Bloggers
Eliana holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and is currently the Chief Economist for the South Asia Region at the World Bank (on leave from the School of Economics at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo, where she is a Professor of Economics). A former Professor at the Fletcher School (Tufts University) and a Visiting Professor at MIT, Yale, Georgetown University, and the University of São Paulo.
Eliana has worked twice for the World Bank: once as Lead Economist for China (1993-1995) and later as Sector Manager in Latin America (1998-2000). In between those two assignments, she worked at the Research Department in the IMF and as Secretary for International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance in Brazil. During the last ten years, she wrote weekly opinion pieces for Valor Econômico and a monthly article for O Estado de São Paulo. Her most recent books are Fábulas Econômicas (Pearson, 2006) and Mosaico da Economia (Saraiva, 2009).
Susan Hirshberg is the South Asia Regional Disability Coordinator and Sr. Education Specialist.
Ejaz Ghani taught Economics at Oxford University and Delhi University. He studied Economics in Delhi University, Jawahar Lal Nehru University, and Oxford University. He has worked on Africa, East Asia, and South Asia, and has a strong interest in globalization, growth, employment, and poverty. He is currently Economic Advisor in South Asia region at the World Bank.
William Byrd is currently serving in the World Bank’s Headquarters in Washington, DC as Economic Adviser in the Fragile and Conflict Affected Countries Group. Previously he was Adviser in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit of the South Asia Region of the Bank. Until late 2006 he was the Bank’s Senior Economic Adviser based in Kabul, Afghanistan. There he was responsible for helping develop the World Bank’s strategy for support to Afghanistan’s reconstruction effort and established the World Bank's office in Kabul.
William Byrd has been in the World Bank for more than 20 years. He has had a number of multi-year assignments based in developing countries including India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
William Byrd's publications include six books on China. other books, and numerous articles, among them several papers on Afghanistan, as well as a number of World Bank reports. He has been responsible for reports on Afghanistan’s Economic Development, Public Finance Management, Economic Cooperation in the Wider Central Asia Region, and Afghanistan’s Drug Industry, as well as papers on responding to Afghanistan’s development challenge. More recently he co-authored a joint report of the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development on “Afghanistan: Economic Incentives and Development Initiatives to Reduce Opium Production”, and also a Bank report on “Fighting Corruption in Afghanistan: Summaries of Vulnerabilities to Corruption Assessments”.
William Byrd has a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and an MA in East Asian Regional Studies from the same institution.
Md. Abul Basher was born and brought up in the countryside of Bangladesh and had his primary education in a school that did not have any roof. He studied in different institutions in Bangladesh, UK, The Netherlands and USA. Besides his academic publications in a number of journals including Journal of Development Economics, he used to write regularly in different dailies of Bangladesh on macroeconomic and trade related issues before joining the World Bank in May 2008. Apart from economics, his passion is literature. His first novel “Joler deyal” (in Bengali) has been published this year.
Zahid Husain joined The World Bank in 1995 and is currently working as a Senior Economist in South Asia Finance and Poverty group. Prior to that, he was a member of the academia, with 14 years teaching experience in a number of Universities in Bangladesh and abroad. He has worked in a number of flagship World Bank reports on Bangladesh. His other passion is cricket.
Farria Naeem joined The World Bank in 2006 and is currently working as a Research Analyst in the South Asia Poverty and Finance group.
Latest Posts:
- Remittances in Bangladesh: Determinants and 2010 Outlook
- Does Collusion Exist in Bangladesh's Commodity Markets
Ben Safran is currently a Junior Professional Associate with the South Asia Human Development Unit. His work has focused on education in Pakistan. He is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in mathematical economics. His senior thesis, titled “The Mathematics of Beauty: The Divine Proportion’s effect on Facial Attractiveness” examined the effects of modifying one’s appearance to be in “Golden Ratio” on their perceived beauty (and found preference for inherent proportionality – or natural beauty.) Ben was born and raised in Washington DC and is an avid soccer player.
