Is there a middle class in Asia? Depends on how you define it 
Laos: what a change rural roads make
World Bank opens largest set of development data --for free and in several languages
Bloggers
Louis Kuijs works since September 2004 as Senior Economist in the World Bank’s China office on macroeconomic issues, conducting macroeconomic analysis and policy dialogue. He is the main author of the Bank’s China Quarterly Update.
Previously, he worked at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, in the European Department and, before that, in the African, and Fiscal Affairs Departments.
Before joining the IMF in 1997, he worked at Oxford Economic Forecasting (Oxford, UK), on macroeconomic modeling and forecasting for industrialized countries and emerging markets.
Mr. Kuijs has also worked at the University of Amsterdam, the Hypo Vereinsbank (Munich, Germany), and for the Economist Intelligence Unit (London, UK).
He received his undergraduate Drs (Economics) degree from the University of Amsterdam and his Ms (Economics) from the London School of Economics.
After 7 years in Washington DC, William Rex moved to the World Bank office in Vientiane in 2006 in search of a more intense interaction with government clients and work-life balance. Now that his two young sons have discovered sticky rice and tuk-tuks, there is probably no route back. Since joining the Lao PDR country office, William has been working on capacity and institutional development, governance, aid effectiveness, and a provincial development project in Khammouane. More recently he took over as team leader of the Nam Theun 2 Social and Environment Project. William worked at the University of Cape Town before joining the Bank, and has a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He has succeeded in finding more intense interaction with government clients.
Dave Lawrence is based in Jakarta, where he works as Senior Operations Officer for the Multi Donor Fund for Aceh & Nias (MDF). He began working for the World Bank Group in 1996, when the International Finance Corporation (IFC) sent him to provincial Ukrainian cities to set up business advisory centers. After seven years managing private sector development programs in the former Soviet Union, he moved to IFC headquarters to support global advisory services operations. In 2006 he joined the East Asia & Pacific department in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where he managed IFC's post-Tsunami program. Later, he became IFC's Resident Representative in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Dave has managed a variety of advisory services programs targeting private sector development, including regulatory reform, small business development, agribusiness supply-chains, and corporate governance. In addition to his work for the MDF, he writes for IFC's Public-Private Partnership department and the World Bank Group's SmartLessons program.
Katia is a country economist based in Vientiane, Lao PDR. She joined the Bank in 2003 as a Young Professional and since worked in the World Development Report 2005, Economic Policy and Debt, and East Asia and Pacific Economics unit. In Laos, Katia worked on nearly everything, including macroeconomics, microeconomics and private sector development, trade, growth, and has been happy to apply her knowledge of economics of transition from a planned to a market economy in practice. When not thinking about the Lao economy, Katia enjoys travelling, photography, road biking, motorcycle riding, literature, and ukiyo-e.
Frederico Gil Sander has been based in Bangkok since November 2008. He follows the Thai economy but also works on debt and macroeconomic issues in Laos and Cambodia. His first job was with investment bank Bear Stearns, where he issued bonds for emerging market countries (fortunately none of his proposals for complex securitizations were successful). Having created enough debt (and after an intermission to pursue a PhD in political economy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School) Frederico went on to work on debt relief for poor countries with the World Bank's Economic Policy and Debt Department. During that time he enjoyed working with debt managers in many African countries, including the Central African Republic, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique and São Tomé e Príncipe. A Brazilian native, Frederico enjoys football (soccer) but cannot dance the samba (or anything else for that matter).
Philip Schellekens works in the East Asia and Pacific Department of the World Bank. Prior to his appointment to the World Bank, he was with the International Monetary Fund, where he served in the Asia and Pacific, Monetary and Capital Markets, and European Departments. He worked as macroeconomist and financial sector economist on Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand in the Asia region, as well as on Lebanon, South Africa and most of the European economies. Before joining the Fund, he was for two years with the Economics Departments of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He also worked at the Bank of England, the Financial Markets Group, and the IMF’s Research Department. He completed his graduate studies at the London School of Economics, where he obtained an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Economics.
Rogier van den Brink is a Lead Economist in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department (PREM) of the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank since October 2008. He oversees the PREM work in Mongolia and leads the Bank’s economic analysis on Mongolia including the Mongolia Quarterly Update.
Laura Bailey started as the World Bank’s country manager for Papua New Guinea in April 2009. Before that, she has worked in Africa and Asia for a wide spectrum of clients – national and international NGOs, bilateral aid agencies, national governments – increasingly focusing on public administration and capacity building, and also doing large project evaluation and design missions.
Laura was born in California, and moved every 2-3 years across the USA and Europe. After finishing an undergraduate degree in public policy and psychology, and a transition break digging Bronze Age relics out of the sand on an archeological site in the Middle East, she spent three years working for an organizational development consulting firm in San Francisco during the technology boom of the mid-1980s. She moved to Boston to take up graduate studies in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and in 1988 began working on development projects in West Africa.
Nugroho is the online communications officer handling the Bank's online activities in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and the Pacific Islands. Before joining the Bank, he worked at a number of local and international organizations and involved in a range of issues including humanitarian, environment, and health.
