Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
Elliott School of International Affairs
City View Room
The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to invite you to the annual GW India Conference on India’s Economic Development and U.S.-India Economic Relations. This year’s conference will focus on “Making India an Advanced Economy by 2047: What Will it Take” and will feature numerous esteemed individuals and notable speakers. Breakfast, lunch, and coffee included.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Institute for International Economic Policy, the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy, the GW Center for International Business Education and Research, and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.
Conference Agenda
8:30-9:00 a.m. – Breakfast and Registration
9:00-9:05 a.m. – Welcome Remarks
James Foster, Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, GWU
9:05-10:15 a.m. – Opening Keynote Session
Chair: Alyssa Ayres, Dean, Elliott School of International Affairs
Thematic Address: Indermit Gill, Chief Economist, The World Bank, “How Can India Avoid the Middle-Income Trap?”
Keynote Address: V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor, GOI, “India’s Path to An Advanced Economy: Growth and Structural Transformation”
10:15-11:15 a.m. – Session 1: “India Macroeconomic Imperatives in a Post-Pandemic World”
Chair: Ajay Chhibber, IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar, GWU
Speaker: Sajjid Chinoy, J.P.Morgan, and Member, PM’s Economic Advisory Council
Discussant: Prachi Mishra, Chief, Systemic Issues Division, IMF
11:15-11:30 a.m. – Coffee break
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. – Session 2: “India’s Trade Policy and the Global Environment”
Chair: Atman Trivedi, Partner, Albright Stonebridge Group
Speaker: Arun Kumar, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, USA and former Head, KPMG, India
Discussants: Judith Dean, Professor of International Economics, Brandeis University
12:30-1:30 p.m. – Lunch Keynote Session
Chair: Scott Pace, IISTP and SPI Director, GWU
Lunch Speaker: Dr. Vivek Lall, Chief Executive, General Atomics Global Corporation, on “U.S.-India Technology and Defense Cooperation”
1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m. – Session 3: “Reducing Inequality and Eliminating Poverty”
Chair: James Foster, GWU
Speaker: Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative
Discussants: Nandini Krishnan, Lead Economist, Poverty and Equity, South Asia, The World Bank.
2:30-3:30 p.m. – Session 4: “Social Inclusion and Empowerment”
Chair: Deepa Ollapally, Research Professor of International Affairs, GWU
Speaker: Prerna Singh, Mahatma Gandhi Associate Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Discussant: Irfan Nooruddin, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Indian Politics, Georgetown University
3:30-3:45 p.m. – Coffee Break
3:45-4:45 p.m. – Session 5: “Climate Change: India’s Pathways and Challenges”
Chair: Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland
Speaker: Mekala Krishnan, Partner, McKinsey Global Institute
Discussants: Stephane Hallegate, Senior Climate Change Advisor, The World Bank
4:45-5:30 pm – Closing Session: “Pathways to India’s Progress: Breaking the Mould”
Chair: Vivek Arora, Deputy Director, Independent Evaluation Office, IMF
Speaker: Raghuram Rajan, Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, Chicago Booth, and 23rd RBI Governor
5:30-6:30 pm – Reception:
Remarks by Junaid Kamal Ahmad, Executive Vice President of MIGA
About the Keynote Speaker
Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran serves as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. He wrote a weekly column for Mint for 15 years, as well as co-authored four books. Prior to his current role, Dr. Nageswaran was a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India for 2 years and is an honorary senior advisor to the International Financial Services Authority of India. Between 1994 to 2011, he held several positions including Currency Economist at the Union Bank of Switzerland, Head of Research and Investment Consulting in Credit Suisse Private Banking in Asia, and Head of Asia Research and Global Chief Investment Officer at Bank Julius Baer. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad with a Masters in Business Administration and received his PhD in Finance from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
About the Thematic Address
Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, Gill served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he helped shape the Bank’s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program. Gill led the World Bank’s influential 2009 World Development Report on economic geography. His work includes introducing the concept of the “middle-income trap” to describe how countries stagnate after reaching a certain level of income. He has published extensively on key policy issues facing developing countries—among other things, sovereign debt vulnerabilities, green growth and natural-resource wealth, labor markets, and poverty and inequality. Gill has also taught at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
About the Session Speakers
Sajjid Z. Chinoy
is J.P. Morgan’s Chief India Economist and also serves on the Advisory Council to the 15th Finance Commission set up by the Government of India. He has previously worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and McKinsey & Company. He has also previously served as a member of the RBI’s “Expert Committee to Revise and Strengthen the Monetary Policy Framework” that proposed inflation targeting in India, was a consultant to the FRBM Review Committee set up by the government to proposed a new fiscal anchor, and a member of the Indian Banks Association (IBA) Monetary Policy Group. Since 2014, he has been ranked as one of the “Best Individuals in Research in India” by Asset Magazine. He has authored several publications on the Indian economy including co-editing a book on Indian economic reform: “Reforming India’s External, Fiscal and Financial Policies” with Dr. Anne O. Krueger. He received his Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University in 2001.
