The State of Economics, The State of the World

OVERVIEW
AGENDA
SPEAKERS
Chairs

“The State of Economics, The State of the World” conference will bring together some of the leading figures, who have played a role in shaping contemporary economics, to do a major stocktaking of economics, viewed as a discipline embedded in other social sciences, and also to look ahead at the challenge of global development. The speakers will have the space to reflect back on the way thinking in economics has evolved in his or her area of interest; and also to speculate the way the global economy is likely to evolve and the challenges this will pose for humankind, for economic analysis, and for making policy.

The original purpose of economics was development, to inquire into what makes some societies to grow and accumulate wealth, enabling its residents to lead better, fuller lives, while others stagnate. The aim of the conference and the subsequent book will be to stay true to this original concern of economics. The hope is that this stocktaking will enable us to think afresh about the challenges of inclusive development and sustainability that the world, and especially the emerging economies, confront today.

DONWNLOAD AGENDA (pdf)

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

09:00–09:15	Opening Remarks Kaushik Basu Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, World Bank
09:15–10:15	Chair: Kaushik Basu Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, World Bank “Equilibrium, Welfare, and Information” Kenneth Arrow Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Stanford University and 1972 Nobel Laureate in Economics Discussants: Shanta Devarajan Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa Region, World Bank Karla Hoff Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation
10:15–10:30	Coffee
10:30–11:30	Chair: Martin Rama Chief Economist, South Asia Region, World Bank “Social Choice and Welfare Economics” Amartya Sen Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University and 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics Discussants: James Foster Professor of Economics, George Washington University Célestin Monga Managing Director, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO
11:30–11:45	Coffee
11:45–12:45	Chair: Augusto Lopez Claros Director, Global Indicators Group, World Bank “Climate Change, Development, and Poverty” \| Presentation Nicholas Stern Chair of the Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics Discussants: Gäel Giraud Chief Economist, Agence Française de Développement Presentation Michael Toman Research Manager, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation
12:45–14:00	Lunch
14:00–15:00	Chair: Felipe Jaramillo Senior Director, Macroeconomics & Fiscal Management Global Practice, World Bank “Global Financial System and Procyclicality” \| Presentation Hyun Song Shin Economic Adviser and Head of Research, Bank for International Settlements Discussants: Asli Demirguc-Kunt Director of Research, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation Maurice Obstfeld Economic Counsellor and Direcotr of Research, International Monetary Fund Presentation
15:00–15:15	Coffee
15:15–16:15	Chair: Augusto de la Torre Chief Economist, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, World Bank “From Chronic Inflation to Chronic Deflation: Focusing on Expectations and Liquidity Disarray Since WWII” \| Presentation Guillermo Calvo Professor of Economics, Columbia University Discussants: Gita Gopinath Presentation John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics, Harvard University Luis Servén Senior Adviser, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation
16:15–16:30	Coffee
16:30–17:30	Chair: William Maloney Chief Economist, Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions, World Bank “Some “Schumpeterian” Thoughts on Growth and Development” \| Presentation Philippe Aghion Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics, Harvard University Discussants: Francesco Caselli Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics, London School of Economics Presentation Aart Kraay Senior Adviser, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation
Thursday, June 9, 2016
09:00–10:00	Chair: Makhtar Diop Vice President, Africa Region, World Bank “The Revolution of Information Economics: The Past and the Future” \| Presentation Joseph Stiglitz University Professor, Columbia University and 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics Discussants: Ravi Kanbur T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics, Cornell University Presentation Hamid Rashid Chief, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations
10:00–10:15	Coffee
10:15–11:15	Chair: Kyle Peters Senior Vice President, Operations, World Bank “Behaviorally Informed” \| Presentation Cass Sunstein Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University Discussants: Varun Gauri Head of the Global Insights Initiative (GINI) and Senior Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation Robert Hockett Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell University
11:15–11:30	Coffee
11:30–12:30	Chair: Ayhan Kose Director, Development Prospects Group, World Bank “Morality: Evolutionary Foundations and Economic Implications” \| Presentation Jorgen Weibull Professor, Stockholm School of Economics Discussants: Xavier Gine Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation Lawrence Blume Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Cornell University
12:30–13:30	Lunch
13:30–14:30	Chair: Ana Revenga Senior Director, Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank “The Influence of Randomized Controlled Trials on Development Economics Research and on Development Policy” \| Presentation Esther Duflo Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Discussants: David McKenzie Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank Presentation Martin Ravallion Edmond D. Villani Professor of Economics, Georgetown University
14:30–14:45	Concluding Remarks Kaushik Basu Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, World Bank