Anne is the web editor handling the Bank's online activities in Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Singapore. She has a Master's degree in Journalism from the University of Sheffield in the U.K. and her writing has been published in The Guardian, BBC Radio Times online, CNN Traveller, CNBC Business Magazine, and more. In 2007, Anne's article "Amplifying Peace Across Borders" won the International Essay Competition for Young People sponsored by the Goi Foundation of Japan and UNESCO.
She is originally from the Philippines and is now based in Thailand.
Alison Ofotalau is a Communications Officer for the World Bank Country Office in Honiara, Solomon Islands. Before she joined the World Bank in early September 2010, Alison had worked as a Journalist for the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation for over 10 years. Alison worked as the political editor for the national broadcasting service and led the coverage of the 2010 Solomon Islands elections. She graduated with a BA from the Fiji based University of the South Pacific in 2000, with majors in Journalism & History/Politics.
Victoria Kwakwa is currently the Country Director for Vietnam at the World Bank. She has held this post since 2009, and joined the World Bank as a young professional in 1989. Her work at the World Bank has been mainly on economic policy issues across a range of countries in Africa and East Asia. Key areas of her work include competitiveness and growth issues, public expenditure management, fiscal decentralization and economic governance.
Ms Kwakwa was a member of the core team for the 2000/2001 World Development Report on Poverty. She has worked in Washington as well as in field assignments in Nigeria, Rwanda and now in Vietnam.
Ms Kwakwa holds a PhD in economics from Queens University in Canada.
Victoria Kwakwa hiện là Giám đốc Quốc gia của Ngân hàng Thế giới tại Việt Nam. Bà đã giữ chức vụ này từ năm 2009 và bà gia nhập Ngân hàng Thế giới từ năm 1989 với tư cách là một chuyên gia trẻ tuổi. Công việc chính của bà tại Ngân hàng Thế giới là làm việc về các vấn đề chính sách kinh tế ở một loạt các nước châu Phi và Đông Á. Lĩnh vực chủ yếu của bà bao gồm vấn đề cạnh tranh và tăng trưởng, quản lý chi tiêu công, phân cấp tài chính và quản trị kinh tế.
Bà Kwakwa từng là thành viên của nhóm nòng cốt thực hiện Báo cáo Phát triển Thế giới 2000/2001 về Đói nghèo. Bà từng làm việc tại Washington cũng như công tác thực tế tại Ni-giê-ria, Ru-wan-đa và nay là Việt Nam.
Bà Kwakwa có bằng Tiến sỹ về Kinh tế của ĐH Queens, Canada.
James Anderson (Jim) is currently a Senior Governance Specialist working on Vietnam where he recently led the preparation of Vietnam Development Report 2010—Modern Institutions. With support from UK-DFID through the GAPAP trust fund, Jim's work in Vietnam focuses on a range of governance issues, including access to information, transparency, anticorruption, and human rights. Prior to joining the team in Vietnam, Jim worked on governance in the transition countries of central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He co-led the 2005 round of the BEEPS survey of enterprises and co-authored several regional studies including two installments in the Anticorruption in Transition series and Judicial Systems in Transition Economies, as well as survey-based country studies on governance and corruption in Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, the Kyrgyz Republic and other countries. Jim’s earlier work focused on the informal sector and the impacts of privatization in Mongolia where he lived in the mid-1990s. A confirmed “governance data junkie”, he is making no effort to kick the habit. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland. Jim also contributes to the Governance for Development blog. www.worldbank.org/vn/governance
Abhas K. Jha is Program Leader for the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region's Disaster Risk Management Team. In this capacity he is responsible for managing the Bank's disaster risk management practice in the region.Abhas has been with the World Bank since 2001, leading the World Bank's urban, housing and disaster risk management work in Turkey, Mexico, Jamaica and Peru as well as serving as the Regional Coordinator, Disaster Risk Management for Europe and Central Asia. He earlier served for 12 years in the Indian Administrative Service (the national senior civil service of India) in the Government of India (in the Federal Ministry of Finance and earlier in the state of Bihar). He is the lead author of the World Bank publications "Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing after Disasters" and "Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century"
Stéphane Guimbert is an economist in the Phnom Penh office of the World Bank. After a couple of years working in Paris and another couple of years in Washington, he moved with his family to Cambodia in August 2007. He is now working on a range of economic policy issues with the government, in particular on issues of growth. When he is not busy playing soccer with his two sons or playing board games with his daughter, he also enjoys playing the piano and reading books. Stéphane moved from Washington’s headquarters to a country office to be able to get out to the field, learn from development projects, meet officials and development partners, etc. But then he still has to go back to his computer to write on the EAP blog.
Mr. Ivailo Izvorski is a Lead Economist in the East Asia and Pacific region of the World Bank, working on regional economic and financial issues. Since late 2008, Ivailo has been the principal author of the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific economic update. Prior to his work on East Asia, Ivailo worked extensively on central Europe and the countries of the western Balkans in the Europe and Central Asia region of the World Bank, including as the World Bank’s resident economist in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ivailo’s earlier work experience includes the Institute of International Finance and the International Monetary Fund. Ivailo holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.
I was an odd bird at the World Bank - a wildlife biologist working as the Senior Biodiversity Specialist in our East Asia and Pacific Region. I left the Bank in September 2010 for reasons explained in the final blog.
If I were fabulously rich I'd probably be doing something similar to what filled most of my time - but without the bureaucracy.