Arun Kumar .webp)
most recently served as the Chairman and CEO of KPMG in India, an organization consisting of several thousand professionals engaged in providing assurance, tax, and advisory services. He was a member of the global board of directors of KPMG. He previously served in President Obama’s Administration as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets and Director General of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service (USFCS). As the Administration’s lead official to promote U.S. exports, foreign direct investment, and enhanced market access around the world, he led a team of 1,700 professionals in 78 countries and all 50 United States. Prior to his stint in Washington, DC, Arun was a partner and a member of the board of KPMG LLP in the US. Based in Silicon Valley, he led KPMG’s Management Consulting practice in the West for many years. He has also been a company mentor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Arun is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of The Global Trade Paradigm (HarperCollins, 2023) as well as two books of poetry.
Dr. Vivek Lall is the Chief Executive of General Atomics Global Corporation based in San Diego, California. GA and affiliated companies operate on five continents. The company produces a series of unmanned aircraft (Predator/Reaper/Guardian), produces electro-magnetic aircraft launch and recovery systems, satellite surveillance, electro-magnetic rail gun, high power laser, hypervelocity projectile, and power conversion systems, is the principal private sector participant in thermonuclear fusion research through its internationally recognized DIII-D Facility.
GA is also a leader in development of next-generation nuclear fission and high-temperature materials technologies. Lall has been appointed to the following Boards: Advisory Board of the Quad Investors Network, United States Technical Team member to the NATO STO (Science and Technology Organization),Industry Advisory Board of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME),International Advisory Group of the US Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors of US Japan Business Council, Global Board of Directors of the US India Business Council, Senior Advisor to the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy at the University of California San Diego, Board of the Center for Advancing Global Business at San Diego State University and US Cabinet Secretary heading Department of Transportation. Lall served as Vice President of Aeronautics Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin, Chief Executive of U.S. and International Strategic Development at General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems and held leadership roles with The Boeing Company where he was appointed as Vice President and India Country Head, Boeing Defense Space & Security.
In addition, he has worked as an adjunct faculty member at Embry- Riddle, McConnell Air Force Base, served as the founding Co-Chair of the US-India Aviation Cooperation Program and prior to Boeing he worked for Raytheon and conducted research with NASA Ames Research Center in various multidisciplinary engineering fields. Lall was also a special advisor to the United Nations in New York in broadband and associated cyber security issues. He earned a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from Carleton University in Canada, a Masters of Aeronautical Engineering degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Wichita State University in Kansas, his MBA from City University in Seattle and has completed management and executive courses at the American Management Association in Washington DC.
He was also conferred the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award by the President of the United States of America in September 2022, conferred the “World Leader Award” by the House of Lords in the United Kingdom in 2023 and the Golden Peacock award by the Institute of Directors (IOD) at United Arab Emirates in 2024. He is also an Ambassador of the State of Arkansas and a Kentucky Colonel which is the most well-known US colonelcies conferred to several past US Presidents. He was granted the Grand Cross by His highness Mahmoud Salah Al Din Assaf and Cambridge (UK) has listed him as one of only 2000 Outstanding Scientists of the Twentieth Century as well was President of the Mathematical Association of America. He has authored over hundred articles in various journals. He was also trained as a private pilot at the Phoenix International Flight Training Center in Florida.
