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Development Research Group

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Research Teams

  • The researchers in the Development Research Group are organized into five thematic teams, listed below.

     

    Additional Resources:

  • The World Bank
    Director

    Topics: human capital and skills; service delivery; the impact of policies and programs to improve human development outcomes—education, health, social protection, and poverty and inequality 

Finance and Private Sector Development

  • Photo of Bob Cull
    Research Manager

    Topics: microfinance institutions; African financial development; Chinese financial development and firm performance; bank regulation and supervision in developing economies; financial inclusion 

  • Photo of Miriam Bruhn
    Senior Economist

    Topics: micro, small, and medium enterprises; the effect of regulatory reform on entrepreneurial activity; access to finance; financial literacy 

  • Xavier-Gine.jpg
    Lead Economist

    Topics: financial inclusion; the impact of microfinance services (including credit, insurance and savings); digital financial services; financial literacy; consumer financial protection

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: banking; behavioral economics; the political economy of the credit market, particularly in India and Southeast Asia

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: corporate and consumer finance; financial technology (fintech); banking; financial risk management; the impact of digital financial services on businesses and households; measuring financial inclusion (the Global Findex database) 

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: enterprise development; entrepreneurship; migration; labor market interventions; methodology for use with developing country data 

  • The World Bank
    Economist

    Topics: financial markets and institutions; capital market development; institutional investors; emerging markets finance; banking; market microstructure; asset prices 

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: access to finance and bank lending to individuals and firms; the role of financial sector policies and financial innovations on real activity and economic development 

  • Federica Zeni
    Economist

    Topics: corporate environmental strategies; regulatory policies; financial markets

Macroeconomics and Growth

  • The World Bank
    Research Manager

    Topics: banking; capital flows; corporate and sovereign bonds; benchmark indexes; debt and equity markets; emerging market finance; financial crises; financial development; financial markets and institutions; firm financing; firm performance and growth; institutional investors; international finance; micro and macro financial risk

  • The World Bank
    Economist

    Topics: public finance; optimal tax design; informality and tax evasion; fiscal policy and inequality; financial inclusion

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: macroeconomic aspects of economic development: firm dynamics, distortions, and aggregate productivity. real and financial shocks: macroeconomic and firm-level effects. 

  • Manuel-Garcia-Santana Photo
    Senior Economist

    Topics: macroeconomic aspects of development and trade

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: public economics, political institutions and incentives theory, applied to emergent problems of government across sectors (climate change; green infrastructure; fragility and conflict; water scarcity; public health; structural transformation & local government)

  • The World Bank
    Economist

    Topics: macroeconomics; regional and aggregate economic development; structural change; occupational choice

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: fiscal policy (especially fiscal transfers); economic growth; exchange rate pass-through; monetary policy; conflict, political economy

  • The World Bank
    Economist

    Topics: industrial organization; competitive and comparative advantage; trade; structural change; impact investing

  • The World Bank
    Research Economist

    Topics: international macroeconomics; international finance; monetary-fiscal issues in emerging market economies 

  • headshot
    Economist

    Topics: public economics, taxation, governance

  • Dario Tortarolo
    Economist

    Topics: taxation; public economics; labor economics 

Poverty, Inequality, and Human Development

  • The World Bank
    Research Manager

    Topics: poverty; inequality; education; household labor supply; related measurement issues

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: gender; family economics; demography; political economy; fertility; family planning; sexual and reproductive health; women's social networks; son preference; sex ratio imbalances; women's work; digital job search; female entrepreneurship; gender-based violence; marriage markets

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: labor; economics of the family and gender; economic shocks; social protection; methodological studies on household surveys

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: poverty measurement; public economics and mechanism design; wellbeing measurement

  • The World Bank
    Economist

    Topics: human capital accumulation; school-based violence reduction programs; mental health; crime and violence; psychology-based programs to improve social-emotional skills; higher (tertiary) education 

  • Quy-Toan Do, WDR 2023 Co-Director
    Co-Director (2023 World Development Report) & Lead Economist

    Topics: institutions and their relationships to economic development; the political economy of institutional development; fragility, conflict and violence; migration and forced displacement

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: the measurement of wellbeing and poverty; the evaluation of health and social policies; determinants of poverty reduction

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: social protection; nutrition and early childhood development

  • Armory Gethin
    Economist

    Topics: conflict; education; growth; inequality and shared prosperity; public finance

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: internal and international migration and its impacts on households and communities; evaluation of active labor market policies; school-to-work transitions; long-term effects of shocks to employment; population aging and labor supply decisions; women's labor supply decisions

  • Headshot of Clement Joubert
    Research Economist

    Topics: labor economics (drivers of informality, labor market mismatches, overeducation, scarring effects and radicalization); public economics (household saving decisions, pension reform, social protection for informal workers); gender economics (gaps in earnings, careers and social protection coverage) 

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: health and nutrition, cash transfers, and gender

  • Caroline-Lopez
    Research Economist

    Topics: education; human capital; and behavioral economics

  • The World Bank
    Economist

    Topics: taxation and public finance (determinants of compliance, improving administration, use of technology, political economy); social protection (cash transfers and livelihoods programs); education and youth employment (apprenticeship programs, gender gaps, impact of role models); national and ethnic identity

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: cash transfer programs; human capital accumulation among adolescent females and young women; family planning; using adaptive experiments, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to improve women's health