My first research was on ducks' sense of smell and my second paper was on the mating display of the Blue Duck. I moved from waterfowl to primates for my PhD, studying the endangered Kloss gibbon (and the people) on remote Siberut Island, west of Sumatra. That unwittingly set the course for the rest of my life in terms of commitment to our region. That also resulted in my first 'popular' book; for nearly 20 years I had one or more books on the go. With gibbons behind me, I began work as Advisor in the Centre of Environmental Studies at the University of North Sumatra. Seeing the capacity problems facing environmental management in Indonesia, I initiated a series of major ecology books on different areas of Indonesia.
Over the following 12 years - most of those in Indonesia - I wrote three of the volumes (on Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Java and Bali) while employed by Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. During the ten years living in Indonesia I became very involved with freshwater fish and also land snails and ended up writing books on those too. Meanwhile I consulted for most of the major development agencies on land settlement, indigenous people, forest issues, and biodiversity. I came into the Bank through being a consultant for its independent evaluations arm working in Malaysia and Indonesia on land settlement and transmigration. I joined the Bank in 1995.
My World Bank work was of three types: support to others' projects on habitat policy issues, regional initiatives, and my own conservation projects in Mongolia, China, Indonesia, etc. The first of these I found very stimulating and satisfying; seeking to find practical and sustainable solutions while allowing the projects to deliver their benefits. My regional initiatives sought to fill important gaps and to get Bank imprimatur on important topics and approaches that were not commonly supported. These included publications etc on:
- the largely ignored biodiversity of limestone systems especially caves which have had interesting operational implications
- freshwater biodiversity, especially on wild fish which are economically important, especially to poor riparians.
- local-language fieldguides - we now tally 111 volumes
- faiths and environment, an initiative which has led to a number of interesting developments
David Dollar, a US national, worked for five years as the World Bank’s Country Director for China and Mongolia in the East Asia and Pacific Region. In July 2009, after 20 years at the Bank, he started a new position representing the United States Treasury in Beijing. (Read his farewell blog post here.)
Before becoming Country Director, Mr. Dollar worked as Director for the development research department of the World Bank, overseeing the Bank’s research on the investment climate and growth. He co-authored World Bank reports on Globalization, Growth, and Poverty and Assessing Aid. His earlier work focused on aid and growth, and the determinants of the success and failure of reform programs supported by structural adjustment lending. He has been a key World Bank spokesperson on investment climate, globalization, and the effectiveness of aid.
Mr. Dollar joined the Bank in 1989 as an Economist in the Asia Region. He worked as the country economist for Vietnam through 1995. He advised the economic leaders of that country during a period of stabilization and transition to a market economy, and prepared the first World Bank country assistance strategies to support that transition.
Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Dollar was on the faculty of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles; he has published widely in the areas of productivity growth, technology transfer, and development in East Asia. As a professor, he spent a semester teaching at the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He has a PhD in economics from New York University and a B.A. in Chinese history and language from Dartmouth College.
Edith Bowles started as Country Manager in Solomon Islands in 2008, with the opening of the Bank country office. Prior to that, she worked for the WB and USAID in Timor-Leste and other post-conflict settings in Asia and Africa. She spent several years in the 1990s working for NGOs, including three years with the Jesuit Refugee Service working in refugee camps on the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Originally from Massachusetts, she has an undergraduate degree in Asian Studies from Cornell University, including a year spent studying in Beijing. Following two years in Germany in the late 1980s, she studied social anthropology and demography at the University of Hawaii, with support from the East-West Center.
Emmanuel Jimenez, from the Philippines, has held a variety of positions as an economist and manager at the World Bank. Since early 2002, he has been Sector Director, Human Development, in the World Bank’s East Asia Region, where he is responsible for managing operational staff working on education and health issues. Prior to this position, he held a similar position in the Bank’s South Asia Region. Before that he served for many years in the Bank’s Development Economics Staff, where he engaged in research on a variety of issues, including education and health finance, the private provision of social services, the economics of transfer programs and urban development. He also led the core team that prepared The World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation. Before joining the World Bank, Mr. Jimenez was on the faculty of the economics department at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.
Nia Sarinastiti is the Communication and Coordination Officer for the Multi-Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias, a World Bank trust fund. She has been traveling to Aceh and Nias since August 2005.
Nia also manages the communication and coordination for Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF), which was set up after the 2006 earthquake in the Special Region of Jogjakarta and Central Java, and the tsunami in West Java. JRF models on the success of the MDF for Aceh and Nias. She previously worked for IFC (2004-mid 2007) as the Communication Officer in Indonesia.
Florian joined the World Bank East Asia and Pacific region's Sustainable Development Department only very recently (September 2008). Before that, he was based in Brussels and worked on managing and developing the Bank's relations with European Union institutions. He now works on coordination, policy, and partnerships, as well as knowledge management, while learning how operations are run in the Bank.
Before all that he lobbied on Capitol Hill; facilitated networking of high-level German-US politicians and businessmen; wrote policy studies on everything from environment, and electricity meter calibration, to aircraft subsidies; promoted the participation of young people in EU integration; acted as EU diplomat at the UN; wrote articles on politics, bar-tended, and worked in a factory. He graduated in International Relations.