Sabina Alkire
directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at ODID. Her research interests include multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, welfare economics, the capability approach, the measurement of freedoms and human development. Together with Professor James Foster, she developed the Alkire-Foster (AF) method for measuring multidimensional poverty, a flexible technique that can incorporate different dimensions, or aspects of poverty, to create measures tailored to each context. With colleagues at OPHI this has been applied and implemented empirically to produce a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). The MPI offers a tool to identify who is poor by considering the range of deprivations they suffer. It is used to report a headline figure of poverty (the MPI), which can be unpacked to provide a detailed information platform for policy design showing how people are poor nationally, and how they are poor by areas, groups, and by each indicator. Previously, she worked at the George Washington University, Harvard University, the Human Security Commission, and the World Bank. She has a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. She holds a DPhil in Economics, an Msc in Economics for Development and an MPhil in Christian Political Ethics from the University of Oxford.
Prerna Singh 
is Mahatma Gandhi Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies, with appointments in the School of Public Health and the Department of Sociology at Brown University. She has published numerous award-winning books and articles on human development, public health, ethnicity and nationalism. Her first book, How Solidarity Works for Welfare was awarded best book prizes from both the American Political Science and the American Sociological Associations. Singh has been awarded fellowships by the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Social Science Research Council, the Andrew Carnegie foundation, the American Academy of Berlin, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. She has shared her research with scholarly, policy and popular audiences in over a hundred lectures, including keynote addresses, delivered across twenty different countries.
Mekala Krishnan 
is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey’s business and economics research arm. Her research focuses on topics related to sustainable and inclusive growth, including climate risk and the net-zero transition, globalization, productivity growth, and gender economics. Her most recent research focuses on the net-zero transition, adaptation and physical climate risk across sectors and geographies, including its implications for companies and countries. She is an author of the recent MGI reports, The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it would bring, From poverty to empowerment: Raising the bar for sustainable and inclusive growth, and Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts. Her past research has focused on the risks facing global value chains and the future of globalization. Mekala is a frequent speaker on these topics at global conferences as well as with executives at Fortune 500 companies. She has authored numerous articles and her work has been cited in leading business publications, including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review. Mekala serves on a Bretton Woods Committee working group on climate finance and on advisory boards for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and for the Sibley School of Mechanical Engineering at Cornell University. She is also on the board of the Global Fund for Women, a leading public foundation dedicated to improving global gender equality. She was previously a member of a task force at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings focused on improving productivity measurement. Mekala received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2011. Prior to Cornell, she received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2006 from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
Raghuram Rajan 
is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School. Prior to that, he was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 2013 to 2016, as well as the Vice Chairman of the Board of the Bank for International Settlements from 2015 to 2016. Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund from 2003 to 2006. Dr. Rajan’s research interests range from banking and monetary policy to corporate finance, political economy, communities, and economic development. He co-authored Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists with Luigi Zingales in 2003. He then wrote Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, for which he was awarded the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs prize for best business book in 2010. In 2019, his book, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind was a finalist for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. His most recent book, with Rohit Lamba, is Breaking the Mold on reimagining India’s economic future. Dr. Rajan was awarded the inaugural Fischer Black award for the best financial economist under the age of 40 in 2003, the Deutsche Bank prize for financial economics in 2013, the Euromoney Central Bank Governor of the Year in 2014, and Banker magazine’s Global Central Bank Governor of the Year in 2016.
About the Reception Speaker
Junaid Kamal Ahmad is Vice President of Operations at the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the Political Risk Insurance and Credit Enhancement arm of the World Bank Group (WBG). He is responsible for advancing and enhancing MIGA’s brand partnering across WBG and with financial institutions, private investors, and development actors to originate and pursue meaningful, impact-driven projects. Mr. Ahmad also leads the Operations team of the Agency to deliver on MIGA’s mandate of mobilizing private finance for development projects in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs).