Céline Ferré started writing blog entries when she was 10, back in the eighties, frantically scribbling with a fountain pen in her diary. Her younger brother introduced her to photography at the age of 13: black and white pictures started giving life to her tales of travel. She first hit the road to work in rural Nepal in 1999, forgot her toothbrush and water purifier, but filled her backpack with her Pentax, rolls of film in ziplocks, pencils, notebooks and Rolling Stones tapes. Not sure if she wanted to reincarnate in Mick Jagger, Jack Kerouac or Raymond Depardon, she studied Economics at UC Berkeley and is currently a Young Professional in the South Asia Region. Thanks to 21st century technology, she now has a portable computer on which she writes blog entries, downloads digital pictures, listens to the Stones (still), and runs Stata do-files. She is still looking for the perfect picture that will capture one of the many facets of daily life, from that of an Afghan nurse to that of a Moroccan shopkeeper, from that of a French teacher to that of a Chilean farmer.
Brittney Davidson is a student at the University of Florida, currently studying Business Marketing and Mass Communications. She also pursued International Social Issues at Christ College in Bangalore, India. She is currently interning at the World Bank for Operations Policy and Country Services.
Prior to her work at the World Bank, Brittney collaborated with associate professors to develop assistance programs for children in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Clinic in Uganda, and spent summers visiting her mother's family in Malaysia. Having attended an arts school for 7 years before college, Brittney enjoys various forms of music, theater, dance, mixed media and, above all, writing.
Sundararajan Gopalan (Sundar, for short) is a Senior HNP Specialist and has been working on nutrition and health issues throughout his career. Though he is a medical doctor by original training, specialized in public health, his work experience with the Bank has broadened his horizons and he believes strongly in working across sector boundaries. Nutrition is an outstanding example of such a multi-sectoral outcome and he has a passion for addressing malnutrition among women and underfive children of low-income countries.
Mike Trucano is the World Bank's Senior ICT and Education Policy Specialist, serving as the Bank's focal point on the topic within the education sector. In this role he provides support to World Bank education projects with ICT-related 'components', and is involved in a variety of research activities. Current areas of focus include policy development, the use of mobile phones in education, ICT and education indicators, 'new economy skills for Africa', and evaluations of low-cost devices. He is also a principal contributor to the World Bank's EduTech blog and oversees the organization's internal knowledgebase wiki on ICT/education topics.
He previously served as the ICT and Education Specialist at infoDev, the multi-donor 'ICT knowledge shop' housed within the World Bank's Global ICT Department (GICT), where he coordinated activities related to information and communication technologies and the Millennium Development Goals ("ICTs for MDGs"), especially as they related to education. He also led infoDev's work exploring the use of various low-cost ICT devices to meet developmental objectives in the social sectors, an initiative he continues to help lead from within the World Bank education sector. Highlights during his time at infoDev include Knowledge Maps: ICT and Education (what we know, and what we don't, about ICT use in education in developing countries), over 75 country-level surveys of ICT and education in Africa and the Caribbean, a handbook on Monitoring and Evaluation of ICT in Education Projects, and the ICT in Education Toolkit for Policymakers, Planners & Practitioners (with UNESCO, used in over 25 countries to date).
Mike brings experience working in a variety of capacities with on-the-ground ICT/education initiatives in several regions of the world, including feasibility studies, evaluation and assessment, teacher training and professional development, appropriate technologies and targeted policy advice, especially related to uses of ICTs in education and community telecentres. He joined the World Bank Group in 1997, first with the IFC, and then serving on the Education and ICT for education teams at the World Bank Institute, where he was a core member of the team that developed the World Links for Development Program. You can follow him on Twitter @trucano.
Darshana Patel is currently a consultant to the Communication for Governance & Accountability Program (CommGAP) at the World Bank, where she is researching and writing on the role of communication in strengthening accountability and governance.
Prior to this work, she facilitated a joint political platform building process with youth and student party leaders in Nepal; worked with DC-based community groups, teachers and parents in transforming the decision making around public schools; and advocated through the U.S. Congress for more democratic corporate and international trade policy. Her sole, consistent belief behind this diverse professional work is that an informed, empowered and engaged citizenry is the foundation for a democracy.