I am a senior urban environment specialist in the China and Mongolia Sustainable Development Department and I have been based in the World Bank office in Beijing since 2006. However, my passion for China and its people goes back much further, a decade and a half in fact, to the first time I lived in China in 1993. China has changed a lot in those 15 years, but the one thing that never changes – the reason that I continue to dedicate my own professional and personal life to this country – is the unwavering energy and enthusiasm of the Chinese people to ensure that tomorrow is better than today.
My job in the urban development sector in China provides me with immensely interesting opportunities to work on critical problems affecting the environment, livability and long-term economic viability of China’s rapidly urbanizing cities and towns. My work ranges from urban environmental management programs such as water supply, wastewater, solid waste and flood protection, to cultural heritage preservation and tourism development (this slideshow shows an example of the latter).
On May 12, 2008, China’s western region was struck by a devastating 8.0 earthquake, the epicenter of which was located in the mountainous Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province. The scale of the human and environmental tragedy caused by this earthquake is hard to fathom. As part of the Bank’s global network of disaster response, I am coordinating the Bank’s contribution to the Chinese Government’s reconstruction efforts – a challenging task for the next year that I will focus on in this blog.
Claudia manages the web sites for the Bank's East Asia & Pacific region and added this blog to her brood in early 2008. She's a native of the beautiful town in the picture and had to move to Washington, DC, to stay away from the tempting, delicious food of her homeland. Her discovery of East Asian food in recent years has somewhat defeated the original objective, though.
She actually does like DC quite a bit, where she landed after working a few years in the online edition of The Miami Herald.
Chris Pablo is Operations Officer in the World Bank Office Manila's Infrastructure Team. He is the team lead for the project Upscaling Urban Poor Community Renewal Scheme, which aims to improve the living conditions of the poor in urban communities by upgrading basic infrastructure such as water systems, roads and drainage, and solid waste management facilities. Before working with the World Bank in 1999, Chris worked at the National Economic and Development Authority, the Philippines' economic development and planning agency. Chris plays a mean bass and leads the Manila Office's informal band.
I work on financial sector development issues in the East Asia & Pacific region for the World Bank. I have been working on a variety of policy issues, from state-owned banking reform to capital market development across many of the countries in the region, including Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
I joined the World Bank in 2002, first joining for a brief period as a consultant with the Financial Sector Development Department in the Europe and Central Asia Region. I then moved to the World Bank office in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2003 and returned to Washington, DC to take on a more regional portfolio in 2005. My prior professional experience was with the U.S. Treasury Department on economic and financial sanctions compliance, inspections, and enforcement, and with the U.S. State Department working on foreign policy towards Egypt and North Africa. I have a graduate degree from the Kennedy School of Harvard University and an undergraduate degree from James Madison University. To summarize my personal background – I am a native Washingtonian, I live in Arlington, Virginia, I am married with two young daughters, and enjoy any kind of boating.
Tim Brown has been living, gardening, cooking and traveling in Indonesia with his wife and two children for 13 years. He is an environmental economist currently working on climate change and low carbon issues with the environment team in the Indonesia Country Office and stays engaged on forestry, land and pollution issues. Before joining the Bank about 4 years ago, he worked on USAID and USEPA projects and consulting firms. Before Indonesia, he lived in Mali, Zaire, Nepal, California, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
A U.S. national, Michael Figueroa has worked as an information assistant in the East Asia and Pacific Region for ten years, supporting the region in information management and web development. Michael earned his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Government at Georgetown University. He was born and raised in New York City.
Naazneen Barma joined the World Bank in September 2007 as a Young Professional. She is a Public Sector Specialist in the East Asia and Pacific Region, focusing on governance and civil service reform and political economy analysis. Her work is currently oriented around implementation of the Bank's new Governance and Anticorruption Strategy in various countries in East Asia.
Naazneen has a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation was a study of the international role in post-conflict peacebuilding. She has published articles on state- and democracy-building, international relations among non-Western nations, and innovation in emerging economies, and is the co-editor of a comparative political economy reader. Naazneen earned her BA (International Relations and Economics) and MA (International Policy Studies) at Stanford University. She was born and raised in Hong Kong.
Note: Deborah no longer works at the World Bank.
Deb works on public sector governance in the East Asia and Pacific region. Before joining the Bank in fall 2007, she worked on foreign policy in the U.S. Congress, on international health and population issues at several nonprofits, and with troubled teens. Outside of work, her interests include photography, yoga, and reading fiction. She has a masters in public policy from UCLA and a BA in history from Haverford College, and grew up outside of Boston. In this blog, she tackles public sector governance issues with her colleague Naazneen.
Philip Karp is Regional Coordinator for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank Institute (WBI), the unit of the World Bank responsible for training, knowledge management, and capacity building. Mr. Karp is based in Beijing and is responsible for coordination of WBI’s training, advisory, analytical and technical assistance activities throughout the EAP region. Previously, he held several unit management positions at WBI. In China, Mr. Karp’s work is focused on supporting China’s increasing role in South-South learning and technical cooperation, particularly with Africa. He also is assisting Chinese government agencies and training institutions in enhancing the use of modern information and communication technologies to support domestic and international knowledge and learning networks. Mr. Karp holds a BA degree from Clark University and a MPP degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ariel Fiszbein is the Chief Economist for the Human Development Network at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 1991 after receiving his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Ariel was for several years the coordinator of the Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) initiative, and oversaw the Bank’s expanding efforts to build solid evidence on effective development programs. Together with a group of colleagues, he recently completed a major policy research report that reviews the lessons from the experience of conditional cash transfer programs.
