reconsidered, (Oxford University Press, 1997).

Mónica Orozco graduated from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), and went on to earn a Degree in Statistics from the University of Chicago. For two years she conducted statistical analysis and social, economic, and demographic surveys in the National Population Council of Mexico. As Monitoring Director in Education, Health and Nutrition Program (PROGRESA), she developed the targeting mechanisms for the identification of households living in extreme poverty. She went on to design the evaluation project, and analyzed the social and demographic elements that were later integrated into Progresa. As Head of Advisors of the National Coordinator she was in charge of the evaluation of program impacts, results, and follow up; she developed special analysis in poverty and inequality and targeted mechanisms at geographical and household level. She also worked in the Ministry of Social Development as Director of Planning and Statistical Analysis where she developed the design of urban poverty maps and methodologies for identifying poverty concentration. Previously, she taught at the Department of Statistics in the ITAM. She is the current General Director of Planning and Evaluation of the Program of Human Development Oportunities (formerly Progresa).

Mead Over is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group. One year after joining the Bank as a health economist in 1986, Mr. Over was assigned to work with WHO’s new Global Programme on AIDS in order to estimate the economic impact of the AIDS epidemic. Since then, Mr. Over has served as Principal Investigator of the research project on the Economic Impact of Adult Mortality in Kagera, Tanzania and has written several articles on the economic impact of AIDS and on the economics of prevention programs and has spoken on these topics at conferences and symposia around the world.  Mr. Over is co-author of Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities in a Global Epidemic, the sixth of the Bank's policy research report series. While maintaining his interest in the economics of the AIDS epidemic, Mr. Over is currently applying economic and biostatistic methods to the evaluation of HNP interventions. Examples include evaluation of hospital organizational reform and evaluation of HIV/AIDS interventions.

Kiran Dev Pandey is an Environmental Economist and Consultant to the Infrastructure/Environment Division of the World Bank's Development Research Group. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University (1984), M.S. in Resource Systems and Policy Design from Dartmouth College (1986) and M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland at College Park (1999). Before joining the World Bank in 1999, Pandey was Senior Energy Economist and Project Manager at Energy and Environmental Analysis Inc., a consulting firm in Virginia. He is a member of the WHO expert panel on Urban Outdoor Air Pollution. He is also coauthor of the chapter on Urban Outdoor Air Pollution in WHO’s forthcoming study comparing health risks from major risk factors.

Janice E. Perlman is University Professor of Comparative Urban Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.  She is also President of the Mega-Cities Project, Inc., a non-profit network of collaboration among the world’s largest cities, which she founded in 1986, after giving up her tenure in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley.  She holds a BA from Cornell University in Anthropology and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Political Science.  Her book, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro, received the C. Wright Mills Award in 1976 for the year’s most outstanding contribution to social policy and is widely used around the world by students and scholars of urbanization.  Her many other publications include: Grassrooting the System, which has been reprinted in over 40 publications; Misconceptions about the Urban Poor and the Dynamics of Housing Policy Evolution which won the Chester Rapkin Award in 1988; and Marginality – From Myth to Reality, Rio’s Favelas 1969-2002 to be published in Urban Informality, Lexington Press, summer 2002.  Professor Perlman’s experience in urban development includes serving as Coordinator of President Carter’s Neighborhood Task Force on Urban Policy; Advisor to the World Bank Urban Projects Department; Executive Director of Strategic Planning for the New York City Partnership; Director of Science, Technology and Public Policy at the New York Academy of Sciences; and consultant to various non-profit and governmental organizations in the USA and abroad.  Dr. Perlman was a Fulbright Scholar for 2000-2001, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and various boards.

Pelle Persson is the Heading the Urban Development Division at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida. Mr Persson has held this position since 1999, but has been working with Sida and its predecessor SIDA since 1986. Mr Persson is an Urban Planner/Civil Engineer by profession and has, before joining Sida, been working with consultants, local authorities and UN Habitat. At Sida, he has held different senior positions within the field of Infrastructure and Transport and has been Chief Engineer at the Sida office in Tanzania between 1989 and 1992 and Counselor at the Swedish Embassy in Namibia 1997-99. The Urban Development portfolio within Sida is in the range of USD80m annually, mostly covering institutional development and capacity building.

