Harris Selod is a Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank in Washington, DC. His current research focuses on urban development, including issues related to transport and land use, as well as land tenure and land markets in developing countries, with a specific interest in sub-Saharan Africa. His publications cover a variety of topics in urban and public economics including theories of squatting and residential informality, the political economy of transport infrastructure choice, the effects of residential segregation on schooling and unemployment, or the impact of land rights formalization and place-based policies. He currently coordinates urban and transport research programs at the research department of the World Bank and organizes the annual World Bank Urbanization & Development Conference.

Over the past years, he has held various positions within the World Bank, including as an invited Visiting Scholar, as a land policy expert seconded by the government of France, and as staff, and was the chair of the World Bank's Land Policy and Administration thematic group (2011-2013). Prior to joining the World Bank in 2007, he was a researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research and an Associate Professor at the Paris School of Economics (where he taught microeconomic theory and urban studies). He also taught economics at various other institutions in France, including the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique (ENSAE).

He holds a PhD in Economics from Sorbonne University, a BSc/MSc in statistics from ENSAE, and a BBA/MBA from ESCP Business School.

Rémi Jedwab is a professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University, the Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy, the Director of the ESIA Initiative on Climate Change and Sustainable Cities, and the co-Director of the Local Sustainable Governance Lab at George Washington University, and an Affiliated Scholar of the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Professor Jedwab's main fields of research are urban, regional and real estate economics, development and growth, environmental economics, and applied micro. Some of the issues he has studied include the economics of cities, urbanization and structural transformation, the economic determinants and effects of vertical urban development, construction and climate change, population growth, sustainable development, the determinants and effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of demography, institutions, history, human capital and technology in development and growth. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the World Bank-GWU-IGC Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference, the World Bank-GWU-UVA Conference on The Economics of Sustainable Development, the World Bank-GWU Livable and Sustainable Cities workshop series, and the Washington Area Development Economics Symposium. He is also a co-editor of the World Bank Economic Review, an associate editor at the Journal of Urban Economics and Regional Science and Urban Economics, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board at World Development. 

Alice Duhaut is an Economist in the Development Impact department at the World Bank where her work focuses on impact evaluations of transportation investments and economic corridors. Her research interests include transport policy, social networks and urban and regional economics. In particular, her work focuses on microeconomic aspects of local economic development and job creation, trade and innovation using network analysis. She received her PhD and MA in Economics from Université libre de Bruxelles and holds a MA in Philosophy from the same university.

Nathaniel Baum-Snow is a Professor and area coordinator for the Economic Analysis and Policy area. He has research interests in urban and real estate economics, labor economics and economic geography. His research includes investigations of reasons for changes in the spatial organization of economic activity in U.S. and Chinese cities, reasons for which workers earn more and have more dispersed wages in larger cities, and the consequences of transportation infrastructure investments on urban growth and welfare. He is a Managing Editor at the Journal of Urban Economics.

Filipe R. Campante is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Political Economy and Governance at Johns Hopkins University (SAIS and Carey Business School). He is interested in political economy, development economics, and urban/regional issues. His research looks at what constrains politicians and policy makers beyond formal checks and balances: cultural norms, institutions, media, political protest. In particular, it has focused on how these informal constraints are affected by the spatial distribution of people and economic activity, by access to information, by the evolution of cultural norms, and by the structure of the economy. He tries to answer these aggregate questions — what happens to countries or states or cities — with an applied microeconomic approach.

Campante’s work has appeared in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. It has also received multiple mentions in outlets such as the New York Times, Science, NPR, Washington Post, The Economist, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, Politico, among others. Campante is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and was Assistant and Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard (2007-18). Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he holds a PhD from Harvard University, an MA from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and a BA from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, all in economics.

Assistant Professor Daniel Agness joined the department in 2024. He is a development economist with interests in urbanization, agricultural transformation, and social networks. He has worked extensively in East Africa with projects on housing policy and governance in Ethiopia, and technology adoption in Kenya and Rwanda.

Daniel holds a PhD and MA in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley and a BA in Economics from Stanford University.

Victoria Delbridge is the Head of the International Growth Centre’s Cities that Work initiative. She is working with Paul Collier, Ed Glaeser, Astrid Haas and Tony Venables, to develop a network of economists, urban planning practitioners and policymakers to translate economic research into clear urban policy guidance. Victoria holds an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, and a BSc in Environmental and Geographical Science and Economics from the University of Cape Town. Prior to her Masters at Oxford, Victoria was an economist at the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism in South Africa. Her current research areas include urban land use planning, public infrastructure and service provision, urban employment, municipal finance and city-level data strategies.