Ariel was born and raised in Buenos Aires and makes a point of visiting regularly to stay in close touch with his family and friends.
Eric Le Borgne is a Senior Economist for the World Bank's Philippines office in Manila.
Federica Ranghieri is an Environmental Specialist in the East Asian and Pacific Region of the World Bank, where she works mainly on climate change policies, economic instruments and a bit on carbon finance. She previously worked for the Carbon Finance Business Unit and contributed to the launch of the Italian Carbon Fund. She is assistant professor at the University of Milan, where used to teach Environmental Policy and Environmental and Social Communication. She worked also for the IADB on stakeholder engagement and corporate social responsibility. And for the private sector, mainly industrial companies, as advisor on environmental accounting, environmental management, climate change measures, Kyoto Protocol and EU Emissions Trading System compliance. She is a terrible italian cook.
Cameron worked as a senior public sector specialist for the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network in Fiji. He left the Bank in July 2009.
Flore de Préneuf documents the results of development projects for the World Bank. She went to China in 2008 to look at "green projects" financed by the Bank (www.worldbank.org/china/results). Born in France in 1973, she has worked as a freelance journalist and photographer in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia, the Middle East and Texas. Her personal photo portfolio can be found at www.foto-kino.com.
Specializing in transportation, energy, and the environment, Deborah Gordon has worked to develop and advance innovative transportation strategies and technologies for over 25 years. In December 2008, she and co-author Daniel Sperling recently released Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability, which provides a concise history of America's love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. On May 20, Gordon and Sperling spoke during a panel discussion at the World Bank's InfoShop book launch series.
Ms. Jaehyang So is Manager of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), a multi-donor partnership administered by the World Bank to support poor people in obtaining affordable, safe, and sustainable access to water and sanitation services. Under Ms. So’s leadership, WSP designed and is implementing a results based program in its 24 focus countries and globally.
Ms. So has a background in urban service delivery, utilities and corporate restructuring, and public-private partnerships. Ms. So has focused on improving the performance of service providers, utilities, and local governments in the World Bank’s programs in Eastern and Central Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. Immediately prior to joining WSP, Ms. So was the Lead Infrastructure Specialist in the South Asia Regional Infrastructure Department working primarily on Bangladesh and Pakistan on urban water and sanitation sector programs. Ms. So has also worked on the World Bank’s corporate strategy and risk management development, most recently, leading the team preparing the World Bank Group’s Sustainable Infrastructure Action Plan and the World Bank’s response to the global economic crisis.
Prior to joining the Bank, Ms. So was with Monitor Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she advised Fortune 100 level companies on corporate strategy issues in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. She is a Korean national, and holds an MBA and a BA in Economics from Stanford University.
Jim Adams is Vice President of the East Asia and Pacific Region, at the World Bank. In this capacity, he has overall responsibility for World Bank operations in one of the world’s most dynamic regions, covering more than a dozen states ranging from the world’s most populous country --China-- to the smallest and most remote Pacific Islands states.
Previously, Jim was Vice President and Head of Network, Operations Policy and Country Services, at the World Bank. In this capacity, he was responsible for operational policy development, procurement and financial management activities, relations with United Nations and nongovernmental organizations, and support to Regional staff working in all these areas.
Since joining the Bank in 1974, he has held a variety of operational positions in East Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, including as Country Director for Tanzania and Uganda, as Director for Operations Policy, and as a Division Chief of several departments.
Before joining the Bank, Jim worked as a loan officer for Merchants Bank, in Syracuse, NY, and with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Jim studied at Colgate University, and holds an MPA from Princeton University.
Joachim von Amsberg joined the World Bank in 1993 as an Economist and Young Professional and worked on World Bank supported environmental programs and policy studies for Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay in the Latin America and Caribbean Region, as well as policy studies in Egypt. Subsequently, he worked for years on the World Bank’s Brazil program. His work brought him to the role of Lead Economist, at the World Bank Headquarters where he led the economic policy dialogue, analytical assistance and adjustment lending programs for Brazil.
In 2004, he was appointed World Bank Country Director for the Philippines where he led a new strategy for enhanced support to the country. He contributed to debates on the Philippines’ fiscal and social agenda. With World Bank support, the Consultative Group of the Philippines was transformed into the Philippines Development Forum, a more participatory process that included players in government, civil society, the private sector, and the international community.
He then became Country Director for Indonesia 2007-2010, overseeing one of the Bank’s largest country programs and country offices. He supported the Government of Indonesia’s efforts to improve the investment climate and service delivery to the poor through stronger governance; and led the Bank’s relationships and engagement with Indonesia, its Government, and other stakeholders, in close collaboration with IFC and MIGA.
Since July 1, 2010, Joachim is the Vice President of Operations Policy and Country Services, based in Washington, DC.
Joachim von Amsberg has a Ph.D. in Finance and Economic Policy from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, completed in 1993; an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Technische Universitaet Berlin, Germany, completed in 1991; and an M.B.A. major in Finance from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, completed in 1990. He is married to Anjum Khan, and has three children. He played junior soccer in his teens.
