Francesca Recanatini has focused throughout her career on integrating governance and institution building in development and economic growth. She begun working on institution building in transition countries while at the IMF in 1994 and at the Center of Institutional Reforms and Informal Sector (IRIS) in 1995. She joined the World Bank in 1998 in the Research Department focusing on measuring quality of institutions and has subsequently worked in several countries in Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Middle East to support the design and implementation of governance reforms through in-depth data collection and coalition building. Currently she is working on governance issues, institution building and performance indicators in High-income countries and fragile and post-conflict environments.

She has published several papers on indicators, corruption and governance, contributing recently to Anticorruption Policy: Can International Actors Play a Role? edited by Susan Rose-Ackerman and Paul Carrington (September 2013); to the Global Handbook on Research and Practice in Corruption, Adam Graycar, editor (January 2012); and to the International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, Susan Rose-Akerman and Tina Soreide, eds. (December 2011). She is currently a Member of the EU Group of Experts on Corruption and holds a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Maryland at College Park.