Juliana Oliveira-Cunha is a PhD student in Economic Geography at the London School of Economics (LSE). She also works as a Policy Economist at the Cities that Work initiative of the International Growth Centre (IGC). The initiative aims to bridge the gap between economic research and policymaking in developing countries by translating robust evidence into clear urban policy guidance. Before joining the IGC, Juliana worked as a pre-doctoral Research Assistant at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the LSE. 

Paul Court is the City of Cape Town’s Chief Economist and the Manager of its Economic Analysis Branch. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and has 17 years’ experience in the fields of public and development economics. For the past 12 years, Paul, together with his dedicated team, has helped elevate the City’s understanding of Cape Town’s economy, as well as driven the increasing application of economic tools in assessing and evaluating major City projects and strategies. Paul initiated the development of the City’s quarterly economic publication – EPIC – which, for over 10 years, has been the go-to document for insights on Cape Town’s economy. He has also been a key proponent for obtaining metro access to disaggregated tax data, something that has yielded much fruit in the last few years. Having contributed to a number of City strategies and plans, including authoring the Investment Incentives Policy and co-authoring the Inclusive Economic Growth Strategy, Paul is acutely aware of the need to understand the spatial dynamics of the economy in order to effectively plan for its growth.

Roberta Gatti serves as the Chief Economist for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan (MENAAP) region at the World Bank. In this capacity, she is responsible for the regional macroeconomic outlook and the semi-annual publication of the Economic Updates. She directs analytical work to support the Bank’s operations and economic surveillance across countries in the region, and leads the regional Gender Innovation Lab. Previously, as Chief Economist for the Human Development practice group, Roberta co-led the conceptualization and launch of the World Bank Human Capital Index and shaped the Service Delivery Indicators data initiative. She began her career at the World Bank as a Young Professional in the Macro unit of the Development Research Group, subsequently leading analytical agendas on growth, firm productivity, social inclusion, health, and labor markets, including serving as the Global Lead for Labor Policies. Roberta has also managed large teams and lending portfolios in both the MENAAP and Europe and Central Asia regions.

Her research has been published in top field peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Economic Growth, and the Journal of Development Economics. Roberta is the lead author of several flagship reports, such as Jobs for Shared Prosperity: Time for Action in the Middle East and North Africa; Being Fair, Faring Better: Promoting Equality of Opportunity for Marginalized Roma; The Human Capital Project; The Human Capital Index 2020 Update; and The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa.

Roberta holds a B.A. from Università Bocconi and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. She has taught undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. courses at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University. She is also a frequent lecturer and keynote speaker at universities and policy events around the world.

Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, Indermit served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he helped shape the Bank’s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020.  Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program.

Indermit led the World Bank's influential 2009 World Development Report on economic geography. His work includes introducing the concept of the “middle-income trap” to describe how countries stagnate after reaching a certain level of income. The 2024 World Development Report, prepared with his guidance, highlights strategies for countries to escape the middle-income trap—by adopting modern technologies and driving innovation.

Indermit has published extensively on key policy issues facing developing countries—among other things, sovereign debt vulnerabilities, green growth and natural-resource wealth, labor markets, and poverty and inequality. Indermit has also taught at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Arti Grover is a Principal Economist and Regional Program Leader heading the economic research and strategy for the Middle East, Central Asia, Türkiye, Pakistan & Afghanistan (MCT) region of the IFC. Prior to this position, Arti was the Global Lead on Firm Dynamics at the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice. In this role, she managed a team of highly talented micro-economists; shaped the group’s agenda on firm dynamics and productivity; conceptualized the Investment Climate Assessments (ICA) 2.0 as well as the World Bank’s engagement on climate change from the perspective of the private sector.During the pandemic she spearheaded a major analytic program on Business Pulse Surveys and used the evidence from this work to design COVID-19 emergency operations. She has extensive experience in working on complex analytical and lending projects, deploying novel approaches to support firms. Her research covers a wide range of topics including firm dynamics, trade, productivity, entrepreneurship and spatial development.She co-authored two of the World Bank’s Productivity Project flagship reports – High-growth firms and Place, Productivity and Prosperity and three books on trade in services. In addition, she has published over thirty articles in top peer-reviewed journals, as chapters in books, and as World Bank policy research papers. Ms. Grover has been affiliated, in a research capacity, with the Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.Prior to joining the Bank in 2009, she was a Doctoral Fulbright fellow at Princeton University and an Assistant Professor at Delhi School of Economics, India.