Joe Leitmann is the World Bank’s environment coordinator for Indonesia, with responsibility for activities related to climate change, natural resource management, pollution, global environmental issues, and environmental safeguards for all sectors. He is also the Bank’s Disaster Management Coordinator and was the founder/first manager of the $650 million Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias following the tsunami.
With over two decades at the World Bank, Joe has worked on projects, programs and policies related to: post-disaster reconstruction, natural resource management, urban environmental management, urban poverty, and renewable energy. In addition to short-term assignments in over 50 countries, he has had multi-year field assignments in Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia. Leitmann began his career in development work as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer.
Leitmann holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California/Berkeley and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of Sustaining Cities: Environmental Planning and Management in Urban Design as well as numerous articles on sustainable development.
Tobias Haque is an Economist with the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, East Asia and Pacific Region. He is based in the Sydney office, working on a variety of macroeconomic and public finance management issues across the Pacific Island countries. Before moving to Sydney, Tobias held the role of Country Economist for Solomon Islands, based in the newly-established Honiara office.
Prior to joining the World Bank, Tobias worked on a wide variety of economic development issues across various South-East Asian countries as a Program Manager at the New Zealand Agency for International Development and at Castalia - a private consulting firm, specializing in regulation of network infrastructure. He began his career at the New Zealand Treasury, where he spent time in the Office of the Chief Executive, providing analysis and advice to Treasury's Senior Management Team on long-term strategic issues facing the New Zealand economy.
Hoang Duc Minh is the Program Director of Raising Awareness on Environment and Climate Change Program managed by a youth community group in Hanoi, Vietnam. In January 2012, they implemented the Green Tet Project in Hanoi to call for reducing plastic bag usage in the city.
Erdene works as a Rural and Environment operations officer at the World Bank’s Mongolia office in Ulaanbaatar. He joined Bank in July 2008. Before that, he worked at an environmental NGO. Erdene graduated from the National University of Mongolia in 1997 and obtained an environmental education masters degree from the Mongolian State University of Education in 2007. He likes to travel and photograph rural life in Mongolia.
Neeraj Prasad is the regional Coordinator for the East Asia Carbon Finance portfolio and for Climate Change. In this assignment, he is responsible for managing and delivering the Bank’s largest Carbon Finance portfolio of CDM projects, and is coordinating a climate change strategy for the region as well. He also continues to manage several environment projects. Before joining the Bank in 1997, he was a member of the Indian Administrative Service, where his final assignment was in the Indian Ministry of Finance. He was also seconded to the Indian ED’s office in the IMF from 1993-96. He has graduate degrees in International Commerce and History.
Xubei Luo is an economist in the East Asia and Pacific region’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department. She joined the World Bank as a Young Professional in 2005. She has worked on regional economy, investment climate, public expenditure tracking, growth, trade and logistics, labor market, poverty and inequality issues in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, and European Union countries. Her research has been included in several journals, books, and policy research working paper series.
Xubei holds a Ph. D. in Economics from International Development Research Center (CERDI), University of Auvergne, France , and MAs in Project Analysis, Development Economics and Economic Policy from CERDI, an MA in Finance and a BA in International Finance from Sun Yat-Sen University, China.
Xiaoqing Yu is a lead social protection specialist at the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific region.
Ms. Yu started her career in the World Bank in 1996. Before joining the East Asia region in 2003, Ms. Yu spent about six years in the Eastern European and Central Asian region of the Bank, working on pension and social welfare reforms, as well as labor market development of the Baltic, Balkan and former Soviet Union countries. She worked on various operations and co-authored economic and sector reports, as well as the regional social protection strategy.
Ms. Yu holds a B.A. in economics from Peking University and a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.
Zoe Elena Trohanis is an Infrastructure Specialist and acting Regional Coordinator for Disaster Risk Management for the World Bank’s East Asia Region, focusing on climate change and disaster risk management in Indonesia, China and the Philippines. Prior to her current assignment, she worked with the anchor Disaster Risk Management team in the Sustainable Development Network, where she advised the governments of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. She has been with the Bank for over six years, prior to which she worked in the private sector. Zoe holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA from American University.
Chris Bennett is a civil engineer working as a Senior Transportation Specialist in the World Bank's Sustainable Development Department.
Cut Dian is an economist in the World Bank Office Jakarta. She joined the Bank in May 2005. She is part of the Public Finance and Regional Development team under the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (PREM) and has worked on several activities, including Aceh and Nias public expenditures, District Education expenditure review, Aceh post-Tsunami reconstruction, and several damage and loss assessments. Dian is also managing a large sub-national database and leading the decentralization/Aceh cluster within the PFRD team. She completed her bachelor degree from University of Indonesia and a master degree from Institute Social Studies, Netherlands. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked with United Nations Support Facility for Indonesia Recovery/UNSFIR, which was a project of UNDP Indonesia.