She holds a BSc in Economics and Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a MA in Governance and Development from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University.
Ashi Kathuria is a consultant in South Asia Human Development based in the India Office.
Santanu Lahiri has joined WSP-Bangladesh in June 2007 to manage the local government water supply and sanitation capacity building program. Prior to joining WSP-Bangladesh, Mr. Lahiri worked with WSP-East Asia, academic institutions of national government and the private sector. He has sector experience in many Asian countries such as Cambodia, China, India, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines and Vietnam. His work focuses on institutional strengthening and capacity building, decentralization approaches, networking and learning institutionalization.
Sadiq is a senior manager for the World Bank's South Asia region. At the Bank, Sadiq has worked on poverty reduction, governance, private sector, trade and macroeconomic issues. He has authored more than 30 books, policy research papers and articles on various development issues.
Joe Qian is a Communications Analyst for the South Asia Region and specializes in web and media productions. He previously worked on the Second China project for the US Department of State and graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Political Science focusing on International Relations and a minor in Chinese as well as recognition as a University Scholar. He's concurrently pursuing his Masters at John's Hopkins University in Economic Interdepedence and Global Security.
Joe's an avid tennis player, pianist, and travels as much as he can with a passion for anything new and exotic.
If you have any ideas or suggestions for the blog, shoot an email to jqian@worldbank.org.
Mark LaPrairie, World Bank Representative to Bhutan, first went to Bhutan in 1988 under a Canadian volunteer program for a three-year assignment as a teacher in rural primary schools. He returned to Bhutan in 1997 as Education Officer for UNICEF. He joined the Bank in 1999 as an Education Specialist in South Asia. His prior work experience also includes field positions with CARE (Canada) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Africa. For the past eight years, he has served as Task Team Leader for Bank-financed education projects in Bhutan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Prior to his appointment as Representative to Bhutan, Mark served as Country Operations Officer for Bhutan and head-of-office in Maldives. Mark is currently pursuing a doctorate of education degree at the University of London, examining the use of children's stories in primary schools and hip-hop in high schools for Buddhism-based values education in Bhutan.
Jeremy Levin is a senior technical specialist in South Asia Sustainable Development Department, SASDI where he works on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and carbon finance lending and grant operations as well as leading several analytic and advisory activities. He holds a masters degree in Technology and Policy from MIT, and dual bachelors degrees with honors in economics and environmental sciences from University of Pennsylvania.
Chulie de Silva is the Senior Communications Officer in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is a firm believer in reaching out to audiences that we normally do not communicate with. One way to do it she says is through a combination of powerful images and meaningful texts as they did with this Tuk-tuk mobile exhibition. She is an advocate of citizen journalism and writes about people, travels and her family history in her two blogs -- chulie.wordpress.com and chuls.wordpress.com.
Benjamin Crow is a Communications Assistant with the South Asia External Affairs Team. His primary responsibility is as Coordinator for the Public Information Services program for South Asia. He is also the communications contact for Bhutan and the Maldives. He has been with the Bank for over 16 years and has worked on girls' education, gender issues, and now communications.
Karina Manasseh works in the South Asia External Affairs Department at the World Bank. Prior to joining the Bank she worked as an Associate at Kissinger McLarty Associates and as a journalist in Brazil having published articles at Folha de Sao Paulo, Jornal do Brasil and Valor. She holds a BA in Journalism and a Master's Degree in International Relations from Georgetown University.
Dilinika joined the World Bank Colombo Office in 2005. Currently she works for the South Asia Region External Affairs(SAREX)team. Her work areas include supporting the World Bank knowledge and information dissemination program, youth engagement, Civil Society Fund and supporting operations communications and World Bank media relations.
Mariam Claeson, M.D., M.P.H., is the program coordinator for AIDS in the South Asia Region of the World Bank since January 2005.
SHANTAYANAN DEVARAJAN is the Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region. Since joining the World Bank in 1991, he has been a Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group, as well as the Chief Economist of the Human Development Network and the South Asia Region. He was the 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.
