Bloggers
Asli Demirgüç-Kunt is the Director of Development Policy in the World Bank's Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) and the Chief Economist of Financial and Private Sector Development Network (FPD). After joining the Bank in 1989 as a Young Economist, she has been in different divisions of the Research Group, working on financial sector issues and advising on financial sector policy. She is the lead author of World Bank Policy Research Report 2007, Finance for All? Policies and Pitfalls in Expanding Access.
The author of over 100 publications, she has published widely in academic journals. Her research has focused on the links between financial development and firm performance and economic development. Banking crises, financial regulation, and access to financial services including SME finance are among her areas of research. Prior to coming to the Bank, she was an Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from Ohio State University.
Find out more about Asli on her personal webpage.
Thorsten Beck is Professor of Economics and Chairman of the European Banking Center at Tilburg University. Before joining Tilburg University in 2008, he worked at the Development Research Group of the World Bank. His research and policy work has focused on international banking and corporate finance and has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics and Journal of Economic Growth. His operational and policy work has focused on Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. He is also Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and a Fellow in the Center for Financial Studies in Frankfurt. He studied at Tübingen University, Universidad de Costa Rica, University of Kansas and University of Virginia.
Maria Soledad Martinez Peria is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Economics Research Group at The World Bank. Her published work has focused on currency and banking crises, depositor market discipline, foreign bank participation in developing countries and access to finance. Currently, she is conducting research on bank financing to SMEs, the impact of remittances on financial development and the spread of the recent financial crisis. Prior to joining the World Bank, Sole worked at the Brookings Institution, the Central Bank of Argentina, the Federal Reserve Board, and the International Monetary Fund. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. from Stanford University.
Deniz Anginer is a Financial Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. His research focuses on liquidity and credit risk in financial markets. Prior to coming to the Bank, he worked as a consultant for Oliver Wyman in their New York office. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
L. Colin Xu is a lead economist in the Research Group of the World Bank. He has worked mainly on the effects and the political economy of business environment, governance, regulation and privatization, and ownership, among others. He has worked extensively on the behavior of Chinese and African firms, publishing around 30 journal articles in these areas.
Daniel Lederman is a senior economist in the Research Group of the World Bank. An economist and political scientist by training, he has written extensively on issues related to the political economy of reforms, innovation, and international trade, and he is the author of over thirty journal articles, chapters, and books on these topics.
Ignacio Mas has been Senior Advisor in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and at the Technology Program at CGAP. Previously he was Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, Executive Vicepresident of Marketing and Account Management at DoCoMo interTouch, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe for Intel Capital.
Ignacio has undergraduate degrees in maths and economics from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard University. He has been Adjunct Professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. He is currently an Associate at Bankable Frontier.
To find out more about Ignacio, please visit his website.
Inessa Love is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group. Since joining the Bank as a Young Economist in 2001, her research has focused on access to external finance, entrepreneurship, the impact of the financial crisis and development of the domestic financial sector. She holds an MA in Financial Economics from American University and a Ph.D. in Finance and Economics from Columbia University's Graduate School of Business.
Xavier Gine is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group. He is currently a BREAD affiliate and Associate Editor for the Journal of Development Economics. Since joining the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002, his research has focused on access to financial services and rural financial markets.
In recent papers he investigated the macroeconomic effects of a credit liberalization; the relationship between formal and informal sources of credit in rural credit markets; indigenous interlinked credit contracts in the fishing industry and the impact of microfinance services such as business training and financial literacy, microinsurance and microsavings. His work has been published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Law and Economics and World Bank Economic Review. Prior to joining the Bank he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.
Murat Seker is a research analyst in the Enterprise Analysis Unit of the Finance and Private Sector Development Vice Presidency in the World Bank Group. He joined the Bank in 2008. During his time at the Bank, Murat's research has focused on issues related to economic development and growth in developing countries. Working with both macro level and micro-level datasets, he has produced policy research papers, reports, and policy notes on how improvements in financial access and business environment, regulatory reform, developments in international integration, and innovation contribute to productivity gains, job creation, and sustainable economic growth. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.
Raju Jan Singh is the Lead Economist for Central Africa, based in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Prior to joining the World Bank, Mr. Singh held positions at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, at the Swiss Ministry of Finance in Bern, and at Lombard Odier & Cie (private banking) in Geneva. He was also a consultant for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, working with the central banks of Rwanda and Tanzania, and taught at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
Raju Jan Singh est économiste en chef, responsable pour l’Afrique centrale et basé à Yaoundé, Cameroun. Avant de rejoindre la Banque Mondiale, M. Singh a été employé au Fonds Monétaire International à Washington DC, à l’Administration Fédérale Suisse des Finances à Berne, et chez Lombard Odier & Cie (Banquiers Privés) à Genève. Il a aussi été consultant pour l’Agence Suisse pour le Développement et la Coopération où il a travaillé avec les banques centrales du Rwanda et de Tanzanie, et a enseigné à l’Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales à Genève.
