Events

World Bank - KDIS Research Partnership Workshop: Learning and the Future of Work

September 19, 2019

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The international workshop, Learning and the Future of Work, is organized by the World Bank Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia, in collaboration with the Korea Development Institute (KDI) School.

To ground the discussion, the main messages of the latest two World Development Reports will be presented. The WDR 2018 stressed the importance of learning in order for education to fulfill its potential, while the WDR 2019 analyzed how jobs and workers will likely change in coming years and decades. The connection between the two themes is evident: a crucial way to prepare for the jobs of the future is learning and acquiring the relevant skills looking forward.

Panels of experts from Malaysia, East Asia, and beyond will then discuss whether and how the main lessons from these WDRs are relevant for their countries and the challenges of implementation of the reports’ policy recommendations. The one-day workshop has been designed so that the morning will be devoted to the future of work (WDR 2019), while the afternoon will deal with learning (WDR 2018) and the connection between both themes.

Join us on Live Chat: Workshop will be live-streamed, allowing for online audience participation (only available during the workshop).

PROGRAM
SPEAKERS

9:30-9:45am - Welcome and Opening Remarks
Firas Raad (Country Manager, World Bank)
Wook Sohn (Associate Dean, KDI School) (pre-recorded message)
9:45-10:45am - Session 1:The Future of Work and the Implications for Malaysia and East Asia
Presentation of the World Development Report 2019 – The Changing Nature of Work
Shwetlena Sabarwal (Senior Economist, World Bank)
Moderator: Norman Loayza (Lead Economist, World Bank)
11:00-12:30am - Discussion Panel
Allen Ng (Chief Economist, Securities Commission Malaysia) [Presentation]
Patrick Patriwirawan (Acting Deputy Executive Director, Department of Labor and Employment of the Philippines)
Achim Schmillen (Senior Economist, World Bank) [Presentation]
1:30-3:30pm - Session 2: WDR 2018 and Beyond: Learning from Experience
Main Messages from the World Development Report 2018 - LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise by Halsey Rogers (Lead Economist, World Bank)
Beyond the 2018 WDR: Emerging findings from a systematic review of what improves learning outcomes by Mary Breeding (Consultant, World Bank)
Comparing the impacts of different education interventions: Can we use Learning Adjusted Years of Schools (LAYS) by Deon Filmer (Lead Economist, World Bank)
Chair: Kenneth Simler (Senior Economist, World Bank)
4:00-4:30pm - Wrap-up and Way Forward
Delegates from EAP countries/panel:
Chan Sophal, Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Teguh Dartanto, Institute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM), Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Patrick P. Patriwirawan Jr, Institute for Labor Studies, Manila, Philippines
Tristan A. Canare, Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Philippines
Yvonne Chen Jie, National University of Singapore
Thanyaporn Chankrajang, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
Nguyen Phuong, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Training , Hanoi, Vietnam
Ngo Xuan Lieu, National Center for Employment Services, Department of Employment, MOLISA, Hanoi, Vietnam
4:30-5:00pm - Closing Remarks
Anushka Thewarapperuma (Senior Operations Officer, World Bank)
Mary E. Breeding

Consultant, World Bank
Mary E. Breeding is a consultant in Education at the World Bank where she has worked on multiple types of education projects since 2010. Her primary areas of specialization are teacher policy, school accountability, and monitoring and evaluation. She has also worked to provide support on a range of policy projects in the areas of student assessment and school finance. Prior to joining the World Bank, Dr. Breeding was a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University (2008-2010) and she held the William E. Miller Fellowship at the American Political Science Association in 2007-2008. She received her Ph.D. from American University in 2008.

Deon Filmer
Lead Economist, Research Group, World Bank
Deon Filmer is a Lead Economist in the Research Group at the World Bank and was Co-Director of the World Development Report 2018 Learning to Realize Education’s Promise. He has also previously served as Lead Economist in the Human Development department of the Africa Region of the World Bank. He works on issues of human capital and skills, service delivery, and the impact of policies and programs to improve human development outcomes—with research spanning the areas of education, health, social protection, and poverty and inequality. He has published widely in refereed journals, including studies of the impact of demand-side programs on schooling and learning; the roles of poverty, gender, orphanhood, and disability in explaining education inequalities; and the determinants of effective service delivery. He has recently co-authored the following books: Making Schools Work: New Evidence from Accountability Reforms, Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and From Mines and Wells to Well-Built Minds: Turning Sub-Saharan Africa's Natural Resource Wealth into Human Capital. He was a core team member of the World Bank's World Development Reports in 1995 Workers in an Integrating World and 2004 Making Services Work for Poor People, and a contributor to 2007’s report Development and the Next Generation. He holds a PhD and MA in Economics from Brown University and a BA from Tufts University.

