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Coming Soon

Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics 2025¡ªDevelopment in the Age of Populism

The 2025 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) on "Development in the Age of Populism" will be held on July 22-25, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Add to Calendar 22-07-2025 08:00 25-07-2025 17:00 America/New_York Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics 2025¡ªDevelopment in the Age of Populism Hello,\n\nThis is a reminder to join us virtually on ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳: Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics 2025¡ªDevelopment in the Age of Populism \n\nAbout the event: The 2025 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) on "Development in the Age of Populism" will be held on July 22-25, 2025 in Washington, DC. \n\nGo to event page: /en/events/2025/07/22/abcde-2025 \n\nWe look forward to seeing you! \n\n WORLD BANK - \nDevelopment Events Brought to You Live Online
ABCDE 2025

This event will be streamed here in

Date & Time

July 22 - 25, 2025 ET

Location

Days 1&2: Preston Auditorium, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, Washington, D.C. Days 3&4: Birdsall House Conference Center, Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C.

In-Person

?

Online:?

Event Contact

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

CGD

?

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In Memory of Stanley Fischer (1943-2025)

ABCDE 2025 is dedicated to the memory of?, who established this influential forum in 1989. His vision and leadership have left a lasting legacy, inspiring generations of development economists worldwide. We honor Fischer's contributions and continue to build upon the foundation he laid for collaborative and innovative economic research. As Fischer , "the?ultimate objective of the series is,?by enhancing the knowledge base, to improve both member country and Bank policymaking."

?

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group¡¯s Annual Conference on Development Economics¡ªABCDE¡ªis a 36-year-old forum to stimulate an exchange of ideas between leaders in global policy discussions and researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners from the Bank¡¯s member countries. Established in 1989 and organized by the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC), ABCDE became the premier venue for cutting-edge insights on how to tackle the most pressing challenges of development. Several younger researchers presenting papers went on to become Nobel Prize winners. The conference also played a role in shaping the global consensus on development policy. 

Beginning in 2024, ABCDE is co-sponsored by partnership that rotates every two years. For the 2025 conference, the  and  are the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group¡¯s partners.

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

By most measures of human progress, the world is in better shape today than it has ever been¡ªin life expectancy, in per capita GDP, in literacy rates, among other things. Yet, profound dissatisfaction has taken root in many countries, at every level of income. The global economic system that has powered much of this progress over the last 80 years is now widely regarded as broken. Nearly two-thirds of the global electorate went to the polls last year to register their displeasure regarding income inequality, cultural insecurity, and elite institutions.

Populism, in short, is ascendant to an unusually synchronized degree, fueled by a fragmenting public consensus on the policies needed for economic progress. It will pose a formidable development challenge in the coming years.

ABCDE¡ªscheduled for July 22 - 25, 2025 and organized by the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ in conjunction with the Center for Global Development and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy¡ªaims to assess the developments during the last decade, analyze the causes, and adjust our approach to economic progress.

Bringing together some of the world¡¯s leading economic thinkers, the conference will help identify the best way forward¡ªwith deep dives on key topics such as artificial intelligence, migration, nutrition and health, and pollution, and a geographical focus that spans the world. Attendees will explore geopolitical shifts; unilateralism and multilateralism; and growth and opportunity.

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

All times listed below are in Eastern Standard Time (EST)

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Preston Auditorium, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Headquarters
08:00 ¨C 09:00

Registration and Breakfast

09:00 ¨C 09:15

Welcome Remarks

Indermit S. Gill, Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics
09:15 ¨C 09:45

Opening Remarks: The End of Development Cooperation?

Masood Ahmed, President Emeritus of the Center for Global Development
09:45 ¨C 10:30

Keynote Address

Mohamed El-Erian, President of Queens' College at Cambridge University
10:30 ¨C 11:15

Plenary Panel: Development in the Age of Populism

CHAIR: Justin Sandefur, Lead for Economic Growth, Low-and Middle-Income Countries Program, Open Philanthropy

 

SPEAKERS:

  • Indermit S. Gill, Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics
  • Rachel Glennerster, President of the Center for Global Development
  • Danny Quah, Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics, Lee Kuan Yew School
11:15 ¨C 11:30

Coffee Break

11:30 ¨C 13:10

Session 1: Reviving Multilateralism

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Danny Quah, Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics, Lee Kuan Yew School

 

CHAIR: Matteo Bugamelli, Executive Director, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

 

PANELISTS:

  • Paper 1: Multilateralism: Whenever We Can or Only When We Must? (Masood Ahmed, Center for Global Development)
  • Paper 2: Regionalism and Multilateralism: Southeast Asia (Selina Ho, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore )
  • Paper 3: Asia-Pacific Growth and the Changing International System (Xinquan TU, China Institute for WTO Studies, University of International Business and Economics)
13:10 ¨C 14:30

Lunch Break

14:30 ¨C 16:00

Session 2: Artificial Intelligence

CHAIR: Gaurav Nayyar, Director of the World Development Report 2026, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

 

PANELISTS: 

  • Paper 1: AI as Normal Technology (Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University)
  • Paper 2: How does Competition Policy Need to Change in a World of Artificial Intelligence? (Catherine Tucker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Paper 3: Could AI Leapfrog the Web? Evidence from Teachers in Sierra Leone (Daniel Bj?rkegren, Columbia University)

DISCUSSANT: Han Sheng Chia, Policy Fellow, Center for Global Development

16:00 ¨C 16:15

Coffee Break

16:15 ¨C 17:45

Session 3: Pollution

CHAIR: Somik Lall, Senior Adviser in the Office of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group Chief Economist and Director for Development Policy

 

PANELISTS:

  • Paper 1: Systemic Review and Meta-Analysis of Ex-Post Evaluations on the Effectiveness of Carbon Pricing (Jan Steckel, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change)
  • Paper 2: Quality of Carbon Credit Projects and Alternative Methods to Finance Sequestration (Barbara Haya, University of California - Berkeley)
  • Paper 3: Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India (Kaushik Deb, The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago's India Team)

DISCUSSANT: Carolyn Fischer, Lead Economist, Development Research Group, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Preston Auditorium, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Headquarters
08:00 ¨C 09:00

Registration and Breakfast

09:00 ¨C 09:30

Stanley Fischer Memorial Lecture: Geopolitics and Development

Robert B. Zoellick, former President of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group (2007-12), former Deputy Secretary of State (2005-06), former U.S. Trade Representative (2001-05)

09:30 ¨C 11:00

Session 4: Geopolitical Shifts

CHAIR: Aaditya Mattoo, Chief Economist, East Asia and Pacific, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

 

PANELISTS:

  • Paper 1: Geopolitical Shifts and New Strategic Directions in Northeast Asia (Shin-wha Lee, Korea University)
  • Paper 2: Migration and Geopolitical Shifts (Saravana Ravindran, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore)
  • Paper 3: Industrial Policy, Trade, and Geopolitical Shifts (Heiwai Tang, University of Hong Kong)
11:00 ¨C 11:15