Franziska Ohnsorge is the World Bank Chief Economist for South Asia. In this role, she is responsible for leading the research program on key economic issues in South Asia to inform the policy debate and World Bank lending. Before starting this position, she was the Manager at the Development Economics Vice Presidency where she spearheaded the flagship Global Economic Prospects report. Prior to joining the World Bank, Franziska Ohnsorge worked in the Office of the Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and at the International Monetary Fund. Her research has been featured in peer-reviewed journals as well as policy publications and has covered a wide range of topics in international macroeconomics and finance, including debt and financial crises, inflation and monetary policy, as well as growth and informal labor markets. Her work has been widely cited, including in the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Stéphane Straub is a distinguished economist and scholar renowned for his extensive contributions to the fields of economics, infrastructure development, and institutional economics. As the Chief Economist for the Infrastructure Vice-Presidency, Stéphane brings his wealth of knowledge and expertise to drive forward the analysis of transformative infrastructure projects and policies.

Stéphane’s engagement with international organizations underscores his dedication to driving positive change on a global scale through rigorous economic analysis. It includes his experience as a Lead Economist with the Sustainable Development Global Department at the World Bank in 2016-17 and regular consultancy contributions throughout his career to institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Union, and the Asian Development Bank.

Stéphane's research addresses the complexities of infrastructure development, procurement, impact, and institutional evolution in developing countries. His research has delved into contractual arrangements for critical infrastructure projects spanning transportation, energy, water and sanitation, and ICT. In particular, he has focused on public-private partnerships and concessions, and private financing for infrastructure, in collaboration with esteemed colleagues, with the aim to pave the way for more efficient and effective infrastructure solutions.

Nick Tsivanidis is an Assistant Professor in the Real Estate Group at the Haas School of Business, and the Department of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also co-director of the Cities Research Programme at the International Growth Centre (IGC).

Tsivanidis is an applied economist with interests across Urban and Regional Economics, Development Economics, and Applied Macroeconomics. His research centers on connecting theory with empirics that combine new sources of granular data with natural experiments to learn about the process of urbanization in developing countries.

Ming Zhang, a Chinese National, is the World Bank Group's Global Director for Urban, Subnational Finance, Tourism, and Disaster Management under the Infrastructure Vice Presidency. He is responsible for spearheading global knowledge programs, fostering innovative thought leadership, and ensuring client impact and global partnership in these sectors.

Mr. Zhang joined the World Bank in 1997. Prior to his current position, he served as the Practice Manager for Urban, Resilience and Land in three different regions (South Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, and East Asia and Pacific) where he oversaw the formulation and implementation of  knowledge and financing programs. His earlier career positions at the World Bank included roles as team lead on urban development, infrastructure, and local government.

Mr. Zhang holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning and an M.A. in Economics, both from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He also holds a B.A. in Geography from East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

Professor Duranton is a member of the Graduate Group in City & Regional Planning. Gilles Duranton is professor of real estate and holds the Dean’s Chair in Real Estate. He joined Wharton in 2012 after holding academic positions at the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics.

A graduate from HEC Paris and Sorbonne University, he obtained his PhD in economics jointly from the London School of Economics and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

His research focuses on urban and transportation issues. His work is concerned with land use, urban growth and the estimation of the costs and benefits of cities and clusters. He is also interested in the effects of transportation infrastructure on urban development and the evaluation of local policies.

He serves as co-editor for the Journal of Urban Economics and sits on the editorial board of several other academic journals. He is a fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and worked as consultant on regional and urban policy for various national governments and international organisations. He was the foreign advisor of a two-year mission on urban issues for the government of Colombia. He was also the 2011 president of the North American Regional Science Association and currently serves as president of the Urban Economics Association. He is currently the chair of the Wharton Real Estate Department.

Louise Fox is a nonresident senior fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative (AGI), which is part of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. She is also a Senior Research Associate at ODI Global.  Her work at Brookings and ODI Global focuses on youth employment, inclusive growth, and poverty reduction. Her previous positions included chief economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), visiting professor of development economic policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and various positions at the World Bank.

Fox is an internationally recognized development economist who specializes in strategies for employment creation, opportunity expansion, economic empowerment, and poverty reduction.  She has advised governments in the developed and developing world, international organizations, and philanthropic and non-profit organizations on problem diagnosis, strategies for results, and outcome measurement. Her recent projects include leading a study on the employment impacts of Sida’s (Sweden) projects in Africa (with ODI, London), helping prepare a Tanzania Jobs Diagnostic for FCDO (with ODI Global), advising the Gates Foundation on how to support market development benefitting poor and vulnerable women in Africa and South Asia, and serving on a UN High Level Panel on the Development of a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, where Fox was the technical lead.