These days I work in communications in the World Bank’s East Asia & Pacific region, based in Washington DC. It’s a fascinating place to work with so much going on at any one time and so many smart people to bump into in the corridors. I started out in the communications field as a fledgling journalist in my native Australia. When I started, people were only just coming to terms with the idea of writing a story on a computer (we called them video display terminals then). Things have obviously moved pretty quickly since then. Eventually, I found my way to a large Sunday newspaper in Sydney where I became the environment correspondent. It was the late 1980s when people in Sydney were starting to object to swimming in sewage at their beaches. I wrote a few stories about the issue that upset a few people in Government but things really started to improve after that. (I never think about poo anymore when I dive under the waves at Bondi Beach.) Ever since then, I have been fairly preoccupied by all things green, working for different periods of time at Greenpeace (in London) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Fiji. I’ve also spent time working with the Australian Government on indigenous land issues. Everywhere I’ve worked my challenge has been to help the organization reach out to people – to get beyond just talking to each other in the safe confines of the office. That’s why I like this blog.
Arief is the World Bank's Regional Communications Officer for the East Asia Pacific Region based in Washington, DC. Until three years ago he was based in Jakarta and headed the communications team for the Bank’s Indonesia Country Program.
Joe works on web development, editing, and coordinates the World Bank's blog for South Asia. He previously worked on the Second China project for the State Department and graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Political Science and East Asian Language and Literatures. He's an avid tennis player, pianist, and travels as much as he can with a passion for anything new and exotic.
Douglas Zhihua Zeng (曾智华) is currently a senior economist at the Financial and Private Sector Development Department of the Africa Region, World Bank, and has worked on many countries in East Asia and Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia. His areas of expertise include macroeconomics, innovation, special economic zones, clusters, competitiveness, skills, and knowledge economy. Recent books (including those co-authored) include Building Engines for Growth and Competitiveness in China: Experience with Special Economic Zones and Industrial Clusters; Knowledge, Technology, and Cluster-Based Growth in Africa; Promoting Enterprise-Led Innovation in China; Innovation for Development and the Role of Government; and Enhancing China’s Competitiveness through Lifelong Learning, among others. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Economist) and Stanford University (Ford Foundation Scholar). He can be reached at Zzeng@worldbank.org.
作者为世界银行高级经济学家，世界银行学院“知识与发展”项目创始人之一。1998年加盟世行，主要从事国家发展战略的研究和咨询, 以及技术援助项目的设计与管理。他曾为东亚非洲拉丁美洲欧洲的30多个国家工作, 是知名的创新、竞争力、产业集群、知识经济、和终身学习等方面的专家。近期专著包括: 《解读“中国奇迹” －经济特区和产业集群的成功与挑战》；《中国：促进以企业为主体的创新》；《创新与发展及政府的作用》；《知识, 技术和非洲产业集群的发展》；《发展终身学习, 提高中国竞争力》；《中国与知识经济 – 机遇与挑战》等。他还在国内外著名的杂志上发表了很多文章。加盟世行之前, 他曾任中国社会科学院经济学家和斯坦福大学福特学者。他的邮箱是: Zzeng@worldbank.org.
Harry joined the Bank in March 2006. Together with the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management team, he´s been involved on various analytical --and mostly economic-- work on the Indonesian region of Aceh. Originally from that region, he has a Bachelor degree from Syiah Kuala Univ – Aceh and a Masters from the University Sains Malaysia. He plays soccer and is a big fan of Manchester United.
Geumala is a communications assistant in the Banda Aceh office and focuses on outreach to communities. She worked with tsunami-affected communities starting just a few days after the tsunami that hit the area in December 2004.
Hamish works as the communications officer for the World Bank, Solomon Islands country office. As a volunteer from an organization called the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD), Hamish has received a twelve month contract in this position.
Hamish has recently completed his Masters in International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts with a focus on English Literature and History. He also worked as a journalist in China from 2005-2006. As an early traveler, growing up in both the United States (Maryland) and Australia (Sydney), Hamish inherited a set of itchy feet that have led him to travel through Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
Note: Nanda no longer works at the World Bank.
Nanda Gasparini can talk and write endlessly, so it's no surprise she has a blog (you may need to stop her every now and then). She blames this on being from Venezuela, a country where she says everyone speaks forever (including the president). Living for the past two years in Laos, she's proud to be the only Venezuelan in the country. She's also the World Bank's communications specialist on the Nam Theun 2 project, a hydroelectric dam being built in the country. Prior to arriving in Laos she worked and studied in the U.S. where she was able to pick up an American accent.
My name is Gabriela Leite Soares. I was born in Timor-Leste in Maliana, the capital of the district of Bobonaro. My family moved to the capital city of Dili in 1989, and we have been living there ever since. After finishing high school in 2003, I worked as a receptionist at the Embassy of Malaysia for three months. I joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) afterward. I received a full scholarship for one year to attend Gonzaga Preparatory School, a private Jesuit high school located in Spokane, Washington. Upon completing my study at Gonzaga Prep, I was awarded with full scholarship from Gonzaga University, a private Jesuit University also located in Spokane.
During four years of college, I was active in Justice Club and the Hawai’i Pacific Islander Club, and served as the International Student Senator and the President of International Student Union, I also organized to bring Mr. Constancio Pinto, then the Charge d’Affaires of Timor-Leste, to the U.S. to speak about Timor-Leste at Gonzaga University. I majored in Political Science and minored in French. I graduated from Gonzaga University in May 2009, and I joined the World Bank in July 2009 as a Communications Assistant.
Note: Wolfgang no longer blogs for the East Asia & Pacific on the rise blog.
