Development Research Group
Research Teams
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The researchers in the Development Research Group are organized into five thematic teams, listed below.
Additional Resources:
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Deon FilmerDirector
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
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Robert CullResearch Manager
Topics: microfinance institutions; African financial development; Chinese financial development and firm performance; bank regulation and supervision in developing economies; financial inclusion
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Miriam BruhnSenior Economist
Topics: micro, small, and medium enterprises; the effect of regulatory reform on entrepreneurial activity; access to finance; financial literacy
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Xavier GinéLead Economist
Topics: financial inclusion; the impact of microfinance services (including credit, insurance and savings); digital financial services; financial literacy; consumer financial protection
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Martin KanzSenior Economist
Topics: banking; behavioral economics; the political economy of the credit market, particularly in India and Southeast Asia
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Leora KlapperLead 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)
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David McKenzieLead Economist
Topics: enterprise development; entrepreneurship; migration; labor market interventions; methodology for use with developing country data
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Alvaro PedrazaEconomist
Topics: financial markets and institutions; capital market development; institutional investors; emerging markets finance; banking; market microstructure; asset prices
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Claudia RuizSenior 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
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Federica ZeniEconomist
Topics: corporate environmental strategies; regulatory policies; financial markets
Macroeconomics and Growth
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Sergio SchmuklerResearch 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
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Pierre BachasEconomist
Topics: public finance; optimal tax design; informality and tax evasion; fiscal policy and inequality; financial inclusion
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Roberto N. Fattal JaefSenior Economist
Topics: macroeconomic aspects of economic development: firm dynamics, distortions, and aggregate productivity. real and financial shocks: macroeconomic and firm-level effects.
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Stuti KhemaniSenior 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)
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Tatjana KleinebergEconomist
Topics: macroeconomics; regional and aggregate economic development; structural change; occupational choice
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Steven PenningsSenior Economist
Topics: fiscal policy (especially fiscal transfers); economic growth; exchange rate pass-through; monetary policy; conflict, political economy
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Tristan ReedEconomist
Topics: industrial organization; competitive and comparative advantage; trade; structural change; impact investing
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Agustin SamanoResearch Economist
Topics: international macroeconomics; international finance; monetary-fiscal issues in emerging market economies
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Poverty, Inequality, and Human Development
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Dean JolliffeResearch Manager
Topics: poverty; inequality; education; household labor supply; related measurement issues
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S AnukritiSenior 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
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Kathleen BeegleLead Economist
Topics: labor; economics of the family and gender; economic shocks; social protection; methodological studies on household surveys
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Benoît DecerfSenior Economist
Topics: poverty measurement; public economics and mechanism design; wellbeing measurement
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Lelys DinarteEconomist
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
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Quy-Toan DoCo-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
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Jed FriedmanLead Economist
Topics: the measurement of wellbeing and poverty; the evaluation of health and social policies; determinants of poverty reduction
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Emanuela GalassoSenior Economist
Topics: social protection; nutrition and early childhood development
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Amory GethinEconomist
Topics: conflict; education; growth; inequality and shared prosperity; public finance
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John GilesLead 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
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Clement JoubertResearch 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)
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Oyebola OkunogbeEconomist
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
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Berk ÖzlerSenior 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
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Louise Paul-DelvauxEconomist
Topics: distributional impacts of labor market policies, gender gaps in the labor market, formal & informal jobs, public employment services
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Vijayendra RaoLead 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
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Sandra RozoSenior 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
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Anja SautmannSenior 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
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Damien de WalqueLead 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
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Roy van der WeideSenior 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
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Michael WoolcockLead 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
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Carolyn FischerResearch Manager
Topics: technical change; trade; carbon leakage in environmental policy instrument design
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Daniel Ayalew AliSenior 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
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Patrick BehrerResearch 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
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Susmita DasguptaLead 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
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Klaus DeiningerLead 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
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Gabriel EnglanderEconomist
Topics: wildlife and biodiversity conservation; marine fisheries; protected area management; forests; tourism
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Thea HilhorstSenior Land Governance Specialist
Topics: land policy and tenure security related to institutions
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Megan LangEconomist
Topics: consumer decision-making around energy and rural electrification; women-owned enterprises; psychology and economics
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Alejandro Molnar
Topics: transportation; industrial organization; international trade; digital platforms
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Harris SelodSenior 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
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Forhad ShilpiSenior Economist
Topics: economic geography; urbanization; rural-urban transformation; internal migration; intergenerational educational mobility; infrastructure; labor markets; markets and institutions; gender
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Ruozi SongEconomist
Topics: energy market; green technology adoption; efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and distributional impacts of environmental policies; climate change adaptation
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Kibrom TafereEconomist
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
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Govinda TimilsinaSenior 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
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Daria TaglioniResearch 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
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Erhan ArtucSenior Economist
Topics: globalization and labor markets; globalization and jobs; the distributional effects of international trade; regional and sectoral mobility of workers; unemployment; informality; migration
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Paulo BastosSenior Economist
Topics: drivers of firm-level upgrading and industrial development, links between globalization and technological change, and the distributional impacts of trade and FDI
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Cristina ConstantinescuEconomist
Topics: trade policy, trade in services, and international migration
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Ana Margarida FernandesLead 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
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Devaki GhoseResearch 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
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Hiau Looi KeeLead 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
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Çağlar ÖzdenLead Economist
Topics: globalization of product and labor markets; migration; forced displacement; brain drain and high skilled migration; government and economic development
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Bob RijkersSenior Economist
Topics: corruption; state capture; tax evasion; aid effectiveness; trade; labor markets
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