Opening Remarks
Kaushik Basu (World Bank)

Chair:
Makhtar Diop
World Bank

Chair:
Felipe Jaramillo
World Bank

Chair:
Kyle Peters
Senior Vice President, Operations, World Bank

Chair:
Martin Rama
Chief Economist, South Asia Region, World Bank

Philippe Aghion

Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Philippe Aghion is the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the economics of growth. With Peter Howitt, he pioneered the so-called Schumpeterian Growth paradigm which was subsequently used to analyze the design of growth policies and the role of the state in the growth process. Much of this work is summarized in their joint books Endogenous Growth Theory (MIT Press, 1998) and The Economics of Growth (MIT Press, 2009), in his book with Rachel Griffith on Competition and Growth (MIT Press, 2006), and more recently in Repenser l’Etat (Seuil, 2011). In 2001, Philippe Aghion received the Yrjo Jahnsson Award of the best European economist under age 45.
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Kenneth Arrow
Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Stanford University and 1972 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Kenneth Arrow is the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, emeritus; a CHP/PCOR fellow; and an FSI senior fellow by courtesy. He is a Nobel Prize-winning economist whose work has been primarily in economic theory and operations, focusing on areas including social choice theory, risk bearing, medical economics, general equilibrium analysis, inventory theory, and the economics of information and innovation. He was one of the first economists to note the existence of a learning curve, and he also showed that under certain conditions an economy reaches a general equilibrium. In 1972, together with Sir John Hicks, he won the Nobel Prize in economics, for his pioneering contributions to general equilibrium theory and welfare theory.
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Kaushik Basu

Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, World Bank
Kaushik Basu is World Bank Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. Prior to this, he served as Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India and is currently on leave from Cornell University where he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies. Basu is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and has received India’s Padma Bhushan award, the inaugural Professor A.L. Nagar Fellow award, as well as the National Mahalanobis Memorial award. Basu’s contributions span development and welfare economics, industrial organization, and game theory. He has taught at the Delhi School of Economics, Harvard, Princeton and MIT. He is widely published in journals and scholarly volumes. He has authored several books, including Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a new Economics (2010).
Read More | Twitter: @kaushikcbasu
Lawrence Blume

Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Cornell University
Lawrence E. Blume is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He is a Visiting Research Professor at IHS and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, where he has served as Co-Director of the Economics Program and on the Institute's steering committee. He teaches and conducts research in general equilibrium theory and game theory, and also has research projects on natural resource management and network design. A Fellow of the Econometric Society, he received a BA in Economics from Washington University and a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Blume was one of the general editors of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, to which he contributed several articles on economic theory.
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Guillermo Calvo

Professor of Economics, Columbia University
Guillermo Calvo is Professor of Economics, International and Public Affairs, and Director of the Program in Economic Policy Management (PEPM) at Columbia University. . He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He is the former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (2001-2006), President of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, LACEA, 2000-2001, and President of the International Economic Association, IEA, 2005-2008. He was professor of economics at Columbia University (1973-1986), the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989), and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland (1993-2006). He was Senior Advisor in the Research Department of the IMF (1988-1993), and afterwards advised several governments in Latin America and Eastern Europe. His main field of expertise is macroeconomics of Emerging Market and Transition Economies. His recent work has dealt extensively with capital flows and balance-of-payments crises in Emerging Market Economies. He has published several books and more than 100 articles in leading economic journals. His latest book “Emerging Capital Markets in Turmoil: Bad Luck or Bad Policy?” was published in 2005 by MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. He graduated with a Ph.D. from Yale in 1974.
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Francesco Caselli

Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics, London School of Economics
Francesco Caselli is the Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He has earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Bologna in 1992 and a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1997. Previous appointments include Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the director of the Macroeconomics Program at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), a managing editor editor of Review of Economic Studies, and a former co-editor of the Journal of Economic Development and editor at large of Economica. His research interests include economic development and political economy.
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Asli Demirgüç-Kunt

Director of Research, Development Research Group, World Bank
Asli Demirgüç-Kunt is the Director of Research at the World Bank. After joining the Bank in 1989 as a Young Economist, she has held different positions, including Director of Development Policy, Chief Economist of Financial and Private Sector Development Network, and Senior Research Manager, doing research and advising on financial sector and private sector development issues. She is the lead author of the World Bank Policy Research Report 2007 Finance for All? Policies and Pitfalls in Expanding Access and has also created the World Bank’s Global Financial Development Report.
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Shanta Devarajan

Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa Region, World Bank
Shanta Devarajan is the Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region. Since joining the World Bank in 1991, he has been a Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group, and the Chief Economist of the Human Development Network, the South Asia Region and Africa Region. He was the director of the World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People. Before 1991, he was on the faculty of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The author or co-author of over 100 publications, Mr. Devarajan’s research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources and the environment, and general equilibrium modeling of developing countries. Born in Sri Lanka, Mr. Devarajan received his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Read More | Twitter: @Shanta_WB
Esther Duflo

Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the MIT and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance. Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes including the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (2015), the A.SK Social Science Award (2015), Infosys Prize (2014), the David N. Kershaw Award (2011), a John Bates Clark Medal (2010), and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship (2009). With Abhijit Banerjee, she wrote Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011 and has been translated into 17 languages. Duflo is a member of the President’s Global Development Council and she is a Founding Editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. She has degrees in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. She subsequently received a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1999.
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James Foster

Professor of Economics, George Washington University
James Foster is Professor of Economics at George Washington University and directs the university’s Institute for International Economic Policy in the Elliott School of International Affairs. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University, holds a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Hidalgo (Mexico), and is an Honorary Member of the SCR, Magdalen College Oxford. Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics, poverty, and inequality. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper is one of the most cited papers on poverty and it was the basis for targeting the Progresa/Oportunidades program in Mexico.
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Varun Gauri

Head of the Global Insights Initiative (GINI) and Senior Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
Varun Gauri is Head of the Global Insights Initiative (GINI) and Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank. His current research addresses three themes: how to use behavioral insights to enhance development policy, when public agencies comply with human rights orders, and why individuals support public goods. Dr. Gauri was Co-Director of the World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior.
Read More | Twitter: @varungauri
Xavier Gine

Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
Xavier Gine is a Lead Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group. He is currently a BREAD affiliate and Associate Editor for the Journal of Development Economics. Since joining the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002, his research has focused on access to financial services and rural financial markets. In recent papers he investigated the macroeconomic effects of a credit liberalization; the relationship between formal and informal sources of credit in rural credit markets; indigenous interlinked credit contracts in the fishing industry and the impact of microfinance services such as business training and financial literacy, microinsurance and microsavings. Prior to joining the Bank he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.
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Gaël Giraud

Chief Economist, Agence Française de Développement
Gaël Giraud is a French economist, specialized in general equilibrium theory, game theory, finance and energy issues. He is Chief Economist at the Agence Française de Développement, affiliated with University of Paris 1-Sorbonne Economic Center (CES) and associated researcher at Paris School of Economics (PSE). He is also member of the Scientific Committee of the “Laboratoire d'Excellence” devoted to financial regulation (LabEx ReFi) and member of the Steering Committee on the Energy Shift within the French government and of the Research team “Riskergy" (M. Lepetit) on Energy resilience and sovereign debt.
Read More | Twitter: AFD_France @AFD_France
Gita Gopinath

John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics, Harvard University
Gita Gopinath is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics at Harvard University. Her research focuses on International Finance and Macroeconomics. She is a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, member of the economic advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies, co-editor of the current Handbook of International Economics, and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for the programs in Economic Fluctuations and Growth, International Finance and Macroeconomics, and Monetary Economics. She also served as a member of the Eminent Persons Advisory Group on G-20 Matters for India's Ministry of Finance. In 2011, she was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Before coming to Harvard, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business.
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Robert Hockett

Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell University
Robert Hockett joined the Cornell Law Faculty in 2004. His principal teaching, research, and writing interests lie in the fields of organizational, financial, and monetary law and economics in both their positive and normative, as well as their national and transnational, dimensions. His guiding concern in these fields is with the legal and institutional prerequisites to a just, prosperous, and sustainable economic order. A Fellow of the Century Foundation and regular commissioned author for the New America Foundation, Hockett also does regular consulting work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Monetary Fund, Americans for Financial Reform, the 'Occupy' Cooperative, and a number of federal and state legislators and local governments. Prior to doing his doctoral work and entering academe, he worked for the International Monetary Fund and clerked for the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
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Karla Hoff

Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
Karla Hoff is a Lead Economist in the World Bank's Development Research Group and she was Co-Director of the World Development Report 2015 on Mind, Society, and Behavior. Much of her work focuses on using the tools of economics to study social interactions. She has published papers in the American Economic Review that explain how segregation between renters and homeowners can create neighborhoods of highly unequal civic quality, how cueing social stigma impedes academic performance, and how Big Bang privatization in post-Soviet states impeded the emergence of the political demand for the rule of law. She was a member of the MacArthur Research Network on Inequality and Economic Performance, 1996–2006. She coedited The Economics of Rural Organization and Poverty Traps. In current work, she is evaluating in India the effect of a large-scale women’s empowerment project on the bias against women and a program of participatory theater. Her work spans conceptual analysis and grassroots fieldwork. She has a BA in French from Wellesley College and a PhD in economics from Princeton.
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Ravi Kanbur

T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics, Cornell University
Ravi Kanbur is T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He holds an appointment tenured both in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and in the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford. He has taught at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Essex, Warwick, Princeton and Columbia. Ravi Kanbur has served on the senior staff of the World Bank, including as Resident Representative in Ghana, Chief Economist of the African Region, and Principal Adviser to the Chief Economist of the World Bank. He has also served as Director of the World Bank's World Development Report. Professor Kanbur's main areas of interest are public economics, development economics and economic theory. His work spans conceptual, empirical, and policy analysis. He is particularly interested in bridging the worlds of rigorous analysis and practical policy making. His vita lists over 250 publications, covering topics such as risk taking, inequality, poverty, structural adjustment, labor, urbanization and agriculture.
Read More | Twitter: @RaviKanbur
Aart Kraay

Senior Adviser, Development Research Group, World Bank
Aart Kraay is Senior Adviser in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 1995 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1995), and a B.Sc. in economics from the University of Toronto (1990). His research interests include international capital movements, growth and inequality, governance, and the Chinese economy. His research on these topics has been published in scholarly journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of the European Economic Association. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics, and is an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has also held visiting positions at the International Monetary Fund and the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
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David McKenzie

Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
David McKenzie is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit. He received his B.Com.(Hons)/B.A. from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. Prior to joining the World Bank, he spent four years as an assistant professor of Economics at Stanford University. His main research is on migration, enterprise development, and methodology for use with developing country data. He has published more than 100 articles in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Economic Journal, American Economic Journal: Applied Micro, Journal of Econometrics, and all leading development journals. He is currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Development Economics, the World Bank Economic Review, and Migration Studies. He is also a co-founder and regular contributor to the Development Impact blog.
Read More | Twitter: @dmckenzie001
Célestin Monga

Managing Director, UNIDO
Célestin Monga is Managing Director at the United a Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). He previously worked as senior advisor and program director at the World Bank and has held various board and senior positions in academia and financial services. A graduate of MIT, Harvard, and the universities of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, Bordeaux and Pau, Dr Monga was the Economics editor for the 5-volume New Encyclopedia of Africa (Charles Scribner's, 2007). His published works have been translated into multiple languages.
Read More | Twitter: @CelestinMonga
Maurice Obstfeld

Economic Counsellor and Direcotr of Research, International Monetary Fund
Maurice Obstfeld is the Economic Counsellor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, on leave from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics and formerly Chair of the Department of Economics (1998-2001). He arrived at Berkeley in 1991 as a professor, following permanent appointments at Columbia (1979-1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989), and a visiting appointment at Harvard (1989-90). From July 2014 to August 2015, Dr. Obstfeld served as a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was previously (2002-2014) an honorary advisor to the Bank of Japan's Institute of Monetary and Economic Studies. He is also the co-author of two leading textbooks on international economics as well as more than 100 research articles on exchange rates, international financial crises, global capital markets, and monetary policy. He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1979 after attending the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1973) and King’s College, Cambridge University (M.A., 1975).
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Hamid Rashid

Chief, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations
Hamid Rashid is the Chief, Global Economic Monitoring, Development Policy and Analysis Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) at the United Nations. He currently leads the publication of the World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) – the joint flagship publication of UN-DESA, UNCTAD and five UN regional commissions on the state of the world economy and emerging macroeconomic policy challenges. Prior to joining UN-DESA, Dr. Rashid served as a Senior Adviser in UNDP’s Bureau for Development Policy and led a multi-sectoral programme in the UNDP headquarters, addressing issues of property, labour and entrepreneurial rights of the poor. During 2006-2008, he served as the Director General for United Nations and Multilateral Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangladesh. He was responsible for conceptualizing, coordinating and representing Bangladesh’s positions on various economic issues – special and differential market access for the least developed countries, international migration and financing for development - at the UN and other multilateral forums. Dr. Rashid earned his Ph.D. in Finance and Economics and MPA from Columbia University in New York and Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas. He has taught graduate level courses in economics and public policy at the Columbia University, University of Manchester and the London Business School.
Martin Ravallion