Udesh Pillay is the Executive Director of the Surveys, Analyses, Modeling and Mapping (SAMM) research programme of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in South Africa. He holds a Ph.D in geography from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and an MA in geography cum laude from the University of Natal in Durban. Prior to joining the HSRC, Dr Pillay was the Head: Delimitation and Planning of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). As an urban and political geographer, Dr Pillay’s key areas of expertise include urban development, local governance reform and restructuring, local economic development, demarcation and urban public policy. These are linked to strong GIS skills at a conceptual level.  Dr Pillay managed several research and consultancy projects prior to joining the HSRC, where his project and financial management skills were applied in the context of large-scale, operational projects related to the demarcation of voting districts ahead of the 1999 national elections, and the successful execution of local elections in 2000. Publications in books and journals deal mainly with issues of urban development and social change in South Africa, informal settlements, locality, and local economic reform.

Janelle Plummer is a senior urban poverty specialist working with GHK International. The focus of her work is local government capacity for more effective urban poverty reduction. She has carried out detailed research for DFID into how challenging policies such as community participation and public-private partnerships can be implemented within the existing constraints of municipalities in developing countries. In her consultancy work she has completed a range of participatory poverty assessments, and the design and implementation of poverty reduction and service delivery projects in South Asia, South-east Asia and Africa. In addition to a collection of papers, she is the series editor of the Municipal Capacity Building series published by Earthscan, the author of ‘Municipalities and Community Participation’ as well as the more recent ‘Focusing Partnerships: A Sourcebook for Capacity Building in Public-Private Partnerships’.

Mario Polèse is professor at the Instiutut de la recherché scientifique (INRS) in Montreal, and titleholder of the Senior Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Studies. Among his books are The Social Sustainability of Cities: Diversity and the Management of Change, with Richard Stren, and Économie urbaine et régionale, the principal textbook in French in urban & regional economics (translated into Spanisn and Portuguese). He has held teaching and research positions in Latin America, Switzerland, and France. He currently heads the Montreal Interuniversity Group Villes et développement, designated a Centre of Excellence by the Canadian International Developement Agency.

Rosendo Pujol founded the Research Program on Sustainable Urban Development (ProDUS) at the University of Costa Rica (UCR) in 1991 where he continues to direct the program and where he also teaches in the School of Civil Engineering (UCR).  His work is now focused on the impacts of urban growth, its relation to infrastructure availability, environmental impacts, and geographical distribution of telecommunications demand.  He directed the Master Plan for the county of San Ramón y Montes de Oca, and the Participatory Strategic Planning Processes in Grecia, and the cities of Guápiles and San Ramón. Rosendo Pujol is trained as a Civil Engineer, and holds a Masters degree in Seismic Risk and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning, both from University of California at Berkeley.   In 1995, he was awarded the Clodomiro Picado Prize, Costa Rica’s national award for technology research.

Mary Racelis is the Director of Institute of Philippine Culture and Full Professor of Sociology, Ateneo de Manila University. Her extensive publications have focused on poverty and urbanization; civil society,NGOs, people's organizations and governance; participation and empowerment; family, women and gender; and socio-cultural change. She has workedclosely with community-based NGOs and CBOs, and currently serves as a member of their Boards. Dr. Racelis was the UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, 1983-92, and Country Representative of The Ford Foundation, 1992-97. She is a consultant to the Asian Development Bank, AusAid, the Rockefeller Foundation, United Nations Development Program, UNICEF, and the World Bank. These professional activities are balanced off by her close interaction with her 13 grandchildren.

Carole Rakodi is Professor of International Urban Development in the International Development Department, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, UK. She is a geographer and urban planner with extensive professional, research and teaching experience in developing countries, especially in Africa (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana) and also in India. She has published extensively on urban planning and management, housing and land markets and policy, and urban poverty and livelihood strategies. She is author of "Harare: Inheriting a Settler-Colonial City: Change or Continuity?" (1995) and editor of "The Urban Challenge in Africa: Growth and Management of Its Largest Cities" (1997) and "Urban Livelihoods: A People-Centred Approach to Reducing Poverty" (2002).