Wolfgang Fengler is a Lead Economist in the Nairobi office of the World Bank where he covers Kenya, Eritrea, Somalia, Comoros and Seychelles. He took this position in August 2009. Until then he has been a Senior Economist in the Jakarta office of the World Bank. For more than five years he lived with his wife and three small children in Indonesia. He has been managing the Public Finance and Regional development team consisting of 27 members, predominantly national research analysts and economists. While in Indonesia, Wolfgang has worked on several activities, including a national Public Expenditure review, a sub-national support program to provinces, Aceh post-Tsunami reconstruction, Development Policy Loans and SWAPs. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was a Fellow at the Research Institute for International Relations (now in Berlin) and set up Africa Consulting, LLC.
Wolfgang loves ping-pong and tries to play every Friday afternoon with the drivers and security guards in one of the Bank’s conference rooms. He was also part of the World Bank Jakarta soccer team and intends to continue his sports activities in Kenya.
Note: Evelyn no longer works at the World Bank.
Evelyn Ng works in the World Bank office in Sydney and is the Research Analyst for the Pacific Island countries. A Malaysian-born Chinese and Australian national, Evelyn completed her Honours degree in Economics in the University of Queensland before joining the World Bank in 2005. Since then, she has worked on short policy notes and economic updates on the Pacific Islands and has been involved with temporary migration work in the region. More recently, she was involved with work on assessing the impact of higher food and fuel prices on the economies and households of Fiji, Tonga, and Kiribati. Known to her colleagues as Eve, she enjoys working with client governments as well as meeting people in villages and learning their ways of life.
Xiaoli Wan works in the World Bank Beijing Office as an economist since September 2010, focusing on macroeconomic developments of Chinese economy. She is the principal writer of the Bank’s China Monthly Update report. Before joining the Bank in summer 2010, she worked in the Southwest Jiaotong University as an associate professor, and also worked in Beyond Bond Corp. (New York, NY) as an analyst in 2008. Xiaoli holds a Ph.D. in economics from China Center for Economic Research (CCER), Peking University, China.
Milan Brahmbhatt is a Lead Economist in the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region and editor of the twice yearly East Asia & Pacific Update. Milan is also the Bank's go-to expert on the economic impact of the avian flu. He joined the Bank in 1994 after nine years in the private sector in England and the U.S., as an economic forecaster and consultant for a variety of government and multinational business clients. Milan grew up in Kenya and completed high school and higher education in England. He is a voracious reader, especially of literature, history and philosophy, as well as Internet news sources of all kinds.
Pichaya "Noi" Fitts joined the World Bank in 2007 as communications officer for its Thailand office. Before joining the World Bank, she worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme in Papua New Guinea, where she interned in 2004 after graduating from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
Like many external affairs officers at the World Bank, Noi had a successful journalism career and holds an M.A. in communications. The late Audrey Hepburn, Robert De Niro, Kenny G, Jon Bon Jovi, Mel Gibson, and Greek musician Yanni are among the international celebrities she has interviewed and photographed. Shaking hand with Colin Powell when he was the US Secretary of State was Noi’s most exciting moment. Her less proud moment was in 1997, when she bumped into Bruce Willis at the launch of Planet Hollywood in Bangkok. She wished she had a better thing to say to him than, "I’m just looking for the bathroom."
Noi has a soft spot for children and old people, and she is addicted to Thai massage. When she's not glued to the computer writing about Thailand, she dreams of becoming the Thai female version of Tiger Woods. For now, she intends to keep her job at the World Bank because there is no way she could make any money golfing.
Note: Alessandro is currently on leave from the World Bank.
Hello, I am Alessandro Magnoli Bocchi.
I like economics, because it provides nice tools to understand what’s happening in the world. For instance, it provides answers to questions like: Why do some countries grow, and others don’t? Why investment pours into some regions, but flees from others? What to do with unemployment? Are prices rising too fast?
I hope you too find these questions important and stimulating - and I look forward to learning, together with you, some of the answers.
My main interests include economic growth, fiscal policy and public finance, social systems analysis, welfare theory, and development.
Currently I work at the World Bank. Previously, I was a Research Associate at Harvard University, and an economist at the Inter-American Development Bank.
Note: Gao Xu no longer works at the World Bank.
Gao Xu worked in the World Bank Beijing Office as an economist between May 2008 and June 2010 , focusing on macroeconomic developments of the Chinese economy. He is the principal writer of the Bank’s China Monthly Update report. Before joining the Bank in summer 2008, Gao worked in the IMF Beijing Representative Office, first as an research assistant and then as a part-time economist from 2006-2008, conducting research on China. Gao holds a Ph.D. in economics from China Center for Economic Research (CCER), Peking University, China. In addition to uncovering the logic behind economic data, Gao also enjoys reading books, fitness, and playing with his little boy, Niuniu.
(Note: James left the World Bank in February 2010)
James' primary responsibilities on this blog lied in coordinating and producing content for it. He also helped manage the East Asia and Pacific region's Web sites for the World Bank.
James grew up in Iowa, in America’s heartland, and earned a journalism degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He started his professional career as a newspaper reporter, but quickly moved into the rapidly changing world of online journalism, working as Web editor for the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. In 2008 he left the hills of the Mountain State for a new life Washington. He loves to travel when he can, enjoys playing tennis and rocks the mic at any karaoke night he can get to.
