Thinking about Development Differently: Complexity and Network-Based Approaches for Policy

Luis Felipe López-Calva is the Director of the Poverty Global Department in the Prosperity Vertical at the World Bank. He has over 25 years of experience working with international institutions and advising national governments. Prior to rejoining the World Bank in 2022, he served as UN Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations Development Program. Previously at the World Bank, López-Calva led research, financing, and policy engagement on poverty and inequality issues across multiple regions, and served as the Co-Director for the World Development Report 2017 on Governance and the Law. López-Calva has also held various positions in academia including at Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California-San Diego and the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research. His research interests focus on labor markets, poverty and inequality, institutions, and the microeconomics of development. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from Boston University, as well as a Master’s and a PhD in Economics from Cornell University. 

César A. Hidalgo is a Chilean-Spanish-American scholar, Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), and head of the Center for Collective Learning (CCL), a multidisciplinary research laboratory with offices at TSE and at Corvinus University of Budapest. Hidalgo is known for developing methods to estimate economic complexity and relatedness, building several national economic data observatories (oec.world, datamexico.org,  datasaudi.sa, etc.), and proposing the idea of augmented democracy. These contributions have been recognized with numerous awards including the 2018 Lagrange Prize and three Webby Awards. Hidalgo holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of three books, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, Why Information Grows, and How Humans Judge Machines. His next book, The Infinite Alphabet, explores the principles governing the growth, diffusion, and valuation of knowledge.

Almudena Fernández is UNDP's Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), leading the SDG and Policy Team, providing strategic policy advice on economic trends, forecasts and challenges across the region and their impact on achieving the SDGs. She is also in charge of the LAC regional office's research and knowledge production programme, including the production of the Regional Human Development Report, in close collaboration with the UNDP-wide network of economists. With more than 16 years of experience in technical positions at UNDP, she has led the development of content and knowledge products in the region and specializes in issues related to inequality, poverty, innovation, and sustainable development in LAC. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University, and a bachelor's degree in Economics and Anthropology from the University of Chicago, USA.