Norman Loayza
Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
Norman Loayza is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He is currently leading the Asia hub of the Research Group, based in Malaysia. He was director of the World Development Report 2014, Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development. His research has dealt with various areas of economic and social development, including macroeconomic management, economic growth, microeconomic flexibility, private and public saving, financial depth and stability, natural disasters, and crime and violence. His advisory experience at the World Bank has also ranged across different topics in various regions and countries. A few examples include business environment and economic performance in Latin America; informal and formal labor markets in the Middle East and Northern Africa; public infrastructure gaps in Pakistan and Egypt; savings for macroeconomic stability and growth in Sri Lanka, Georgia, and Egypt; and pro-poor growth in Indonesia and Peru. On external service from the World Bank, he was a Senior Economist at the Central Bank of Chile (1999-2000), where he advised on financial and monetary policy. Norman has edited 10 books and published nearly 50 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. A Peruvian national, he holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1994).

Allen Ng

Chief Economist, Securities Commission, Malaysia
Allen Ng is the Chief Economist of Securities Commission Malaysia since September 2018. He was formerly the Director of Research at Khazanah Research Institute, with research focusing on the roles of technology and the state in economic development. Prior to that, he spent more than a decade at Bank Negara Malaysia holding various portfolios over the years. His last role at the central bank was Deputy Director of the Monetary Policy Department, where he was primarily responsible for leading macroeconomic surveillance and research on matters relating to money and credit, as well as supporting the secretariat function of the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee. Prior to that, he was Deputy Director of the central bank’s Economics Department where he was, among other responsibilities, overseeing longer-term structural policy research to support the central bank’s economic advisory role to the Government. Allen has a BA and MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge. He is also a Chevening alumnus.

Patrick Patriwirawan Jr.

Acting Deputy Executive Director, Institute of Labor Studies, Philippines
Patrick Patriwirawan Jr., is currently the Acting Deputy Executive Director of the Institute for Labor Studies, the policy research and advocacy arm of the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment. He has done researches in the areas of labor relations, security of tenure, overseas employment, public sector unionism, and unemployment insurance. He is also a lecturer at the University of the Philippines – Manila where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Behavioral Science. While he earned his Master of Industrial Relations degree from the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. He is currently working on a research project focusing on industry practices, business landscapes and strategies of the Information Technology and Business Process Management sector in the Philippines in line with the introduction of digital automation and the impact of the fourth industrial revolution, among others.

Firas Raad
Country Manager, World Bank, Malaysia
Firas Raad, a Jordanian National, is the World Bank Country Manager in Malaysia, East Asia and Pacific. He was formerly the Country Manager for Kuwait. Raad joined the World Bank in 2002 as a Senior Health Policy Specialist. More recently, he was working in the Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Global Practice. He has extensive health policy experience in various countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. Prior to 2009, Raad focused on implementing health sector reforms in Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt. He also served as the World Bank Human Development Coordinator for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Between 1997 and 2000, Raad was the Private Secretary for Health Affairs in the Royal Jordanian Court providing health sector reform policy advice. Between 2009 and 2013, Raad took a leave of absence from the World Bank and worked in the Quartet Mission in Jerusalem, first as an Advisor and later as Head of the Mission, to support Palestinian economic development. His primary research interests are in health equity, health financing and health systems reform. He is a founding member of several regional and international organizations dedicated to peace-building, sustainable development and global health. He has published several articles on public health and development. He has a PhD in International Health Policy and Economics from the Harvard School of Public Health, and a Masters degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Halsey Rogers
Lead Economist, Education Global Practice, World Bank
Halsey Rogers is Lead Economist with the World Bank’s Education Global Practice. He recently served as Co-Director of the World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise, and he now helps lead initiatives that advance the WDR vision, including the global Learning Poverty estimates and the Global Education Policy Dashboard. In the past, he represented the Bank in SDG negotiations on education, led the Bank’s global teacher-policy research, and co-authored the Bank’s Education Strategy 2020: Learning for All. Rogers has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. He has advised many governments on the quality of service delivery, teacher effectiveness, and aid effectiveness, and he co-authored Growth and Empowerment: Making Development Happen (Oxford). Previously, Rogers served as advisor to former World Bank chief economists Joseph Stiglitz and Nicholas Stern and as senior economist in the research department. Prior to joining the Bank, he served with the Council of Economic Advisors at the White House, UC Berkeley, the Indonesian Ministry of Finance (Jakarta), and the Korea Development Institute (Seoul). He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley.