Mr. Ahmad, a Bangladeshi national, was previously the Country Director for the World Bank in India. He joined the Bank in 1991 as a Young Professional and worked on infrastructure development in Africa and Eastern Europe. He has since held several management positions, leading the Bank’s programs in diverse regions including Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. Mr. Ahmad served as the Chief of Staff and earlier as Special Assistant to the President of the World Bank Group. During a part of his time at the Bank, Mr. Ahmad was based in Johannesburg and New Delhi and in 2004, he was a core member of the World Development Report: Making Services Work for Poor People.
Throughout his career, Mr. Ahmad has focused on the role of service delivery in building and leveraging state capability and markets towards the goals of economic development and sustainability. In his work, Mr. Ahmad has focused on public finance and federalism and the management of urban governments across diverse country contexts from fragile and conflict settings, low and middle income, to large federations. In addition, he has worked on public-private partnerships in infrastructure sectors and with municipal governments, focusing on the mobilization of private equity and long-term debt from capital markets. As the first Senior Director of the World Bank’s Water Global Practice and the former Country Director for India, Mr. Ahmad initiated and oversaw multi-billion-dollar sector and country programs covering finance, infrastructure, and human development. He is recognized for his strategic leadership of teams to deliver impact at scale.
Mr. Ahmad holds a PhD in Applied Economics from Stanford University, a 2-year MPA from Harvard University and a BA in Economics from Brown University. Prior to joining the World Bank Group, Mr. Ahmad worked in the Planning Commission, Government of Bangladesh, in the areas of trade and industrial policy. Mr. Ahmad has published on fiscal federalism and decentralization and on various aspects of infrastructure reform and service delivery.
Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.
Christopher Fussner founded and owns TransTechnology Pte. Ltd. in Singapore in 1988, a major distributor of surface mount technology and semiconductor capital equipment. Headquartered in Singapore, Trans-Tec has 235 employees worldwide with offices in China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam. He has had extensive experience in negotiating and establishing joint ventures, strategic alliances, licenses, distribution networks and sales worldwide. In addition, Mr. Fussner is also founder and owner of Certain Cellars Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, an importer and distributor of fine wines. Prior to forming these companies, Mr. Fussner headed Asia sales for Amistar Corporation based in Seoul, Korea and Singapore. As such, he was responsible for sales and service for electronics manufacturing industry machines in Australia, Asia, and India.
is an expert in entrepreneurial strategy, skills development, and digital employee management platforms. She is the Founder of Global Talent Track, a leading vocational skills company that uses a blended learning model to bridge academia and the industry. She is the Co-Founder of 5F World, a platform for global consulting, investing, and mentoring in digital skills and digital transformation for start-ups and social enterprises, and has authored multiple books on knowledge, management, and digital success.
ational. He is a former Lead Economist at the World Bank and former consultant at the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and UNICEF. He previously was a Professor of Economics at Oxford University and Delhi University. He is an expert on topics including economic growth, macroeconomic policy, poverty, employment, entrepreneurship, urbanization, gender trade, decentralization, and agriculture.
is an associate professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University, the Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and the Director of the ESIA Initiative on Climate Change and Sustainable Cities at George Washington University, and an Affiliated Scholar of the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Professor Jedwab’s main fields of research are urban and real estate economics, development and growth, environmental economics, and labor economics. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, urban construction and climate change, the economic determinants and effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of institutions, human capital and technology in development and growth. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the World Bank-GWU Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference and the Washington Area Development Economics Symposium.
atarajan is the Co-Founder of 5F World, a platform for global consulting, investing, and mentoring in digital skills and digital transformation for start-ups and social enterprises. He is the Chairman of Honeywell Automation India and Lighthouse Communities Foundation, as well as a Central Board Member of the State Bank of India, Global Talent Track, and AVPN Singapore.
is the Executive Chair and Founder of Harmonia Holdings Group, LLC. She serves on the Fairfax Economic Development Authority Board, Asian American Chamber of Commerce Board, George Mason University President’s Innovation Advisory Council, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) DC Board, Northern Virginia’s Chamber of Commerce Strategic Leadership Board of Advisors, and as an Officer of the Harvard Club of Washington DC. She was named one of the Top 25 Female CEOs in the DMV in 2008 and received the US President’s Volunteer Service Award in 2021
l is president emeritus and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a policy-oriented research institution that opened its doors in Washington, DC in October 2001. Prior to launching the Center, Birdsall served for three years as senior associate and director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as on the reform of the international financial institutions.