At USAID, Fox prepared a report “Shared Interest,” on how USAID programs benefit both recipient countries and the United States, and  developed new products to increase the use of economics in USAID strategic programming.  Fox is a member of the Economic Advisory Panel at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). She served on the Advisory Board of the G-7 Inclusive Growth Financing Forum, and the Advisory and Review Panel for IFAD’s most recent Rural Development Report.

During her 27-year career at the World Bank, Fox served as a lead economist and poverty advisor for Eastern and Southern Africa, lead economist for transition economies, and contributing author to several Bank policy/regional reports.

Edward L. Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught economic theory and urban economics since 1992. He also leads the Urban Economics Working Group at the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-leads the Cities Programme of the International Growth Centre, and co-edits the Journal of Urban Economics. He has written hundreds of papers on cities, infrastructure and other topics, and written, co-written and co-edited many books including Triumph of the City, Survival of the City (with David Cutler) and Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Europe: A World of Difference (with Alberto Alesina). He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Chair of Harvard’s Economics Department. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Econometric Society, and he received the Albert O. Hirschman prize from the Social Science Research Council. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1992.

Doug Gollin's research focuses broadly on economic development and growth, with an emphasis on the structural transformations that accompany the growth process. He has particular interests in agricultural productivity and technology, from a micro scale to macro scale. His work has also looked at rural-urban mobility and urbanization processes, spatial patterns of development and a range of other topics. He currently serves as Research Director for a major global program of academic research on Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG), funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, and he is a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).

Professor Gollin holds an A.B. degree from Harvard University and an M.A. in international relations from Yale University. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1996. He has published in numerous academic journals including Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Science, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, and American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 

She is an economist with research interests in environmental and development economics. Her current research projects include studying how firms and households learn about and adapt to environmental change and regulation, the returns to environmental technologies, and the returns to worker training and incentives.

From fall 2015 to 2017, Namrata was a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her PhD in environmental economics from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale. She also holds a BA (Honors) in economics from Delhi University, and an MA in international and development economics from Yale University.

Bob Koopman is currently Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer at American University’s School of International Service where his research focuses on the impact of trade and trade policy on economic development and growth. Bob previously served as the Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization and an Adjunct Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva from 2014 to 2022. At the WTO Bob served as Chief Economic Counsellor to the Director General, and provided the WTO Secretariat and Member Countries with analysis and information that promoted a deeper understanding of trade and trade policy's role in economic growth and development. Bob also served as the WTO representative to the G20 Trade and Investment Working Group and the G20 Framework Group. He is a research associate of CEPR, London, serves on numerous advisory boards, and is an editor of the Springer Series on Advances in Applied General Equilibrium Modeling. Bob also previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Economist at the United States International Trade Commission. Bob also previously served as Deputy Administrator for Economic and Community Systems at what is now the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, USDA, and various research leadership and analyst positions at the Economic Research Service of USDA from 1985 to 1999.

Somik V. Lall is Director of Strategy in the Office of the World Bank Group Chief Economist.

Lall has held various leadership positions across the World Bank Group including Senior Adviser to the World Bank Group Chief Economist, Director of the 2024 World Development Report on the Middle-Income Trap, Acting Director of DEC Development Policy, Head of the Climate Economics Team, and Global Lead in the Sustainable Development and Infrastructure Vice Presidencies.

Lall has directed the World Bank's 2024 World Development Report on the “Middle Income Trap” that examines how middle-income countries can break into the ranks of the wealthiest economies. He is also a co-founder of the Growth Academy, a joint initiative between the World Bank and the University of Chicago to advance joint research programs on economic growth with think tanks in emerging economies.

As head of the climate economics and policy team in the World Bank’s Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions vice presidency, he developed and supervised policy research programs on resilience and economic development, the macro-criticality of climate change, and innovations for the low-carbon transition.

Lall has published extensively on key policy issues facing key emerging economies. Recent research includes assessment of business dynamism in Ukraine, the cost of keeping women out of productive jobs, the effectiveness of spatially targeted industrial policies, jobs  potential of African cities, and identifying “differentiated” responsibilities for carbon emissions across countries. During the pandemic, he developed a novel data-driven approach to help city mayors rapidly respond to protect their citizens from the ravages of COVID 19. Listen to his Monocle podcast.

Lall also teaches at Johns Hopkins University and has been a Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi. He has previously served as Senior Economic Counselor to the Government of India.