Shwetlena Sabarwal
Senior Economist, World Bank
Shwetlena Sabarwal is a senior economist in the World Bank. She was a principle author for the World Development Report 2019 on the ‘Changing Nature of Work’ and World Development Report 2018 on ‘Learning to Realize Education’s Promise’. She has been a core team member for World Bank’s ‘Human Capital Index’. She has published in the areas of Education Economics and Labor Markets. In education, her research is on learning, effort, and incentives. In labor markets, her work has focused on entrepreneurship, gender, and networks. Shwetlena has led World Bank’s education engagement in Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Nepal. She holds a PhD in Applied Economics from University of Minnesota in 2008.

Wook Sohn
PROFESSOR AND ASSOCIATE DEAN, DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, KDI School of Public Policy and Management
Wook Sohn is a professor and Associate Dean of the Office of Development Research and International Cooperation at the KDI school of Public Policy and Management. He specializes in financial intermediaries, financial markets and monetary policy. Sohn published many articles in academic journals and edited several books on the Korean economic and financial issues, and participated in the collaborative research projects among the Korean, Hungarian and Cambodian governments. He was a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business and taught at Yonsei University, Seoul National University, and the KAIST Business School. Most recently, he was Executive Director of Economic Research Institute of Bank of Korea. After receiving his B.A. from Seoul National University, He was awarded his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Achim Daniel Schmillen
SENIOR ECONOMIST, SOCIAL PROTECTION AND JOBS GLOBAL PRACTICE, WORLD BANK
Achim Schmillen is a Senior Economist with the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice with more than ten years of experience in the areas of labor markets, labor market policies, migration, jobs and social protection. His expertise spans high quality analytic work and internationally visible research; extensive advisory activities and high-level policy dialogue; and hands-on operational field work and technical assistance in Bhutan, China, Germany, Malaysia, Mongolia, the United States and other countries. Achim joined the World Bank in 2013 through the Young Professionals Program and initially worked in the South Asia Human Development Unit. In 2014, he moved to the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice and began to focus on the broader East Asia and Pacific region. Previous work experience includes appointments with America’s National Bureau of Economic Research and the Institute for Employment Research, the research institute of Germany’s Federal Employment Agency. He holds both a Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Regensburg and was a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Kenneth Simler
SENIOR ECONOMIST, WORLD BANK
Kenneth Simler is a Senior Economist at the World Bank’s Global Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia. His work focuses on the impacts of public policies on poverty and inequality, including both income and non-income dimensions such as food security, nutrition, and education. He has published more than 40 journal articles, books, book chapters, and working papers on these topics as well as on poverty measurement and the spatial aspects of economic growth and development. Prior to joining the World Bank, Ken was a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and a Research Associate at the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program. Ken has a BA in Economics from Amherst College and MSc and PhD degrees in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University.

Anushka Thewarapperuma
SENIOR OPERATIONS OFFICER, WORLD BANK
Anushka Thewarapperuma is a Senior Operations Officer in the Development Economics (DEC) Vice Presidency's Data Group. She coordinates and oversees donor funded programs and ensures operational quality assurance of these externally funded activities. Ms. Thewarapperuma has also worked in DEC’s Strategy & Operations unit and in the World Bank’s Finance and Private Sector Development group and with IFC’s Advisory Services. Prior to the World Bank she worked in the tech sector in the US. She holds a BA (with honors) in Mathematics, French and Computer Science from Franklin and Marshall College, a diploma in International Relations from SAIS Johns Hopkins, in Bologna, Italy and a MA in Economic from Johns Hopkins University.