Coffee Break

11:15 ¨C 11:45

ABCDE 2025 Lecture

Indermit S. Gill, Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics

11:45 ¨C 13:15

Session 5: Africa Growth and Opportunity

CHAIR: Gero Carletto, Senior Manager in the Development Data Group at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

 

PANELISTS:

  • Matteo Bugamelli, Executive Director, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳
  • Andrew Dabalen, Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳'s Africa Region
  • Amb. Robin Renee Sanders, CEO of FEEEDS & FE3DS, LLC and Former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and the Republic of the Congo
  • Johan Swinnen, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute
  • Leonard Wantchekon, Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Associated Faculty in Economics at Princeton University
13:15 ¨C 14:45

Lunch Break

14:45 ¨C 16:00

A Book Talk with Keyu Jin 

The New China Playbook Beyond Socialism and Capitalism

CHAIR: Indermit S. Gill, Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics

 

SPEAKER: Keyu Jin, Professor of Finance, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Birdsall House, Center for Global Development
08:30 ¨C 09:30

Registration and Breakfast

09:30 ¨C 09:45

Opening Remarks

Rachel Glennerster, President of the Center for Global Development

09:45 ¨C 11:15

Plenary Panel: Poverty, Education, and Health in an Era of Unilateralism, Conflict, and Climate Change 

CHAIR:?Rachel Glennerster, President of the Center for Global Development

 

PANELISTS:

  • Paper 1:?Trends in Health, Education, and Poverty Reduction in LMICs (Tom Vogl, University of California - San Diego)
  • Paper 2:?The Role of Safety Nets in Times of Uncertainty and Polycrisis (Rema Hanna, Harvard University)
  • Paper 3: Public Finances and Service Delivery (Shanta Devarajan, Georgetown University)
  • Paper 4: The Role of Voter Preferences in Shaping Policy Outcomes (Laura Schechter, University of Wisconsin - Madison)
11:15 ¨C 11:45

Coffee Break

11:45 ¨C 13:00

A Fireside Chat with Indermit S. Gill and Arvind Panagariya: India¡¯s Economic Progress and What It Means For The Global Economy

CHAIR: Indermit S. Gill, Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics

 

SPEAKER: Arvind Panagariya, Chairman of the Sixteenth Finance Commission of India

13:00 ¨C 14:00

Lunch Break

14:00 ¨C 15:30

Session 6: How can Development Economics Meet the Moment? Practice, Research, and Teaching in a Time of Unilateralism and Polycrisis 

CHAIR:?Markus Goldstein, Vice President of the Center for Global Development

 

PANELISTS:

  • Oriana Bandiera, Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics
  • Jishnu Das, Professor of Public Policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University
  • Leonard Wantchekon, Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Associated Faculty in Economics at Princeton University
15:30 ¨C 16:00

Coffee Break

16:00 ¨C 17:30

Session 7: Education Policy 

CHAIR:?Deon Filmer, Director of the Development Research Group, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

 

PANELISTS:

  • Paper 1:?The Global Distribution of Skills (Dev Patel, Harvard University)
  • Paper 2: Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital (Christina Brown, University of Chicago)
  • Paper 3:?Lead Exposure and Learning Outcome Stagnation (Lee Crawfurd, Center for Global Development)
  • Paper 4:?School-Based Violence as an Impediment to Better Schooling Outcomes (Gabriela Smarrelli, Center for Global Development)
17:30 ¨C 19:00

Cocktail Reception

Friday, July 25, 2025

Birdsall House, Center for Global Development
08:15 ¨C 09:00

Registration and Breakfast

09:00 ¨C 10:30

Session 8: Agricultural Markets and Nutrition

CHAIR:?Eeshani Kandpal, Senior Fellow and Research Manager, Center for Global Development

 

PANELISTS:

  • Paper 1:?Overview of Agricultural Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa (Chris Barrett, Cornell University)
  • Paper 2: Poverty Measurement and the Cost of Healthy Diets (Wiliam A. Masters, Tufts University)
  • Paper 3: Intergenerational Effects of Early Childhood Shocks (Kibrom Tafere, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳)
  • Paper 4:?Food subsidies to Producers and Consumers and Their Impacts on Child Nutrition (Kathy Baylis, University of California - Santa Barbara)
10:30 ¨C 11:00

Coffee Break

11:00 ¨C 12:15

Session 9: Migration

CHAIR:?Dany Bahar, Senior Fellow and Director of Migration Displacement and Humanitarian Policy Program, Center for Global Development

 

PANELISTS:

  • Paper 1:?Skills, Labor Market Shifts, and International Migration (?a?lar ?zden, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳)
  • Paper 2: Demographic Shifts in LMICs and HICs and Impacts for Migration (Wendy Cunningham, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳)
  • Paper 3:?Development Impacts on the Sending Country (Caroline B. Theoharides, Amherst College)
12:15 ¨C 12:45   

Closing Remarks and Presentation of Human Development Flagship Report

Mamta Murthi, Vice President for People Vice Presidency at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

12:45 ¨C 13:00

Fireside Chat between David Evans and Mamta Murthi

SPEAKERS:

Mamta Murthi, Vice President for People Vice Presidency at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

David Evans, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development

13:00 ¨C 14:30 

Lunch

 

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Keynote Speaker
 
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Mohamed El-Erian

Mohamed El-Erian is President of Queens¡¯ College Cambridge, Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz, and Chair of the Gramercy Funds. He is an advisor to the GIC Investment Strategies Committee. He?chairs the Board of Under Armour?and serves on the board of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Previously, he was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-Chief Investment Officer of PIMCO from 2007 to 2014, and former chair of President Obama¡¯s Global Development Council from 2012 to 2017. He was President and CEO of Harvard Management Company, Managing Director at Salomon Smith Barney/Citigroup, and Deputy Director at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. Dr El-Erian writes regularly and is a Financial Times Contributing Editor and Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He has two New York Times¡¯ best sellers (the 2008 ¡®When Markets Collide¡¯ and the 2016 ¡®The Only Game in Town¡¯) and A Times¡¯ Top Ten (the 2023 ¡°Premacrisis¡±). He was named four years in a row to the Foreign Policy list of Top Global Thinkers.?

Dr El-Erian holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree in Economics from Cambridge University, as well as a Masters and Doctorate in Economics from Oxford University.

Opening Remarks: The End of Development Cooperation?
 
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Masood Ahmed

Masood Ahmed is the President Emeritus of the Center for Global Development (CGD). He joined the Center in January 2017, capping a 35-year career driving economic development policy initiatives relating to debt, aid effectiveness, trade, and global economic prospects at major international institutions including the IMF, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, and DFID. He joined CGD from the IMF, where he served for eight years as director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, earning praise from Managing Director Christine Lagarde as a ¡°visionary leader.¡± In that role, he oversaw the Fund's operations in 32 countries, and managed relationships with key national and regional policy makers and stakeholders. In previous years, he also served as the IMF's director of External Relations, and deputy director of the Policy Development and Review Department.

