Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, where he leads the institution’s global research agenda and flagship analytical work, including the World Development Report. His responsibilities include shaping the Bank’s intellectual leadership on growth, productivity, structural transformation, inequality, and the challenges facing middle-income economies.

He brings more than three decades of experience at the World Bank, having held several senior leadership roles of increasing responsibility. Most recently, as Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, he helped shape the Bank's response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020. He has also served as Chief Economist for the Europe and Central Asia Region and as Director of Development Policy. Across these roles, his research and policy contributions have focused on growth transitions, labor markets, competitiveness, and institutional reform. He is the author of influential work on the "middle-income trap," structural change, and the drivers of productivity growth.

He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Dave Donaldson is Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a leading scholar of international trade, economic development, and economic geography. His research investigates how trade integration, transportation infrastructure, and market access shape productivity, welfare, and long-run growth -- bridging rigorous economic theory with rich empirical analysis drawn from both historical and contemporary data.

His contributions to the field include landmark studies on the economic effects of railroads, trade costs, and market integration. He has also contributed to the advancement and integrity of the discipline through extensive editorial leadership at the field's most prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including as Co-Editor of Econometrica (2019–2023) and Co-Editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (2016–2019), with further editorial roles at the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Economic Literature.

Donaldson is the recipient of the 2017 John Bates Clark Medal — awarded annually to the American economist under 40 judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field — and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Murat Şeker was recently appointed Chairman of the Board and Executive Committee of Turkish Airlines. He previously served as Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Chairman of the Board, where he oversaw corporate finance, capital structure, risk management, and strategic investment decisions. In this role, he played a central role in steering the financial performance and global expansion strategy of one of the world’s leading international carriers operating across more than 100 countries. 

His leadership spans financial restructuring, capital market engagement, and board-level governance. His work as CFO of a major multinational enterprise places him at the intersection of firm performance, access to finance, and competitiveness in global markets — navigating investment decisions and productivity challenges against a backdrop of macroeconomic volatility and rapid international growth.

He holds degrees in business and finance and brings extensive executive experience in corporate financial management within internationally integrated industries.

Alice Fulwood is The Economist's Wall Street correspondent, covering a range of topics about banking and the financial system. She co-hosts Money Talks, the magazine's economics and finance podcast. In 2019 she won the “Young Journalist of the Year” award from the Wincott Foundation for her work on quantitative investing and technology in finance. She was nominated for the Wincott “Journalist of the Year” category in 2021 for her work on digital money and decentralized finance.

Prior to joining The Economist in 2018 she worked for an investment bank. During her tenure she was based in Singapore as an economist covering Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. She also worked as a foreign exchange spot and derivatives sales trader in London. Alice graduated from the University of Cambridge, where she studied Economics.

Jorge Rodríguez Meza has been the Manager of the Enterprise Analysis Unit at the World Bank since 2012. He has been with the Unit since 2005 when he joined the organization. Over these years, he has worked on projects measuring the business environment and its impact on development in all regions of the world. Most of this data collection work has translated into an extensive list of research published in journals, reports, and policy notes on issues as varied as access to finance, corruption, job creation, productivity, firm dynamics and experimental data collection.

Prior to joining the World Bank, and after completing his doctorate degree, Jorge worked for five years as a Senior Researcher of the Rural Finance Program of The Ohio State University. During his tenure he combined his experience on data collection with research on poverty measurement, microfinance, and financial access by marginal sectors of society.

Jorge holds a PhD and an MA in Economics from The Ohio State University and a Master of Science in Economics from Queen Mary and Westfield College of the University of London. His areas of expertise are applied research on financial and private sector development, industrial organization, data collection, and survey implementation.

Laura Alfaro is Chief Economist and Economic Counselor at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where she leads economic research and policy analysis to inform development strategies across Latin America and the Caribbean. Her current work bridges academic research and policy implementation across international economics, capital flows, productivity, and private sector development.

Before joining the IDB, she was the Warren Alpert Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and served as Costa Rica’s Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy. Her research has focused on foreign direct investment, globalization, capital markets, and growth. She has also shaped the direction of the field through her editorial work at leading peer-reviewed journals, including serving as Co-Editor of the Journal of International Economics and the World Bank Research Observer.

She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Peter Berkowitz is Director for Policy at the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) at the European Commission, where he leads analytical and policy work on EU cohesion policy and regional development. His responsibilities include overseeing the evaluation of structural funds, supporting institutional reform, and strengthening regional competitiveness across EU Member States.

Over a distinguished career at the European Commission, he has worked extensively on economic governance, territorial development, and policy evaluation. He has held successive leadership roles of increasing responsibility, including as Head of Unit for Smart and Sustainable Growth (2017–2021), where he coordinated work on climate change, the Just Transition Fund, innovation, the digital economy, and transport, and as Head of Unit for Policy Development (2008–2016), where he led the preparation and negotiation of the Commission's proposals for the reform of Cohesion Policy 2014–2020. Earlier in his career, he worked as a regional policy desk officer, with experience spanning enlargement, CAP reform, and rural development.

