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Dilip Ratha's picture
Dilip Ratha
Lead Economist and Manager, Migration and Remittances Team, Development Prospects Group, World Bank
Dilip Ratha is a Lead Economist and the Manager of the Migration and Remittances Unit at the World Bank in Washington, DC. He acts as a focal point for the Bank’s activities and international partnerships on migration and development. Mr. Ratha also leads the Migrating out of Poverty research consortium, a multidisciplinary collaboration among six universities and research institutions in Africa, Asia, and Europe. He has advised many governments and international forums including the Global Forum on Migration and Development, the Global Remittances Working Group, and World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on migration. His expertise includes migration, remittances, and innovative financing. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was a regional economist for Asia at Credit Agricole Indosuez, Singapore; an assistant professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; and an economist at the Policy Group, New Delhi. He has a PhD in economics from the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi.
Sanket Mohapatra's picture
Sanket Mohapatra
Economist, Development Prospects Group, World Bank

Sanket Mohapatra is an economist with the Development Prospects Group at the World Bank. His research interests include international capital flows, sovereign and subsovereign ratings, corporate financing patterns, poverty, inequality and growth, and the development impact of remittances and migration. He has contributed to various issues of the World Bank’s flagship Global Development Finance and Global Economic Prospects reports. He is a core team member of the Africa regional flagship report, Leveraging Migration for Africa: Remittances, Skills, and Investments and co-editor of Remittance Markets in Africa which includes studies of remittance markets in eight African countries and in France and the UK, two key destination countries of African migrants. He is a regular contributor to the World Bank’s Migration and Development Briefson monitoring of global migration and remittance flows worldwide. His work has been published in edited volumes, peer-reviewed journals and as working papers. He holds a Masters from Delhi School of Economics and a Ph.D from Columbia University.

Sonia Plaza's picture
Sonia Plaza
Senior Economist, Migration and Remittances Team, Development Prospects Group, World Bank
Sonia Plaza is a Senior Economist in the Development Economics Prospects Group of the World Bank. She has worked on science and technology projects in Latin American and coauthored a major analytical survey of migration and development for the Africa region. Sonia was born in Lima, Peru. Her father had a constructing firm, so some of her earliest childhood memories are of traveling with him to poor areas including Ayacucho where he was working on projects. This is how she was first exposed to development work, and it shaped her. She wrote chapter 5 of the book, “Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier”, which covers trade facilitation, technology, and skills transfer, and regional trade agreements. She advises many universities on the transfer of skills and tapping into their diasporas. Sonia attended the University of Lima and earned a degree in Economics, after which she joined Chase Manhattan Bank, and was then invited to join the Peruvian Ministry of Trade as a manager responsible for counter trade and debt swap agreements. She also has a dual degree from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania in International Economics and Development. She was Professor of Economics (International Economics) at the Peruvian School of Foreign Service and at the University of Lima in Peru, and was adjunct faculty (Microeconomics and Macroeconomics) at The American University in Washington, DC. Her research interests include international migration, labor mobility, trade, and the future of labor. She joined the Institute for the Study of Labor as a Research Fellow in February 2010.
Ani Silwal's picture
Ani Silwal
Migration and Remittances Team, Development Economics Prospects Group

Ani Silwal joined the Migration and Remittances team in March 2009. He received an MS in Applied Economics from the University of Maryland and a Bachelors in Economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College. He has worked on microfinance in Nepal on which he wrote his undergraduate thesis. He also previously worked as a financial analyst at Exelon Corporation.