Stanley Fischer Memorial Lecture Speaker
 
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Robert B. Zoellick

Robert B. Zoellick?served as the 11th President of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group (2007¨C2012), U.S. Trade Representative (2001¨C2005), and Deputy Secretary of State (2005¨C2006), with earlier roles in the Treasury, State Department, and White House. He is the non-executive chairman of AllianceBernstein and a Senior Fellow at Harvard¡¯s Belfer Center. He serves on the boards of Temasek, Laureate International Universities, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and is active in global initiatives such as Mercy Corps and the Global Tiger Initiative. He has received numerous national and international honors for his contributions to diplomacy, trade, and development. Zoellick holds degrees from Swarthmore College and Harvard University, including a J.D. magna cum laude.

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Development in the Age of Populism
 
Indermit Gill

Indermit Gill Panelist

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, he served as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯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. He led the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳'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¡ªby adopting modern technologies and driving innovation.

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Rachel Glennerster Panelist

Rachel Glennerster is the President of the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, she was at the University of Chicago. She has leveraged randomized trials to address critical issues spanning democracy, health, education, and women's empowerment and pioneered ways to shape markets to promote innovation to address global challenges including pandemics and climate change. She has also written on strategies to stimulate innovation, promoting more equitable access to vaccines, and the response to Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics.?Dr. Glennerster previously served as Chief Economist at the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for International Development in the UK.?In 2021, Dr. Glennerster was appointed Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) for services in international development. She also currently serves as the Chair of Teaching at the Right Level Africa (TaRL Africa).

Danny Quah, Professor in Economics and Dean, School of Public Policy

Danny Quah Panelist

Danny Quah?is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics at the?Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His research interests lie in income inequality, economic growth, and international economic relations. Dr. Quah¡¯s work takes an economic approach to world order - focusing on global power shift and the rise of the east, and alternative models of global power relations. The economic approach emerges, in that Dr. Quah¡¯s work studies the supply and demand of world order: What international system do the world¡¯s superpowers wish to provide; what world order does the global community need? Dr. Quah¡¯s work on income inequality sets the challenge against a broader background of social mobility and cohesion, and in so doing suggests a single narrative on the challenge of income inequality is unlikely to be correct or helpful.

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Justin Sandefur Chair

Justin Sandefur is the Lead for Economic Growth in?Low-and Middle-Income Countries Program, Open Philanthropy.?Before joining Open Philanthropy, Mr. Sandefur was with the Center for Global Development (CGD) for over 15 years. In addition to his work as a Senior Fellow, Mr. Sandefur served as Research Manager and Director of CGD¡¯s education program. His own research focused on the economics of education and health.?Prior to joining CGD, Mr. Sandefur was a Resident Adviser to the Tanzanian government and a Research Officer at Oxford¡¯s Centre for the Study of African Economies. He also taught as a Visiting Professor at Peking University¡¯s National School of Development and Georgetown¡¯s Walsh School of Foreign Service, and served as a consultant for the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and various United Nations agencies.

Reviving Multilateralism
 
Danny Quah, Professor in Economics and Dean, School of Public Policy

Danny Quah Keynote Address

Danny Quah?is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics at the?Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His research interests lie in income inequality, economic growth, and international economic relations. Dr. Quah¡¯s work takes an economic approach to world order - focusing on global power shift and the rise of the east, and alternative models of global power relations. The economic approach emerges, in that Dr. Quah¡¯s work studies the supply and demand of world order: What international system do the world¡¯s superpowers wish to provide; what world order does the global community need? Dr. Quah¡¯s work on income inequality sets the challenge against a broader background of social mobility and cohesion, and in so doing suggests a single narrative on the challenge of income inequality is unlikely to be correct or helpful.

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Masood Ahmed Panelist

Masood Ahmed is the President Emeritus of the Center for Global Development. He joined the Center in January 2017, capping a 35-year career driving economic development policy initiatives relating to debt, aid effectiveness, trade, and global economic prospects at major international institutions including the IMF, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, and DFID.?Ahmed joined CGD from the IMF, where he served for eight years as director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, earning praise from Managing Director Christine Lagarde as a ¡°visionary leader.¡± In that role, he oversaw the Fund's operations in 32 countries, and managed relationships with key national and regional policy makers and stakeholders. In previous years, he also served as the IMF's director of External Relations, and deputy director of the Policy Development and Review Department.

ABCDE 2025

Selina Ho Panelist

Selina Ho?is Associate Professor in International Affairs and Vice-Dean (Research and Development), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She researches how China wields power and influence via infrastructure and water disputes in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She is the author of?Thirsty Cities: Social Contracts and Public Goods Provision in China and India?(Cambridge University Press, 2019), co-author of?Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia?(University of California Press, 2020), and co-editor of?The Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations?(2020). She has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, commentaries, and op-eds. She is a Council Member of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.?

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Xinquan TU Panelist

Xinquan TU?is Dean and Professor at the China Institute for WTO Studies, University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) where he has worked since 1996. His research and teaching focus on WTO, Chinese trade policy, US trade policy, China-US trade relations and government procurement. He has been Visiting Scholar at numerous institutions including Middlebury Institute for International Studies (2016), WTO Secretariat (2011), Indiana University (2011) and Johns Hopkins University (2006) and Visiting Fellow at German Institute for International and Security Affairs (2014) and Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (2009). He was Associate Professor (2008-2011) and Assistant Professor at UIBE (2003-2007) where he received his PhD in International Trade in 2004. He received his BA from Peking University in 1996.

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Matteo Bugamelli Chair

Matteo Bugamelli, an Italian national,?is the Executive Director for Albania, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, San Marino, and Timor-Leste at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. He is currently the Dean of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Board of Executive Directors. He was the Chair of the Board¡¯s Budget Committee from 2020 to 2022 and of the Board¡¯s Audit Committee from 2022 to 2023. He also served on the Board¡¯s Ethics Committee.?Mr. Bugamelli comes from over 20 years of experience working with the Bank of Italy: immediately before joining the WBG Board, he was Director in the Research Department and Coordinator of the Regional Research Branches; and prior to that, he led the Economic Structure and Labor Market Division.?Mr. Bugamelli has authored and co-authored several articles on International Trade, International Migration and Remittances, Firm Behavior.

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Artificial Intelligence
 
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Daniel Bj?rkegren Panelist

Daniel Bj?rkegren is an Assistant Professor of?International and Public Affairs?at?Columbia University. He works on digital transformation and applied machine learning, with a focus on developing economies. He works on methods to make algorithms more humane: robust, transparent, and better aligned with societal values. He is an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and MIT¡¯s Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and a Master¡¯s in Public Policy from Harvard University, and a Bachelor degree in Physics from the University of Washington.