His analytical work focuses on the regional determinants of productivity, innovation systems, and the role of public investment in fostering private sector development. His contributions to EU cohesion frameworks have shaped policy discussions on convergence, competitiveness, and institutional quality — themes closely aligned with enterprise-level performance and business environment indicators.

He holds postgraduate degrees in politics from the University of Oxford and the Institut d’études politiques de Paris, and finance and economic policy from the University of London.

Norman Loayza is Director of the Global Indicators Group at the World Bank. He currently supervises the flagship data and reports, Women, Business and the Law, Enterprise Surveys, Global and Subnational Business Ready, the successor to the discontinued Doing Business. 

Previously, he was a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group and managed 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.

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 dozens of papers in professional journals and edited volumes. A Peruvian national, he holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1994).

Paul E. Carrillo serves as Deputy Chair of the Department of Economics at George Washington University, where he is also a Professor of Economics. He holds a B.S. from Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His research spans real estate, urban economics, public economics, and econometrics, with work published in top-tier economics and real estate journals. He currently holds editorial roles as Co-Editor of the Journal of Housing Economics and Associate Editor of both the Journal of Regional Science and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Nathan Miller is Professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and Department of Economics. His research specializes in industrial organization, competition policy, antitrust economics, and market structure.

His academic work examines how mergers, regulation, and competitive dynamics affect pricing, productivity, and consumer welfare. Using detailed firm- and industry-level data, he has developed empirical tools for merger evaluation and market power measurement. His research contributes directly to understanding how competition shapes enterprise performance and private sector development, aligning closely with themes of firm dynamics and business environment analysis.

He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Chang-Tai Hsieh is Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and a founding director of the International Growth Centre (IGC), a research initiative that partners with governments to design and evaluate policies that promote sustainable growth in developing countries. His research focuses on economic development, productivity, resource misallocation, entrepreneurship, and the role of institutions in shaping firm performance and aggregate growth.

A central contribution of his academic work is the measurement of productivity losses arising from distortions in capital and labor allocation across firms. His influential research has examined how financial frictions, regulatory barriers, and informality affect firm dynamics and long-run growth, using detailed micro-level data across countries including China, India, Mexico, and the United States. His work has been widely published in leading economics journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the American Economic Review, and has significantly shaped debates on structural transformation and development policy.

He received his PhD in Economics from MIT and previously held faculty positions at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Ufuk Akcigit is the Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and Co-Director of the Growth Academy. His research focuses on innovation-driven growth, firm dynamics, R&D investment, technological change, and industrial policy.

His work integrates micro-level firm data with macroeconomic growth models to uncover how competition, knowledge spillovers, and policy design affect productivity growth.  A prolific contributor to the field's leading journals — including the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics — his research has informed policy debates on innovation, competition, and industrial upgrading at both national and international levels.

He previously held a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania and is affiliated with NBER and CEPR. He received his PhD in Economics from MIT.

Martin Mattsson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the National University of Singapore and an affiliate of J-PAL and CEPR.

His research focuses on improving government institutions and public policy. Much of his work is takes place in Bangladesh, where he has conducted three large-scale field experiments. He also pursues projects using non-experimental methods and data from countries including India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Brazil, as well as cross-country datasets.

His paper "When Does Corruption Cause Red Tape? Bribe Discrimination under Asymmetric Information," published in the Journal of Public Economics (250, 2025: 105483), is the winner of the 2026 David Dollar Memorial Prize.

He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University.

Paolo Mauro is Deputy Chief Economist of the World Bank and Acting Director of Private Markets, contributing to the institution’s global economic research and analysis on macroeconomic stability, governance, and capital markets. His work focuses on corruption, fiscal sustainability, sovereign debt, financial development, and the institutional determinants of investment and growth.

Prior to joining the World Bank, he held senior positions at the International Monetary Fund, where he conducted influential research on corruption and economic performance, capital flows, and public finance. His research has been widely cited and published in leading academic journals, contributing to global understanding of how governance and institutional quality shape private sector investment, macroeconomic credibility, and firm-level outcomes.

He received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University.

Petra Moser is the Alan Greenspan Professor of Economics at NYU Stern School of Business. Her research focuses on innovation, intellectual property, technological change, and the institutional foundations of long-run productivity growth.

Her academic work combines historical data and micro-level analysis to study how patent systems, trade policies, migration, and market incentives shape inventive activity and firm-level innovation. She has examined how differences in intellectual property regimes affect knowledge diffusion and how public institutions influence the direction and pace of technological progress. Her research has been published in leading journals, including the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has informed policy debates on innovation policy and competition.

She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago and has received multiple research awards for contributions to innovation and economic history.

Jan De Loecker is Professor of Economics at KU Leuven, Research Professor of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), a Fellow of the Econometric Society, former Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic research (NBER) and Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy research (CEPR). His research focuses on firm-level productivity, market power, globalization, markups, and industrial organization.

He previously held a faculty position at Princeton University and has published influential research on estimating firm-level markups and productivity using micro data. His work has reshaped debates on rising market power, competition, and their implications for growth and welfare. His methodological contributions are widely used in empirical research examining firm performance and structural change.

He received his PhD in Economics from New York University.