  • Louise Paul-Delvaux
    Economist

    Topics: distributional impacts of labor market policies, gender gaps in the labor market, formal & informal jobs, public employment services

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: the social, cultural, and political context of extreme poverty in developing countries, narrative economics, political economy, machine learning, mixed-methods, deliberative democracy, participation

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: forced migration and the policies that support both migrants and their host communities; crime, violence, and conflict, including policies to reduce their incidence; longitudinal studies for hard-to-reach populations; social cohesion

  • Headshot of Anja Sautmann
    Senior Economist

    Topics: health economics; health decision making; demand for healthcare; quality of health care; time-preferences; intertemporal decisions and dealing with economic shocks; methods to measure preferences; adaptive methods to make economic experiments faster and more efficient; non-monetary incentives; demographics of marriage markets 

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: health; education; and the interactions between them; social protection and evaluation of cash transfers; the impact of financial incentives on health and education outcomes; evaluating the impact of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 interventions and policies 

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: poverty and inequality measurement; small area estimation; intergenerational mobility and equality of opportunity; axiomatic approaches to income measurement; spatial econometrics; the transmission of price inflation and volatility 

  • The World Bank
    Lead Social Scientist

    Topics: strategies for enhancing state capability for implementation; crafting more effective interaction between informal and formal justice systems; mixed methods to assess the effectiveness of "complex" development interventions

Sustainability and Infrastructure

  • The World Bank
    Research Manager

    Topics: technical change; trade; carbon leakage in environmental policy instrument design

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: applied microeconomics with a focus on Africa and rural issues; property rights; contracts in land and investment incentives; impact evaluation, especially of land-related project; risk coping and management 

  • The World Bank
    Research Economist

    Topics: economic consequences of air pollution; the impacts of environmental conditions on human capital formation; the role of environmental conditions in generating income inequality across space; distributional consequences of climate change adaptation policy; water conservation; how different legal structures impact environmental pollution 

  • The World Bank
    Lead Environmental Economist

    Topics: environmental management; pollution control; health hazards of pollution; poverty/environment nexus; setting priorities in pollution control; deforestation; biodiversity loss; impacts of climate change on coastal zones and climate extremes; adaptation; infrastructure investments for climate change mitigation; cost-effective regulations

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: income and asset inequality and its relationship to poverty reduction and growth; access to land; land markets and land reform and their impact on household welfare and agricultural productivity; land tenure and its impact on investment and environmental sustainability; capacity building for policy analysis and evaluation

  • Gabriel Englander
    Economist

    Topics: wildlife and biodiversity conservation; marine fisheries; protected area management; forests; tourism

  • The World Bank
    Senior Land Governance Specialist

    Topics: land policy and tenure security related to institutions

  • Megan Lang
    Economist

    Topics: consumer decision-making around energy and rural electrification; women-owned enterprises; psychology and economics

  • The World Bank

    Topics: transportation; industrial organization; international trade; digital platforms 

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: urban development, including issues related to internal migration, transport and land use; land tenure, land markets and land governance; foreign direct investments in agricultural land

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: economic geography; urbanization; rural-urban transformation; internal migration; intergenerational educational mobility; infrastructure; labor markets; markets and institutions; gender

  • Ruozi Song
    Economist

    Topics: energy market; green technology adoption; efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and distributional impacts of environmental policies; climate change adaptation 

  • The World Bank
    Economist

    Topics: impacts of infrastructure on health and education; child health and nutrition; the welfare impacts of weather shocks; intergenerational effects of weather shocks; adaptation to climate change; agriculture and rural livelihoods

  • The World Bank
    Senior Research Economist

    Topics: climate change policy and economics; carbon pricing; infrastructure & economic growth; infrastructure & poverty; energy economics and policy; renewable energy; biofuels; energy efficiency; electricity economics; regional electricity trade; urban planning; power system planning & modeling; energy sector modeling; general equilibrium modeling

Trade and International Integration

  • Daria Taglioni, World Bank
    Research Manager

    Topics: global value chains; globalization and resilience to shocks, links between globalization and technological change, and between trade and environment, economics of globally integrated data-intensive industries

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: globalization and labor markets; globalization and jobs; the distributional effects of international trade; regional and sectoral mobility of workers; unemployment; informality; migration 

  • The World Bank
    Senior Economist

    Topics: drivers of firm-level upgrading and industrial development, links between globalization and technological change, and the distributional impacts of trade and FDI 

  • Image
    Economist

    Topics: trade policy, trade in services, and international migration

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: consequences of openness to trade and FDI for firm-level productivity; innovation and quality upgrading; impact evaluation of trade-related policy interventions such as export promotion and customs reforms; link between exporter growth and dynamics, development, policies and shocks; corruption in customs and tax evasion

  • The World Bank
    Research Economist

    Topics: international trade, urban, and development economics; applied micro topics, especially in education; global value chains and the propagation of shocks through production networks; migration and trade

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: trade; productivity and growth at the firm and aggregate level; domestic value-added in exports; shared-supplier spillovers of FDI; rules of origin and firm productivity; valorem equivalent of non-tariff measures; trade restrictiveness indexes

  • The World Bank
    Lead Economist

    Topics: globalization of product and labor markets; migration; forced displacement; brain drain and high skilled migration; government and economic development 

  • Bob Rijkers
    Senior Economist

    Topics: corruption; state capture; tax evasion; aid effectiveness; trade; labor markets 

  • The World Bank
    Research Economist

    Topics: international trade; urban economics; labor economics