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Arvind Narayanan Panelist

Arvind Narayanan is a Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and the Director of the?. He studies the societal impact of digital technologies, especially AI. He led the Princeton Web Transparency and Accountability Project to uncover how companies collect and use our personal information. His work was among the first to show how machine learning reflects cultural stereotypes, and his doctoral research showed the fundamental limits of de-identification. Mr. Narayanan is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), twice recipient of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Award, and a three-time recipient of the Privacy Papers for Policy Makers Award.

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Catherine Tucker Panelist

Catherine Tucker is the?Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management?and a Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management. She is the faculty director of the EMBA program. She has also been the Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program. Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges this poses for regulation. Ms. Tucker has particular expertise in online advertising, digital health, social media, and electronic privacy. Her research studies the interface between marketing, the economics of technology, and law.?She is a cofounder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab which studies the applications of blockchain. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She has testified to Congress regarding her work on digital privacy and algorithms, and presented her research to the OECD, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, IMF, and the ECJ.?

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Gaurav Nayyar Chair

Gaurav?Nayyar?is Director of the World Development Report 2026 on Artificial Intelligence for Development and an Economic Adviser in the Development Economics Vice Presidency at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, which he joined as a Young Professional in 2013. Previously, he was an Economics Affairs Officer in the Economic Research Division of the World Trade Organization, where he co-led the World Trade Report 2013 on Factors Shaping the Future of World Trade. Mr. Nayyar's research interests lie primarily in the areas of economic growth, structural transformation, trade, technological change, industrialization, and firm productivity, and he has published in a variety of academic journals on these issues. His latest book is At Your Service? The Promise of Services-Led Development.?He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford, where he was a Dorothy Hodgkin Scholar. His other alma maters include the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Cambridge, and St. Stephen¡¯s College, University of Delhi.

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Han Sheng Chia Discussant

Han Sheng Chia is a Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD). His work focuses on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to development programs. He also works on improving the use of evidence in development policy and aid sector reform. He was previously a Senior Advisor in USAID¡¯s Office of the Chief Economist, and helped shift the Agency¡¯s spending to more cost-effective, evidence-based interventions.?Prior to USAID, he was Vice President at GiveDirectly, where he led investments to achieve step function change in how the organization delivered cash transfers. Together with government partners and leading academics, he helped bring to market an AI driven approach to contactlessly identify, enroll, and deliver cash aid to hundreds and thousands of families in rural settings during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pollution
 
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Kaushik Deb Panelist

Kaushik Deb leads the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago¡¯s India team (EPIC India) as the Executive Director. As an applied economist with over 25 years of experience,? he has a distinguished career as a strategic advisor to governments and corporates on policy, markets, equity, access, and technology developments. Prior to joining EPIC India, he directed the India Program at Columbia University¡¯s Center on Global Energy Policy. His previous roles include serving as Program Director at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, where he managed research on global oil, natural gas, hydrogen, and petrochemicals markets. Additionally, he has led research on low carbon fuels and climate issues in Group Economics in bp plc., the Policy Group in IDFC and at TERI. He also established sustainability-focused management leadership programs at TERI University (now TERI SAS). He holds a D.Sc. from ETH Z¨¹rich and a master¡¯s degree in economics from the Delhi School of Economics.

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Barbara Haya Panelist

Barbara Haya is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Environmental Public Policy (CEPP), University of California-Berkeley, where she directs the?. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying the outcomes and design of carbon trading and offsetting programs, and the limits to the effectiveness of carbon trading alone. The Project coordinates research and outreach to ensure its research results inform policy and program design.?She holds a PhD?from UC Berkeley¡¯s Energy and Resources Group. Her work has been featured in the Financial Times, Bloomberg News, the Guardian, and MIT Technology Review.?

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Jan Steckel Panelist

Jan Steckel is Professor, Brandenburg University of?Technology - Cottbus & Head, Climate Policy &?Development ¨C MCC, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.?His research focuses on climate change mitigation in developing and newly-industrializing countries; more specifically he works on interactions between climate change mitigation and sustainable development, drivers of global carbon emissions, energy and economic development, climate policy and policy instruments in developing and emerging economies, political economy and distributional effects of climate policies, and structural change.??From 2007 to 2013 he worked at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research. Mr. Steckel has authored multiple academic articles and has been an author of the IPCC¡¯s Special Report on Renewables as well as its 5th and 6th Assessment report.

Somik Lall is Senior Adviser to the Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group

Somik Lall Chair

Somik Lall is the Senior Adviser in the Office of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group Chief Economist and Director for Development Policy. He was previously Director of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s 2024 World Development Report, which examines the challenges of economic growth in middle-income countries. He is also a co-founder of the Growth Academy, a joint initiative between the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and the University of Chicago to advance joint research programs on economic growth with think tanks in emerging economies. Dr. Lall has previously headed initiatives on climate economics and policy, infrastructure investment, urbanization, and territorial and spatial development. Dr. Lall also teaches at Johns Hopkins University and has been a Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
Follow him on Twitter: @somikcities

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Carolyn Fischer Discussant

Carolyn Fischer?is a Lead Economist and Research Manager of the?Sustainability and Infrastructure Team?in the Development Research Group of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. Her research addresses topics of environmental policy instrument design at the intersection with technical change, trade, development, carbon leakage, and overlapping objectives. She has held appointments as a professor of environmental economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and as a Canada 150 Research Chair in Climate Economics, Innovation and Policy at the University of Ottawa. She is a member of the CESifo Research Network and has served on the boards of both the American and European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, as well as the editorial boards of leading environmental economics journals.?

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Geopolitical Shifts
 
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Shin-wha Lee Panelist

Shin-wha Lee is Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations and Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Unification Studies at Korea University. She also serves as a member of Government Performance Evaluation Committee, Republic of Korea. She received her Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Maryland, College Park, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University¡¯s Center for International Affairs(CFIA, 1994-97). Her major professional experience includes: Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (on Rwanda Genocide); Chair¡¯s Advisor of the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG); Full-time Visiting Professor at Columbia University; International Advisory Member of GR:EEN (Global Re-ordering: Evolution Through European Networks); Visiting Scholar at MIT¡¯s Center for International Studies; Advisory Group Member for the UN Secretary-General¡¯s Peacebuilding Fund(PBF 2014-2017); Senior Visiting Fellow at East Asia Institute at National University of Singapore; and Ambassador for International Cooperation on North Korean Human Rights(2022-2024).

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Saravana Ravindran Panelist

Saravana Ravindran is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is an applied microeconomist with research interests in the economics of developing countries. Saravana's research focuses on the formation and movement of human capital. He has a keen interest in early childhood development programs, their direct and indirect impacts, and aggregate welfare consequences. He also studies challenges and potential policy solutions relating to migration, including mobile banking and digital financial services. Mr. Ravindran received his PhD in Economics from New York University in 2019 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles from 2019 - 2020. He is an affiliated professor of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).