Dr. Francisca Rojas is the Executive Director at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University, the world’s leading organization advancing public innovation in cities globally. With more than 20 years of experience in urban planning, finance, and analytics, Dr. Rojas leads a team of global public innovation experts and researchers, connecting city halls with cutting-edge solutions and delivering capacity building programs for practitioners in more than 200 cities around the world.

Since joining the Center in 2021 as the inaugural Academic Director, Dr. Rojas has built and led a multidisciplinary team to develop BCPI’s applied research portfolio and design and launch both the Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellowship and the Summer Scholars program, inspiring the next generation of public innovators. A respected thought leader in the global public innovation space, Dr. Rojas has built strong relationships and research collaborations across the university.

Prior to joining BCPI, Dr. Rojas spent several years in increasingly senior positions at the Inter-American Development Bank, concentrating on housing and urban development and facilitating more than $1 billion in major loan programs supporting urban investment across Latin America. Earlier in her career, she was a Project Planner for the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative in Washington, D.C., collaborating on award-winning redevelopment plans that have generated over $3 billion in public and private investment. Her career also includes serving as an advisor to Chile’s Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Research Director for the Harvard University Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation’s Transparency Policy Project, and Program Manager for the American Institute of Architects.

Dr. Rojas holds a Ph.D in urban and regional planning and a Master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Bachelor of Science in social science from the University of Michigan. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Mohammed Adjei Sowah is a highly experienced local economic development, urban governance, and public policy consultant with more than 25 years of professional experience across Ghana and Africa. His career spans government, private enterprise, and the NGO sector, where he has played leadership roles through the provision of management, technical, and consulting services. His work focuses on local governance and decentralization, sustainable development, city diplomacy, project management, sanitation and waste management, climate change, and urban mobility.

He served as the Metropolitan Chief Executive of Accra (Mayor of Accra) from March 2017 to October 2021. During this period, he also chaired the Greater Accra Passenger Transport Executive (GAPTE), a public–private partnership responsible for delivering rapid and convenient urban transport services.

From July 2022 to January 2025, he was the Deputy Director of Research at the Office of the President of Ghana, providing policy-relevant research to guide government projects and programmes. He concurrently served as Technical Advisor to the Korle Klottey Municipal Assembly and the Ablekuma North Municipal Assembly in Ghana from 2022 to 2024.

Currently, Adjei Sowah is a Managing Partner at IQS Capital Partners, where he oversees project development and management. Additionally, he is a partner at Sustainable Ghana, a consulting and project management firm focused on urban development issues.

He has served as Vice Chair of the C40 Climate Leadership Group, as a Board Member of the Global Covenant of Mayors, and as a Council Member of the International Growth Centre. He was recognized globally as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People in Climate Change Policy (2019).

Adjei Sowah holds an Executive MSc in Cities from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MSc in Local Economic Development from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and an MA in International Relations and Diplomacy from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). He also holds a professional certificate from the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative from Harvard University and a BSc in Public Administration from the University of Ghana.

Matthew Turner’s research focuses on the economics of land use and transportation. Current projects investigate; the relationship between public transit and the growth of cities, whether and how `smart growth’ type development affects individual driving behaviour, and how land use patterns are evolving in the United States. Recent projects examine the relationship between the extent of a city’s highway network and urban growth, total driving in the city, and patterns of trade. Professor Turner holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, a Ph. D. in economics from Brown University. His research appears in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies and Econometrica, and is regularly featured in the popular press.

Ayah Mahgoub is a Senior Urban Development Specialist with the World Bank Group. She focuses on urban development, tourism development, jobs and economic development, intergovernmental fiscal systems, regional development and smart cities. She has worked across the Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa regions. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in economics and international development at Harvard University. 

Prior to joining the World Bank Group, she worked on economic policy and initiatives to rethink approaches to development in positions she held at the Center for Global Development, Development Innovation Ventures within USAID, and the Office of Strategic Affairs in the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi. She also worked on urban economic development in New York City, economic integration of minorities in France, economic development peace-building initiatives in Sudan, and various initiatives focused on Latin America. 

Forhad Shilpi is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group (Infrastructure Team). Her current research focuses on social mobility in developing countries, microeconomics of climate resilience, infrastructure and urban and regional economics. Her research has been published in leading development and economics journals such as American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Human Resources, and Journal of Economic Geography. She is the lead author of the 2025 Policy Research Report Rethinking Resilience: Adapting to a Changing Climate. She also led the social mobility analysis for the World Development Report 2024 The Middle-Income Trap. She holds a Ph.D. degree in economics from Johns Hopkins University, where she taught several economics courses. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked as a research associate at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.