Edmond D. Villani Professor of Economics, Georgetown University
Martin Ravallion holds the inaugural Edmond D. Villani Chair of Economics at Georgetown University. Prior to joining Georgetown in 2013 he was Director of the World Bank’s research department, the Development Research Group. He joined the Bank in 1988 and worked in almost all sectors and all regions over the following 24 years. Prior to joining the Bank, Martin was on the faculty of the Australian National University. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics, and has taught economics at L.S.E., Oxford University, the Australian National University and Princeton University. Martin’s main research interests over the last 30 years have concerned poverty and policies for fighting it. He has advised numerous governments and international agencies on this topic, and he has written extensively on this and other subjects in economics, including four books and 200 papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes. His latest book, "The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement and Policy," was published by Oxford University Press in January 2016.
Read More | Twitter: @MartinRavallion
Amartya Sen

Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University and 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Earlier on he was Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics, and Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University. He has served as President of the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, the Indian Economic Association, and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM and is now its Honorary Advisor. His research has ranged over social choice theory, economic theory, ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, theory of measurement, decision theory, development economics, public health, and gender studies. Amartya Sen’s awards include Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur (France); the National Humanities Medal (USA); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); Aztec Eagle (Mexico); Edinburgh Medal (UK); the George Marshall Award (USA); the Eisenhauer Medal (USA); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Read More | #AmartyaSen
Luis Serven

Senior Adviser, Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group, World Bank
Luis Servén is Senior Adviser in the World Bank’s Research Department. He manages the research program on macroeconomics and growth. He is currently co-editor of the World Bank Economic Review. He previously managed the Bank’s regional research program for Latin America and the Caribbean. He has taught at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies. He has published numerous books and journal articles on economic growth, open economy macroeconomics, capital flows, fiscal policy, and saving and investment, His current research focuses on exchange rates and international finance, the microeconomic foundations of growth, and the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. He holds a BA in Economics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.
Hyun Song Shin

Economic Adviser and Head of Research, Bank for International Settlements
Hyun Song Shin took up the position of Economic Adviser and Head of Research at the BIS on May 2014. Before joining the BIS, Mr Shin was the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics at Princeton University. In 2010, on leave from Princeton, he served as Senior Adviser to the Korean president, taking a leading role in formulating financial stability policy in Korea and developing the agenda for the G20 during Korea's presidency. From 2000 to 2005, he was Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics. He holds a DPhil and MPhil in Economics from Oxford University (Nuffield College) and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the same university.
Read More | Twitter: @HyunSongShin
Nicholas Stern

Chair of the Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics
Professor Stern is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Head of the India Observatory at the London School of Economics. He is President of the British Academy (from July 2013), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (June 2014). Professor Stern has held academic appointments in the UK at Oxford, Warwick and the LSE and abroad including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Ecole Polytechnique and the Collège de France in Paris, the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore and Delhi, and the People’s University of China in Beijing. He was Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1994-1999, and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank, 2000-2003.
Read More | Twitter: Grantham Research @GRI_LSE
Joseph Stiglitz

University Professor, Columbia University and 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Joseph E. Stiglitz is a graduate of Amherst College, he received his PHD from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970, and in 1979 was awarded the John Bates Clark Award, given biennially by the American Economic Association to the economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the field. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, MIT and was the Drummond Professor and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is now University Professor at Columbia University in New York, where he is also the founder and Co-President of the university's Initiative for Policy Dialogue. He is also the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2011, Time named Stiglitz one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Read More | Twitter: @JosephEStiglitz
Cass Sunstein

Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University
Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations. Mr. Sunstein is author of many articles and books, including Republic.com (2001), Risk and Reason (2002), Why Societies Need Dissent (2003), The Second Bill of Rights (2004), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Worst-Case Scenarios (2001), Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler: The Future of Government (2013) and most recently Why Nudge? (2014) and Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas (2014).
Read More | Twitter: @CassSunstein
Michael Toman

