Ragui Assaad is professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where he co-chairs the Master of Development Practice program. He has been a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum (ERF) since 1994 and currently serves as a member of its board of trustees. He is a non-resident Research Fellow of the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn, Germany. Assaad’s current research focuses on labor markets and human development in the Arab World, with a focus on youth and gender issues as they relate to education, transition from school-to-work, labor force participation, employment and unemployment, informality, migration, and family formation. Under the auspices of ERF, he led the design and implementation of several nationally-representative longitudinal surveys of labor market conditions in Arab countries.