I can hear you saying, “Well, the Bank’s research department is hiring every year, what’s the difference and why are you yelling about it here?” You have a point – let me explain…
It is true that we are on the job market hiring every year, but this year is a bit different. First, we will be in the market to hire a significant number of researchers. While it is not prudent to give an exact number, I can say that we will be shortlisting and interviewing a substantially larger number of candidates at the AEA meetings in San Diego than we have in recent years.
Second, while we are looking for candidates in all areas relevant to development economics, this year we are especially interested in making hires in a couple of key areas. The first of these is natural resource/environmental economics and the economics of climate change. If you’re working on issues that relate to climate change, adaptation, and mitigation, we would like to hear from you. We realize that the suitable candidate may not be graduating this year from an economics department (our typical applicant), but is maybe a post doc, maybe coming from a non-economics program, or is already faculty, and so we want to get on your radar if you aren’t religiously checking JOE. A second area of emphasis for our department, as well as the World Bank as a whole, is gender equity. If you are working on hardships and barriers women face in developing countries and are passionate about searching for innovative solutions to improve their welfare, we urge you to apply to join a large group of researchers whose research agendas already intersect, directly or indirectly, with gender equity issues. Should the right candidates present themselves, it is possible that we may hire more than one researcher in each of these fields. Note that this does not mean we will only be hiring in these fields – we are still interested in fantastic candidates working on other areas of development.
Third, although we are looking to hire primarily junior candidates, i.e. about to receive their PhD or recent graduates, we realize that the right candidate for our department may be a more senior person. So, if you think that you’re interested in being a researcher at the World Bank and fit into one of the two fields of focus described above, do not let the (single-digit) number of years you have been out of grad school deter you from throwing your hat in the ring.
If you apply, you will be looking at joining a young, vibrant, diverse, and growing group of researchers working on all fields relevant to development. You can see the members of our large research department and get a sense of who we are and what we do here and here. We have made a concerted effort to add a significant number of junior researchers to our ranks in the past five years, and we are looking to continue to build on this momentum in the upcoming job market.
The link for applications is here. If you have any questions, particularly as a placement officer or a PhD advisor, you can email me (I am chairing the recruitment committee). We look forward to receiving your applications by November 15, 2019.
Please also note that “Blog your job market paper 2019 will be announced soon (see last year’s announcement here). This year, we are thinking of a three-week window of November 1-22 to accept submissions from PhD students on the job market to blog their paper on Development Impact. Experience and feedback from past years suggests that this is a good avenue to disseminate your JMP: even we ourselves have hired two of the guest bloggers from last year (no causation implied). Stay tuned…
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