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Heiwai Tang Panelist

Heiwai Tang is the Victor and William Fung Professor in Economics at the??(HKU), where he also serves as Director of the??and Associate Dean for External Relations at the Business School. Before joining HKU, he was a tenured Associate Professor of International Economics at the??(SAIS) of?.?Currently, he is the Managing Editor of the Pacific Economic Review and has previously served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Comparative Economics, and the China Economic Review.?Since 2021, he has been involved with several public and regulatory bodies in Hong Kong SAR, including the Currency Board Sub-Committee of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority¡¯s Exchange Fund Advisory Committee, the Industry Advisory Committee of the Insurance Authority, the Securities and Futures Appeals Tribunal among others.

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Aaditya Mattoo Chair

Aaditya Mattoo is the Chief Economist of the East Asia and Pacific Region of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. He specializes in development, trade and international cooperation, and provides policy advice to governments. Prior to this, he was Co-Director of the World Development Report 2020 on Global Value Chains, and Research Manager, Trade and International Integration. Before he joined the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, he was Economic Counsellor at the World Trade Organization and taught economics at the University of Sussex and Churchill College, Cambridge University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and an M.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford. He has published on development, trade, trade in services, and international trade agreements in academic and other journals and his work has been cited in the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, and Time Magazine.

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ABCDE 2025 Lecture
 
Indermit Gill

Indermit Gill Speaker

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, he served as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯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. He led the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳'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¡ªby adopting modern technologies and driving innovation.

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Africa Growth and Opportunity
 
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Matteo Bugamelli Panelist

Matteo Bugamelli, an Italian national,?is the Executive Director for Albania, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, San Marino, and Timor-Leste at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. He is currently the Dean of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Board of Executive Directors. He was the Chair of the Board¡¯s Budget Committee from 2020 to 2022 and of the Board¡¯s Audit Committee from 2022 to 2023. He also served on the Board¡¯s Ethics Committee.?Mr. Bugamelli comes from over 20 years of experience working with the Bank of Italy: immediately before joining the WBG Board, he was Director in the Research Department and Coordinator of the Regional Research Branches; and prior to that, he led the Economic Structure and Labor Market Division.?Mr. Bugamelli has authored and co-authored several articles on International Trade, International Migration and Remittances, Firm Behavior.

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Andrew Dabalen Panelist

Andrew Dabalen is the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s Africa Region Chief Economist since July 1, 2022. The Chief Economist is responsible for providing guidance on strategic priorities and the technical quality of economic analysis in the region, as well as for developing major regional economic studies, among other roles. He has held various positions including Senior Economist in the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s Europe and Central Asia Region, Lead Economist and Practice Manager for Poverty and Equity in Africa and most recently, Practice Manager for Poverty and Equity in the South Asia Region. His research and scholarly publications focused on poverty and social impact analysis, inequality of opportunity, program evaluation, risk and vulnerability, labor markets, and conflict and welfare outcomes.?He has co-authored regional reports on equality of opportunity for children in Africa, vulnerability and resilience in the Sahel, and poverty in a rising Africa.?

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Robin Renee Sanders Panelist

Robin Renee Sanders, a former senior career U.S. diplomat, is currently CEO of FEEEDS & FE3DS, LLC, which focus on Africa business, investment and trade strategies, particularly in the energy, aviation, ICT, and housing sectors. As a career diplomat, she served twice as U.S. Ambassador (Nigeria and Republic of Congo), and at the National Security Council at the White House. Over the course of her full diplomatic career, Ambassador Sanders had oversight over a combined program budget of nearly $600 million. During her time as U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and Republic of Congo, Sanders managed 1,000 American, Nigerian and Congolese employees combined, including having oversight of eight U.S. Government agencies. She led negotiations on issues ranging from governance, elections and policy to business, investment and trade on behalf of the U.S. Government. In addition, with her Embassy teams, designed strategic plans; managed U.S. government interagency processes including embassy military programs; and, worked extensively with U.S. companies on a range of key sectors including energy, trade, and banking.

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Johan Swinnen Panelist

Johan Swinnen is Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He is governing board member of the World Agriculture Forum; representative on the High-Level Executive Committee of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC); and a member of the Champions 12.3 Leadership Group to Reduce Food Loss and Waste (SDG Target 12.3) and the Friends of the Alternative Proteins Steering Group. Earlier, he was commissioner on the Food Systems Economics Commission and a co-lead of the Finance Lever of the Food Systems summit.?Dr. Swinnen was a Lead Economist at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ from 2003 to 2004 and economic adviser to the European Commission from 1998 to 2001. Dr. Swinnen has been a visiting professor at various universities, including at Stanford University¡¯s Center on Food Security and the Environment, and a frequent adviser to institutions such as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

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Leonard Wantchekon Panelist

Leonard Wantchekon is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, as well as Associated Faculty in Economics. He is one of the few African economists teaching at a top U.S. university. He studies the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on contemporary African economic developments and examines how citizen engagement can reduce cronyism, improve democratic governance, and lay the groundwork for policies conducive to economic growth. Dr. Wantchekon¡¯s academic initiatives and research projects have been covered by major international media outlets such as the Economist,?,?,?, Jeune Afrique, BBC, Voice of America and Radio France International, among others. He has served as Secretary and later Vice President of the American Political Science Association and on the Executive Committee of the Afrobarometer Network. He is the Founder and President of the??which opened in Benin in 2014.

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Gero Carletto Chair

Gero Carletto?is the Senior Manager in the Development Data Group at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and the Interim Director of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group¡¯s Institute for Economic Development (IED), a new initiative in the office of the WBG Chief Economist to make development knowledge more accessible and actionable.?Gero is currently the Chair of the Committee on Agricultural Statistics of the International Statistical Institute and the Co-chair of the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys of the United Nations Statistical Commission. He has published extensively in top economic and development journals on various topics, including poverty, food security, agriculture, and rural development, as well as data collection methods and measurement issues.?

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New China Playbook Behind Socialism and Capitalism
 
Indermit Gill

Indermit Gill Chair

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, he served as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯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. He led the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳'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¡ªby adopting modern technologies and driving innovation.

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Keyu Jin Speaker

Keyu Jin?is the Professor of Finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Previously, she was a tenured professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) for 15 years . She is an academic member of the China Finance 40 Group and has worked with the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, the IMF, and the China Banking Regulatory Commission, and is a non-executive board member of the luxury conglomerate Richemont and Jardine Matheson. Her research is on international economics--- such as why capital flows from poor to rich countries, how the global implications of U.S. monetary and fiscal policies have changed; as well as on how the rise of China impacts the global economy, from several perspectives ---trade,?,?,?, ?. Born and raised in Beijing, she attended high school and college in the United States and holds a BA, MA, and PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Poverty, Education, and Health in an Era of Unilateralism, Conflict, and Climate Change
 
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Shanta Devarajan Panelist

Shanta Devarajan?is Professor of the Practice of International Development at Georgetown University¡¯s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He was previously the Senior Director for Development Economics (DEC) and a former Acting Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group. Prior to that, he was the Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s Middle East and North Africa Region. Since joining the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ 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 a 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.