Mireille Razafindrakoto is an Economist at DIAL (the European Centre for Research in Development Economics) and a Researcher at IRD (the French Institute for Scientific Research on Development.  She is the co-editor of a book on The New International Poverty Reduction Strategies (published by Economica in February 2002) and the author of different articles on poverty issues (monitoring and evaluation of poverty, the voice of the poor, the many facets of poverty, redistribution, and the role of the state).  She did field work in Madagascar from 1994 to 1999. As a member of the MADIO Project, based at the National Institute of Statistics in Antananarivo, she was in charge of specific surveys and studies analyzing macro-economic perspectives of Madagascar. Her research on this country covers different subjects including: macro-economic modeling, the dynamics of the industrial sector and the export processing zone, the evolution of external trade, and survey analysis on different topics (employment, living conditions of households, tourism, immigration, democracy and governance).  She graduated from ENSAE-CESD, Paris (Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique - Centre Européen de formation des statisticiens économistes des pays en développement) as Ingénieur Statisticien Economiste  and obtained her Ph.D. in Economics in 1996 at EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute and Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was formerly Director of the Center for International Development (CID) and Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), and the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University. In January 2002 Professor Sachs was appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan as his Special Advisor on the Millennium Development Goals. During 2000-2001, he was Chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization, and from September 1999 through March 2000 he served as a member of the International Financial Institutions Advisory Commission established by the US Congress. Sachs serves as an economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa. He also serves as Co-Chairman of the Advisory Board of The Global Competitiveness Report, and has been a consultant to the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, and the United Nations Development Program. His syndicated newspaper column appears in more than 50 countries around the world, and he is a frequent contributor to major publications such as the New York Times, the Financial Times of London, and the Economist Magazine.  Sachs is the recipient of many awards and honors, including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Society of Fellows, and the Fellows of the World Econometric Society. He is a member of the Brookings Panel of Economists, the Board of Advisors of the Chinese Economists Society, and several other organizations.  Sachs' research interests include the links of health and development, economic geography, globalization, transition to market economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, international financial markets, international macroeconomic policy coordination, emerging markets, economic development and growth, global competitiveness, and macroeconomic policies in developing and developed countries.

Sachs has published more than two hundred scholarly articles, and has authored or edited many books. His NBER volume, Economics of Worldwide Stagflation, co-authored with Michael Bruno, was published in 1985, and his books Global Linkages: Macroeconomic Interdependence and Cooperation in the World Economy, co-authored with Warwick McKibbin, and Peru's Path to Recovery, co-authored with Carlos Paredes, were published by The Brookings Institution in 1991. Sachs' textbook on Macroeconomics in the Global Economy, co-authored with Felipe Larrain, was first published in 1993, and has appeared in German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese.  The John M. Olin Critical Issues Series on The Rule of Law and Economic Reform in Russia, which Sachs co-edited with Katharina Pistor, was published in spring 1997 by Westview Press.  He received his BA, summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 1976, and his MA and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978 and 1980 respectively. He joined the Harvard faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1980, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1982 and Full Professor in 1983. Sachs began his position at Columbia University on July 1, 2002.

Kate Schecter is currently a Program Officer for The American International Health Alliance (AIHA) where she manages health reform projects in four former Soviet countries. She is also a principal investigator for the Carnegie Corporation's Russia Initiative. Before joining AIHA two years ago, she worked as a consultant for the World Bank for three years, specializing in health care reform and child welfare issues. She taught political science at the University of Michigan from 1993 to 1997. She has written extensively about post-Soviet health care systems and is co-editor and author of Coming Unglued; Social Capital and Social Cohesion in Post-Soviet Russia (forthcoming from M.E. Sharpe, 2003). She received her M.A. in Soviet Studies from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Harris Selod received his PhD and Master’s Degree in Economics (from the Université de Paris 1-Sorbonne), in addition to a Master’s Degree in Statistics from ENSAE and a Master’s Degree in Business Studies from ESCP-EAP, in Paris, France. Recipient of the 2002 special mention of the Association d’Economie Sociale, Dr. Selod was a 2001–2002 Postdoctoral Fellow from the European Commission at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Belgium. He is now a researcher at INRA-LEA and CREST-LEI in Paris, and the author of numerous publications in urban and development economics, including "Social Interactions, Ethnic Minorities, and Urban Unemployment" (2001), "Location and Education in South African Cities under and after Apartheid" (2001), "Private versus Public Schools in post-Apartheid South African Cities: Theory and Policy Implications" (forthcoming), "Les problèmes d'accès à l'emploi et de ségrégation résidentielle en Ile-de-France" (forthcoming), "Le chômage dans l'agglomération bruxelloise : une explication par la structure urbaine" (forthcoming), and "La mixité sociale et économique" (forthcoming).

Stephen Sheppard is the James Phinney Baxter III Professor of Public Affairs at Williams College. He has been at Williams since 2000, and before that was previously at Oberlin College, the London School of Economics, Washington University in Saint Louis, and Virginia Tech. Recent publications include The Welfare Economics of Land Use Regulation, Fiscal Austerity and Public Servant Quality and Hedonic Analysis of Housing Markets. His research focuses on land and housing markets, land use regulation and the impact of social and environmental factors on house prices and housing supply.