Stephan Klasen is Professor of Development Economics at the University of Göttingen. He is also the director of the Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research and the Coordinator of the Courant Research Center ‘Poverty, equity, and growth in developing and transition countries’. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and has since held positions at the World Bank, King's College (Cambridge, UK) and the University of Munich. His research focuses mostly on issues of poverty, inequality, environment, and gender. He is a member of the UN Committee on Development Policy, was until recently President of the European Development Research Network, and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 5th Assessment Report.