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Rema Hanna Panelist

Rema Hanna is the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at the Harvard Kennedy School. She serves as the co-Scientific Director of J-PAL South-East Asia in Indonesia and the co-Scientific Director of the Social Protection Initiative, a joint initiative of J-PAL and CID in Morocco. Her research revolves around improving the provision of public services in developing and emerging nations, particularly for the very poor and her work has been published in leading economics journals. In addition, Professor Hanna is a Research Associate with National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) affiliate. She is currently on the editorial board at the American Economic Review and previously was on the board of Review of Economics and Statistics and VoxDev and served as a co-Editor at the Journal of Human Resources.?

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Laura Schechter Panelist

Laura Schechter is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Before that she was Olav F. and Elsie de Noyer Anderson-Bascom Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at UW-Madison. She is associate editor at the Economic Journal. In 2022 Ms. Schechter finished a six-year term as co-editor at Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and In 2019 she finished a three-year term as associate editor at the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Her work has been covered by NPR¡¯s Planet Money and has been funded by the NSF, IFPRI, PEDL, and ATAI among others. Her work has been published in top general interest economics journals such as Econometrica, American Economic Review, and the Economic Journal, as well as in top agricultural economics journals such as American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, and in top development economics journals such as Journal of Development Economics.?

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Tom Vogl Panelist

Tom Vogl is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California-San Diego. He studies population, health, and human capital, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. His current research projects focus on the drivers of fertility change in Africa, the health and human capital impacts of social program retrenchment in Latin America, and the anatomy of global poverty decline. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Economics and recently served on the National Academies Committee on Women¡¯s Empowerment, Population Dynamics, and Socioeconomic Development.?His recent work has investigated the aggregate consequences of changing differential fertility, the causes and consequences of early-life health, and the long-term effects of anti-poverty programs.

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Rachel Glennerster Chair

Rachel Glennerster is the President of the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, she was at the University of Chicago. She has leveraged randomized trials to address critical issues spanning democracy, health, education, and women's empowerment and pioneered ways to shape markets to promote innovation to address global challenges including pandemics and climate change. She has also written on strategies to stimulate innovation, promoting more equitable access to vaccines, and the response to Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics.?Dr. Glennerster previously served as Chief Economist at the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for International Development in the UK.?In 2021, Dr. Glennerster was appointed Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) for services in international development. She also currently serves as the Chair of Teaching at the Right Level Africa (TaRL Africa).

India's Progress and What It Means for the Global Economy
 
Indermit Gill

Indermit Gill Chair

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, he served as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯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. He led the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳'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¡ªby adopting modern technologies and driving innovation.

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Arvind Panagariya Speaker

Dr. Arvind Panagariya is the Chairman of Sixteenth Finance Commission of India. From January 2015 to August 2017, he served as the first Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, Government of India, in the rank of a Cabinet Minister, and during this period, he also served as India¡¯s G20 Sherpa, leading the Indian teams that negotiated the G20 Communiqu¨¦s under the presidencies of Turkey (2015), China (2016), and Germany (2017). Dr. Panagariya, a former Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank, was a faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland at College Park from 1978 to 2003 and worked with the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, IMF, and UNCTAD in various capacities. He has authored more than fifteen books, including India: The Emerging Giant (2008, OUP, New York), which The Economist listed as a top pick of 2008 and Fareed Zakaria described as the ¡°definitive book on the Indian economy,¡± and Why Growth Matters (with Jagdish Bhagwati), described by The Economist as ¡°a manifesto for policymakers and analysts.¡±?

How can Development Economics Meet the Moment? Practice, Research, and Teaching in a Time of Unilateralism and Polycrisis 
 
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Oriana Bandiera Panelist

Oriana Bandiera is the Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE), and a honorary foreign member of the American Economic Association, a fellow of the British Academy, the Econometric Society, CEPR, BREAD and IZA. ?She is director of the Hub for Equal Representation at the LSE and of the Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries (G?LM|LIC) programme at IZA.? She serves on the council of the Econometric Society, on board of the International Growth Centre and of the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. Her research has been awarded the?IZA Young Labor Economist Prize?(2008), the?Carlo Alberto Medal?(2011), the?Ester Boserup Prize?(2018), the??Yrj? Jahnsson Award(2019), the?Arrow Award?(2021) and a?Honorary Doctorate?in Economics from the University of Munich (2021). At the LSE she teaches the undergraduate Development Economics course, for which she won a?Student Union Award?in 2020.

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Jishnu Das Panelist

Jishnu Das?is a Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Mr. Das's work focuses on health and education in low and middle-income countries. He has co-developed one of the largest and longest-running cohort studies on learning outcomes in low-income countries and leads an agenda on quality of healthcare in low-income countries. His research led to the widespread adoption of a training program for informal providers (in West Bengal), health facility inspections (in Kenya), networks for private sector providers (in India), the scale-up of quality measurement tools in health (global) and the development of financial products for private schools (global). He was also part of the team that developed India¡¯s federal inpatient health insurance scheme, the RSBY, which reached 150 million people in 2016.?

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Leonard Wantchekon Panelist

Leonard Wantchekon is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, as well as Associated Faculty in Economics. He is one of the few African economists teaching at a top U.S. university. He studies the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on contemporary African economic developments and examines how citizen engagement can reduce cronyism, improve democratic governance, and lay the groundwork for policies conducive to economic growth. Dr. Wantchekon¡¯s academic initiatives and research projects have been covered by major international media outlets such as the Economist,?,?,?, Jeune Afrique, BBC, Voice of America and Radio France International, among others. He has served as Secretary and later Vice President of the American Political Science Association and on the Executive Committee of the Afrobarometer Network. He is the Founder and President of the??which opened in Benin in 2014.

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Markus Goldstein Chair

Markus Goldstein is Vice President and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, Mr. Goldstein was at Amazon where he led research teams building human resources solutions. Earlier in his career, as Lead Economist at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, he founded and led the Africa Gender Innovation Lab, where his research informed policies across 56 countries and influenced over $10 billion in development investments. A development economist with experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South Asia, his research examined issues of gender and economic activity, focusing on agriculture and small scale enterprises. Mr. Goldstein has taught at the University of Ghana, London School of Economics, and Georgetown University. His expertise spans poverty reduction, gender equity, firm growth, agricultural productivity and health.

Education Policy
 
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Christina Brown Panelist

Christina Brown is?an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at?the University of Chicago. Prior to this, Ms. Brown was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Becker Friedman Institute. She received a?PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and?worked as a consultant for the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and Save the Children.?She?is a development economist studying labor and behavioral economics questions, and her research examines labor and education market imperfections, especially around issues of asymmetric information.?Prior to working as a researcher, Brown taught high school physics.?

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Lee Crawfurd Panelist

Lee Crawfurd is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Global Development. His research focuses on education policy in low and middle income countries.?He?provided research assistance to the RISE programme and continues to?contribute?to a variety of research initiatives?related to improving education systems. Previously he was an advisor with government in Rwanda, South Sudan, and the UK, and a consultant for international organisations and NGOs such as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, AfDB, and ADB. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Sussex and has studied at the University of Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

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Dev Patel Panelist

Dev Patel?is a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard and a Postdoctoral Fellow at J-PAL at MIT. He studies development and environmental economics, focusing on climate change adaptation, gender, and education. In 2026, he will join the Brown Department of Economics and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society as an Assistant Professor. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 2024.