The author or co-author of over 100 publications, Mr. Devarajan’s research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources and the environment, and general-equilibrium modeling of developing countries. Born in Sri Lanka, Mr. Devarajan received his A. B. in mathematics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Maitreyi started her career as a lecturer in St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, has been a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center of Population and Development Studies and worked as advisor to the United Nations Development Program. She has a PhD in Sociology (Demography) from the University of Maryland. Her recent research includes lead authorship of "Poverty and Social Exclusion in India" and "Whispers to Voices: Gender and Social Transformation in Bangladesh" as well as several articles and working papers. Before joining the World Bank, Maitreyi was in the Indian Administrative Service.
Before joining the World Bank she was in the Maharashtra cadre of the Indian Administrative Service, having joined the IAS in 1986. She started her career as a lecturer in St Stephen's College, University of Delhi and has been a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center of Population and Development Studies. She has also worked in the Caribbean as advisor to the UNDP.
Ignacio Mas is Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ignacio has been a Senior Adviser in the Technology Program at CGAP (a resource center for microfinance housed at the World Bank), VP of Marketing and Account Management at interTouch, Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe at Intel Capital (Intel Corp's venture capital arm). Ignacio has been a Visiting Professor of International Business at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He holds undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard University. He is author many articles on branchless banking, which are available here.
SHEKHAR SHAH joined the World Bank in 1989 as Deputy Research Administrator after several years with the Ford Foundation and in the US financial sector. Shekhar has served as the Bank's Lead Economist and Country Coordinator for Bangladesh, Sector Manager for public sector management for Europe and Central Asia, Governance Adviser in the central Public Sector Group, and part of the team for the 2004 WDR, Making services work for poor people. Shekhar has worked on poverty, decentralization, macroeconomic stabilization and services delivery, in part promoting a clearer view of the role of politics and government failures in these areas. Shekhar was posted to New Delhi during 2004-08 as the regional field presence of the chief economist's office, and subsequently to Colombo. With Ariel Fiszbein, the Bank's chief economist for Human Development, Shekhar was the co-author in 2009 of Making Results Count, a strategy for monitoring and evaluation work on India. Shekhar received his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University and his BA in Economics from Delhi University.
Shekhar is the author with Shanta Devarajan of the flagship paper "Can South Asia end poverty in a generation?" that provides the inspiration and the title for the South Asia Blog. Click here to listen to a VOA interview with several economists on the prospects for reducing extreme poverty in Asia, among them with Shekhar talking about South Asia and answering the question posed by the flagship paper.
Forhad Shilpi holds a joint appointment as a Senior Economist in the Development Economics Research Group and South Asia Sustainable Development unit.
A major part of her research examines the impact of infrastructure on the spatial pattern of specialization and the level of commercialization in a rural economy. She also wrote couple of papers analyzing isolation’s impact on regional inequality and subjective well-being. In a recently published paper, she evaluated the impact of India’s economic liberalization on price responsiveness of private investment. She worked extensively on agricultural marketing, non-farm development and rural investment climate issues. Some of her recent papers were published in leading economics journals (Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics). Her ongoing research projects attempt to uncover the implications of infrastructure and amenities for the location choice of the migrants and private firms.
The main areas of focus of her operational works have been the development of the non-farm sector, rural investment climate surveys and assessments, agricultural marketing reforms, implications of trade policy for agricultural and non-farm sectors; development, and rural development strategy. She also participated as a core team member in a number of poverty assessments and contributed to Development Policy Reviews and trade competitiveness diagnostics.
She holds a Ph. D degree in economics from the Johns Hopkins University. She taught econometrics and macroeconomics at the Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked as a research associate at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.
With prior experience in both development and emergencies, Mark is a regional specialist with the Water & Sanitation Program in South Asia based in Bangladesh. Since joining the Bank in 2003, Mark and his family have experienced the richness of living in Delhi, Islamabad and now Dhaka. Mark is captivated by the conundrum of determining policy instruments that might support bottom-up development initiatives and considers himself fortunate to have a position engaging with this dilemma.