Charles W. Calomiris is Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and the Financial Economists Roundtable, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Calomiris was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a member of the Task Force on Property Rights at the Hoover Institution, and co-directs the Project on Financial Deregulation at the American Enterprise Institute. He is Chairman of the Board of Greater Atlantic Financial Corporation, a publicly traded bank based in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Professor Calomiris served on the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, a Congressional commission to advise the U.S. government on the reform of the IMF, the World Bank, the regional development banks, and the WTO. His research spans several areas, including banking, corporate finance, financial history, and monetary economics. He received a B.A. in economics from Yale University in 1979 and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford
University in 1985.
Robert Cull is a lead economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group of the World Bank. His most recent research is on the performance of microfinance institutions and the design and use of household surveys to measure access to financial services. Robert has published over twenty articles in peer-reviewed academic journals including the Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and World Development. He is also co-editor of the Interest Bearing Notes, a bi-monthly newsletter reporting on financial and private sector research. Robert has a B.A. in applied mathematics and political science from Northwestern University and holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in social science from the California Institute of Technology.
Bilal Zia is an economist in the DECRG Finance and Private Sector group. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and has experience in various impact evaluation projects on financial literacy, including evaluation of a financial literacy program in Indonesia, a business and financial literacy training program for youth entrepreneurs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a comprehensive financial literacy program for MFI borrowers and savers in India, a sophisticated de-biasing program for stock market investors in India, school-based financial literacy programs in Brazil, and multi-layered marketing experiments in South Africa.
Roberto Rocha was a young professional at the IMF and transferred to the World Bank in 1985, where he has been since then. In his career in the Bank, he has been involved in extensive research and operational work in the areas of financial sector development, bank and enterprise reforms, and pension reform. In 1993, Roberto moved to the World Bank’s regional office in Budapest, as a lead economist, where he stayed during the remainder of the decade. During this period, he led the World Bank’s work in the areas of bank, enterprise, and pension reform in several transition countries. In 2003, Roberto transferred to the financial sector anchor, first as lead economist for the pensions and insurance unit and later as manager of the financial policy development unit. Roberto has recently become the senior advisor for the Middle East and North Africa Region, and is leading the financial sector flagship, a comprehensive stock-taking report of financial development in the MENA region.
Erik Feyen works as a Senior Financial Economist in the Policy Unit of the World Bank's Financial and Private Sector Development Vice Presidency (FPD). Erik has led banking and capital market analyses for client countries in the African and Middle-Eastern regions and heads FPD's financial sector data and benchmarking work. He previously worked as a management consultant. Erik holds a PhD in Finance from the University of Amsterdam.
Mary Hallward-Driemeier, a Canadian national, is Lead Economist for Financial and Private Sector Development in the World Bank Group. Since joining the World Bank as a Young Professional in 1997, she has published articles on entrepreneurship, firm productivity, the impact of the investment climate on firm performance, the impact of financial crises, and determinants of foreign direct investment.
She was the Deputy Director for the World Development Report 2005: A Better Investment Climate for Everyone. She helped establish the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys Program, now covering over 100,000 enterprises in 100 countries. She is also a founding member of the Microeconomics of Growth Network. She is currently the Task Team Leader for the regional flagship report “Expanding Economic Opportunities for Women in Africa.” She received her M.Sc. in development economics from Oxford University and her Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T.
Paulo Correa is a lead economist in the Financial and Private Sector Department of the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank working in the areas of investment climate assessments; innovation and competition policies; and private participation in infrastructure. Prior to joining, he served for four years as Deputy-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Finance in Brazil (1999-2002). Paulo holds a MSc. in Economics from the University of Western Ontario (1996); a Msc. in Industrial Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1993) and has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals including, most recently, in the World Bank Economic Review (2010).
David McKenzie is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit, and was previously assistant professor at Stanford University. His research focuses on understanding the constraints to firm growth in developing countries, learning about the determinants and consequences of international migration, and developing better methodologies for use with the types of data common in development economics. He is currently working on a number of impact evaluations designed to better understand the effect of policies aimed at helping microenterprises and SMEs to grow. He has published over 50 articles in journals, and is currently an associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics and a member of the World Bank Economic Review editorial board.