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Gabriela Smarrelli Panelist

Gabriela Smarrelli is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Global Development¡¯s Global Education Program. Ms. Smarrelli's primary research fields include development economics, economics of education and public service delivery in low-middle-income countries. Her work currently investigates the barriers to human capital formation, particularly those imposed by the prevalence of school violence and restrictive social norms. She holds a PhD from the University of Oxford, an MPA in Public and Economic Policy from the London School of Economics and a B.A. in Economics from Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. Before joining CGD, she worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Oxford Policy Management, and Apoyo Consultoria.

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Deon Filmer Chair

Deon Filmer is Director of the Research Group at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. He has previously served as Acting Research Manager in the Research Group, Co-Director of the?World Development Report 2018:?Learning to Realize Education¡¯s Promise, and Lead Economist in the Human Development department of the Africa Region of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. He works on issues of human capital and skills, service delivery, and the impact of policies and programs to improve human development outcomes¡ªwith research spanning the areas of education, health, social protection, and poverty and inequality. He has recently co-authored the following books:?,?, and?. He was a core team member of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳'s World Development Reports in 1995??and 2004?, and a contributor to 2007¡¯s report?.?

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Agricultural Markets and Nutrition
 
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Chris Barrett Panelist

Chris Barrett is an Agricultural and Development Economist at Cornell University. He is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and an International Professor of Agriculture at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, as well as a Professor in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Faculty Director of the Cornell Collaboration on International Development Economics Research, a Senior Faculty Fellow of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and a Faculty Fellow at the Cornell Institute for Food Systems. His more than 375 publications have been cited more than 63,000 times, placing him among the top five scholars globally in the agricultural economics, development economics, food security, poverty, and resource economics fields, according to Google Scholar, well within the top 1 percent of all economists worldwide according to RePEc/IDEAS, and in the top 50 economics and finance scholars globally per research.com.?

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Kathy Baylis Panelist

Kathy Baylis is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She joined the department in 2020 after more than a decade in the department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois where she remains adjunct faculty. In 2001-2002, Ms. Baylis was the staff economist in charge of agriculture for the Council of Economic Advisors in the White House, and in the mid-1990s, she worked as Executive Secretary of the National Farmers Union in Canada. Her research evaluates agricultural, conservation and trade policies and their effect on environmental and food security outcomes. She has helped bring in over $30 million in grants, and has supervised over 30 graduate and post-doctoral students. She has published over 60 journal articles and book chapters on agriculture, trade, and environmental policy.?

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William A. Masters Panelist

William Masters is Professor in the?Friedman School of Nutrition?at Tufts University, with a joint appointment in the?Department of Economics?at Tufts. He is coauthor of??(Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), and since 2020 has led the??project that introduced new metrics for the cost and affordability of healthy diets worldwide. He also directs Tufts University activities in support of the?, and his courses on economics of agriculture, food and nutrition were recognized with student-nominated, University-wide??in 2019 and 2022. He is an elected Fellow of both the??(since 2020) and the??(since 2025).?

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Kibrom Tafere Panelist

Kibrom Tafere?is an Economist in the Sustainability and Infrastructure Team of the Development Research Group, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. His research interests are in the areas of development and applied microeconomics, with especial focus on the links between policy and environmental shocks and education, health, food security and agricultural productivity. His current research studies the effects of access to healthcare on health, schooling and agricultural productivity; the long-term and inter-generational effects of childhood shocks; the effects of global health emergencies on food security and maternal and child health, and the targeting of social protection programs.?His research spans a range of middle income and developing countries including Brazil, Ethiopia, India, and Uganda. He holds a PhD in Applied Economics from Cornell University.

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Eeshani Kandpal Chair

Eeshani Kandpal is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD). Prior to this, she was a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. Her research aims to inform development policy to improve maternal and child outcomes along three main themes. In the first theme, she studies the design and impacts of cash transfers to poor households. In the second theme, she examines the design and impacts of pay-for-performance contracts to improve health worker effort and the provision of maternal and child health care. The third theme of her research examines the household-level determinants of investments in women¡¯s human capital as well as the varied interactions between gender and social capital, such as the role of peer effects in intrahousehold decision-making.

Migration
 
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Wendy Cunningham Panelist

Wendy Cunningham is a Lead Economist in ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s Human Capital Project, where she leads the program on demographics for economic development. During her 20 years at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, Ms. Cunningham has carried out research and provided operational support on issues related to jobs, labor markets, socio-emotional skills, youth development, and gender in the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Pacific, and Latin America and Caribbean regions. She has a Ph.D. in labor economics from the University of Illinois, and publishes in economics, education, and psychology journals.

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?a?lar ?zden Panelist

?A?LAR ?ZDEN?is the Deputy Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. Prior, he was a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group and co-director of the 2023 World Development. He was the co-author of recent ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ report ¡°Global Skill Partnerships¡± and lead author of the Policy Research Report ¡°Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets¡±. A Turkish national, Mr.??zden?received his undergraduate degrees in economics and industrial engineering from Cornell University and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. He is a fellow of Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), and the Economic Research Forum. His current research projects explore the determinants and patterns of global labor mobility, brain drain, internal migration, ageing and demographic trends, and linkages between labor, trade, and foreign direct investment flows.

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Caroline B. Theoharides Panelist

Caroline Theoharides is an Associate Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at Amherst College. She received a Ph.D. in economics and public policy from the University of Michigan in 2014 and a B.A. in economics from Colby College in 2006. Her research focuses on labor markets in developing countries, using both quasi-experimental methods and randomized controlled trials. Her previous research examines the effects of economic shocks in destination countries on demand for migrants and their wages. She is particularly interested in topics surrounding international migration and its impacts on origin countries, child labor, and human capital accumulation.

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Danny Bahar Chair

Dany Bahar is the Director and Senior Fellow for the Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Policy Program at the Center for Global Development (CGD). His research sits at the intersection of international economics and economic development. In particular, his academic research focuses on the diffusion of technology and knowledge within and across borders, as measured by productivity, structural transformation, exports, entrepreneurship and innovation, among other factors. Lately, his research has focused on migrants and refugees as drivers of this process and, more broadly, on the benefits that migrants and refugees bring to both their countries of origin and destination. His academic work has been published in top economic journals, and he often contributes to leading media outlets in the United States and around the globe.

Closing Remarks and Presentation of Human Development Flagship Report
 
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David Evans Chair

David Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. His recent research covers education, poverty, early childhood development, and gender. Previously, he was the principal economic advisor for the social sector at the Inter-American Development Bank and, before that, a lead economist at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. He co-authored the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s?World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education¡¯s Promise. In the past, Evans has evaluated education, early child development, agriculture, health, training, tax, and social safety net programs in Brazil, C?te d¡¯Ivoire, the Gambia, Haiti, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. He has a PhD in Economics.