Research Manager, Environment and Energy Research Program, Development Research Group
Michael Toman (Mike) is Lead Economist on Climate Change in the Development Research Group and Manager of the Energy and Environment Team. His current research interests include alternative energy resources, policies for responding to risks of climate change catastrophes, timing of investments for greenhouse gas reduction, and mechanisms for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through reduced deforestation. During his career Mike has done extensive research on climate change economics and policy, energy markets and policy, environmental policy instruments, and approaches to achieving sustainable development. Prior to joining the World Bank in fall 2008, he held senior analytical and management positions at RAND Corporation, Inter-American Development Bank, and Resources for the Future. His teaching experience includes adjunct positions at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the School of the Environment, University of California at Santa Barbara. Mike has a B.A. from Indiana University, a M.Sc. in applied mathematics from Brown University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Rochester.
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Jörgen Weibull

Professor, Stockholm School of Economics
Jörgen Weibull is professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. He is also affiliated with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and with the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. His main field of research is non-cooperative and evolutionary game theory, with applications to economics, political science, and evolutionary biology. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Fellow of Econometric Society.
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Augusto de la Torre

Chief Economist, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, World Bank
Augusto de la Torre, is the Chief Economist for Latin American and the Caribbean. Before his appointment as the region’s Chief Economist, Augusto de la Torre was a Senior Advisor responsible for financial matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since joining the Bank in October 1997, he has published extensively on a broad range of macroeconomic and financial development topics.
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Makhtar Diop

Vice President, Africa Region, World Bank
Makhtar Diop has served as the World Bank's Vice President for Africa since May 2012. Under his leadership, the World Bank Group committed a record-breaking $11.6 billion to Sub-Saharan Africa in FY 2015 to help tackle development challenges such as increasing food security and agricultural productivity; improving access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy, creating economic opportunities for Africa’s youth; and responding quickly and effectively to emergency situations such as the recent Ebola epidemic.
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Felipe Jaramillo

Senior Director, Macroeconomics & Fiscal Management Global Practice, World Bank
Felipe Jaramillo is the Senior Director of the World Bank Group’s Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management Global Practice (MFM). In this position, Mr. Jaramillo leads a team of over 350 country economists and macroeconomics experts, providing integrative development strategies, policy-based lending, macro data, global perspectives, real-time policy analysis, country risk assessments, and innovative projection tools to countries around the world.
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Ayhan Kose

Director, Development Prospects Group, World Bank
Ayhan Kose is Director of the World Bank Group’s Development Prospects Group. In this capacity, he leads the World Bank Group’s work on global macroeconomic outlook and forecasts as well as financial flows and commodity markets. He also coordinates work related to the monitoring of the World Bank Group’s twin goals of ending poverty and promoting shared prosperity. Under his management, the Development Prospects Group produces the Bank’s flagship reports, Global Economic Prospects and Global Monitoring Report, in addition to other monitoring publications.
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Augusto Lopez-Claros

Director, Global Indicators Group, World Bank
Augusto Lopez-Claros is the director of Global Indicators Group at the World Bank Group. He was chief economist and director of the Global Competitiveness program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, and is also a former Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund in Russia. A longer bio and a list of recent lectures and copies of recent papers on (i) the fiscal implications of the global financial crisis, and on (ii) the role of corruption in the development process.
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William Maloney

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

Senior Vice President, Operations, World Bank
Kyle Peters is the World Bank’s Senior Vice President, Operations. In his current role, he oversees the operations vice presidencies of the World Bank. He also oversees the World Bank Group’s Cross-Cutting Solutions Areas, including climate change, gender, public-private partnerships, and fragility, conflict and violence. His top priorities are delivery of the Bank’s lending and knowledge program to client countries; driving improvements in the World Bank delivery model; and overseeing of planning and strategy so the Bank can be more effective in achieving its development goals.
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Martin Rama

Chief Economist, South Asia Region, World Bank
Martin Rama is the Chief Economist for the South Asia region of the World Bank, based in Delhi, India. His main priorities are to promote debate on difficult policy issues in the region, to lead the preparation of major reports on regional issues, and to oversee the overall quality of the Bank’s analytical work in the region. To deliver on these tasks, he and his team actively engage with counterparts in government, academia, civil society and the business community.
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Ana Revenga

Senior Director, Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank
Ana Revenga is the Senior Director of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank Group. In her 24-year career at the World Bank, she has worked in both technical and management positions in the East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America, and Middle East and North Africa regions, as well as in OECD countries.
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