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Mamta Murthi Speaker

Mamta Murthi is Vice President for the People Vice Presidency at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, a role she assumed on July 1, 2020. In this role she oversees the Global Practices for?Education;?Health, Nutrition, and Population;?Gender;?Social Protection?and?Jobs?¨C as well as the?Human Capital Project. Mamta has held many leadership positions at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, including as Director of Operations Policy (2019), Director of Strategy and Operations in Infrastructure (2018), Director of Strategy and Operations in the Africa Region (2015-2018), and Regional Country Director for the EU, based in Brussels (2012-15).??An economist by training, she has had technical roles in Social Protection and Labor (1996-2004) and Education (2006-10). She was Deputy Director of the World Development Report on?Development and the Next Generation?in 2006. During 1998-2000, Mamta was MacArthur Fellow for Poverty and Inequality at King¡¯s College, Cambridge.

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Organizing Committee Chair
 
Kenan Karakulah, Economist

Kenan Karakulah

Kenan Karak¨¹lah?is an Economist at the Development Economics Development Policy (DECDP) unit. He was a member of core team of 2024 World Development Report. His research interests cover various cross-cutting areas of macroeconomic policy, including economic growth, social protection, and sovereign debt. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked as the Head of Department at the Ministry of Treasury and Finance. Kenan holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Hacettepe University, T¨¹rkiye, and a Master of International Development Policy from Duke University.

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Program Committee
 
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Gero Carletto

Gero Carletto?is the Senior Manager in the Development Data Group at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and the Interim Director of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group¡¯s Institute for Economic Development (IED), a new initiative in the office of the WBG Chief Economist to make development knowledge more accessible and actionable.?Gero is currently the Chair of the Committee on Agricultural Statistics of the International Statistical Institute and the Co-chair of the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys of the United Nations Statistical Commission. He has published extensively in top economic and development journals on various topics, including poverty, food security, agriculture, and rural development, as well as data collection methods and measurement issues.?

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Carolyn Fischer

Carolyn Fischer?is a Lead Economist and Research Manager of the?Sustainability and Infrastructure Team?in the Development Research Group of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. Her research addresses topics of environmental policy instrument design at the intersection with technical change, trade, development, carbon leakage, and overlapping objectives. She has held appointments as a professor of environmental economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and as a Canada 150 Research Chair in Climate Economics, Innovation and Policy at the University of Ottawa. She is a member of the CESifo Research Network and has served on the boards of both the American and European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, as well as the editorial boards of leading environmental economics journals.?

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Gaurav Nayyar

Gaurav?Nayyar?is Director of the World Development Report 2026 on Artificial Intelligence for Development and an Economic Adviser in the Development Economics Vice Presidency at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, which he joined as a Young Professional in 2013. Previously, he was an Economics Affairs Officer in the Economic Research Division of the World Trade Organization, where he co-led the World Trade Report 2013 on Factors Shaping the Future of World Trade.?Gaurav¡¯s research interests lie primarily in the areas of economic growth, structural transformation, trade, technological change, industrialization, and firm productivity, and he has published in a variety of academic journals on these issues. His latest book is At Your Service? The Promise of Services-Led Development.?Gaurav?holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford, where he was a Dorothy Hodgkin Scholar. His other alma maters include the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Cambridge, and St. Stephen¡¯s College, University of Delhi.

Joe Rebello, External Affairs Lead for Development Economics

Joe Rebello

Joe Rebello?is the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s External Affairs Lead for Development Economics. In this capacity, he advises the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group¡¯s Chief Economist on external engagement and media relations. He also plays a key role in message development and external outreach on several flagship publications¡ªincluding the?World Development Report,?Global Economic Prospects, and?Women, Business, and the Law. He was previously a senior communications officer for the International Finance Corporation, where he advised senior management in crafting IFC¡¯s highest-priority internal and external communications. Before joining the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group in 2008, he was a business journalist for 20 years, writing about US and international economic policy, debt distress, and banking for?The Wall Street Journal,?Dow Jones Newswires, and?The Kansas City Star.

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Lizette Romo

Lizette Romo is a political economist currently serving as an Operations Analyst at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group Institute for Economic Development. In her role, she coordinates outreach activities and manages the planning and execution of the Institute¡¯s high-profile events, conferences and workshops. Before joining the Institute, Lizette had an impactful eight-year tenure in the Office of the President, serving under three Presidents, including her role as Special Assistant to the President. Prior to this, she contributed as a consultant to the Governance and Public Sector Unit in the Latin America and Caribbean Region. Her professional journey includes significant experience with various international and private sector organizations. Lizette holds a Master of Science degree in International Political Economy from The London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from El Colegio de M¨¦xico.

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Assem Kalenova

Assem Kalenova is a Program Assistant in the Development Economics Development Policy (DECDP) unit at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. In this role, she provides high-level administrative and logistical support to the DECVP Front Office, including serving as back-up to both the WBG Chief Economist and Acting Deputy Chief Economist on all administrative matters. Prior to joining the Bank, Assem served as Executive Assistant to the Founding President of Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Under the university¡¯s Institutional Transformation Program, she contributed to the development of key institutional policies, including the Conflict of Interest Policy. She also initiated and led two pilot projects: HEADLiners and the Information Sessions for Administrative Directors, which significantly enhanced internal communications, particularly during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Assem holds a Bachelor's degree from Karaganda Buketov University in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.

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Blog Post

 

"Development in the Age of Populism" by Indermit Gill, Rachel Glennerster, and Danny Quah

Available at |  |

 
Previous ABCDE Conferences

 

The Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) is a well-known series of conferences that facilitate the discussion of new knowledge about development. First held in Washington DC in 1989, the series has become broader in scope as the world's economies have become more interconnected and challenges have grown more complex.

 

 

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The 2024 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) on "The Great Incoherence", was held on June 10-11, 2024 in Washington, DC in-person and online. A growing incoherence is clouding global debates over how to achieve the key development goals of the 2020s¡ªa profound mismatch exists between international policy advocacy and the research-based solutions necessary to achieve the desired development outcomes.

 

Learn more about ABCDE 2024

 

2023 ABCDE banner image

The 2023 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) on "Growth and Resilience", was held on June 5-6, 2023 in Washington, DC, in-person and online. The ABCDE is one of the world's best-known conferences for the presentation and discussion of new knowledge on social and economic development. The conference aims to promote the exchange of cutting-edge knowledge among researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners.

 

Learn more about ABCDE 2023

 

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The 2022 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) on "Recovery, Reform, and Business", was held on June 21-24, 2022 online in Zoom. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis produced an unprecedent shock to the global economy. This edition focused on how enterprises are recovering from the pandemic crisis, how the business environment was affected by the pandemic, and reform prospects for the future. 

 

Learn more about ABCDE 2022

Websites

 


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FAQs

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