Ana Palacio was the first woman to serve as Foreign Minister of Spain, from 2002-2004. Before this, she was a member of the Spanish Parliament, where she chaired the Joint Committee of the two Houses for European Affairs. She also served as a member of the European Parliament, where she chaired the Legal Affairs and Internal Market Committee, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee and the Conference of the Committee Chairs, the most senior decision-making body on legislative policy and programs. As the Head of the Spanish Delegation to the European Union’s Intergovernmental Conference and a member of the Presidium of the Convention, Ms. Palacio was at the forefront of the debate on the future of the European Union and drafted and led legal discussions on the European Treaties reform.
is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Distinguished Resident Scholar at the Emerging Markets Forum in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow at the Results for Development Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the international Scaling Community of Practice, which has over 2,500 participants.
is Associate Editor and Chief Economics correspondent at the Financial Times. Prior to that he was a senior economist at the World Bank and Director of Studies at the Trade Policy Research Centre, in London. Larry Summers described him as “the world’s preeminent financial journalist,” while economist Kenneth Rogoff has said “He really is the premier financial and economics writer in the world.” Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism in both 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize in 1994. In 2000. Wolf was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by the University of Nottingham in 2006, and was made Doctor of Science (Economics) of University of London, honoris causa, by the London School of Economics in the same year. In 2018, on the occasion of the KU Leuven Patron Saint‘s Day he received a doctorate honoris causa of the university. In 2019, Wolf received the Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Joe Zammit-Lucia With extensive experience in the business and political worlds, Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia is an adviser to business leaders focused on leadership in contemporary socio-political culture, an author, public speaker and commentator in the international press on the inter-relationship between business and politics.
is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, and a Senior Associate at the Council on Economic Policies, Zurich, Switzerland. He was Assistant Director in the IMF’s Research Department from 2015-2018, and the Director of the IMF-Singapore Regional Training Institute (STI) in Singapore from 2006-2015. Before moving to Singapore in 2006, Sunil was Chief of the IMF Institute’s Asian Division in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the IMF in 1992, he was on the Economics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Fanni Kovesdi (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Department of International Development, University of Oxford)
Scott M. Moore is a political scientist, university administrator, and former policymaker whose career focuses on China, sustainability, and emerging technology. As Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, Scott Moore works with faculty members from across the University to design, implement, and highlight innovative, high-impact global research initiatives in areas including sustainability and emerging technology. Dr. Moore directs Penn Global’s four research and engagement fund programs, including those designed to support faculty-led projects in China, India, and Africa as well as its At-Risk Scholars Program. In addition, Dr. Moore conducts research as an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China and The Water Center at Penn, and teaches in the Department of Political Science.
interested in understanding the factors that shape technological change, with a particular focus on transitioning to more sustainable and energy-saving technologies. Within this broader category, he studies consumer preferences and market demand for new technologies as well as relationships between innovation, industry structure, and technology policy. He has explored these themes in the context of China’s rapidly developing electric vehicle industry. He applies an interdisciplinary approach to research, with expertise in discrete choice modeling and conjoint analysis as well as interview-based case studies.
Barbara Stallings is a William R. Rhodes Research Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of Studies in Comparative International Development. She is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University. Before arriving at Brown in 2002, she was director of the Economic Development Division of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile (1993–2002), and professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1977–1993). She has doctorates in economics (University of Cambridge) and in political science (Stanford University) and is a specialist in development economics, with an emphasis on development strategies and international finance. In addition, she works on issues of economic relations between Asia and Latin America and comparisons between the two regions. Her recent books are Innovation and Inclusion in Latin America: Strategies to Avoid the Middle Income Trap (2016) and Promoting Development: The Political Economy of East Asian Foreign Aid (2017). Her most recent book, 
Yu-Chieh Hsu (Human Development Report Office)
Tasneem Mirza (United Nations Development Programme)
Jonathan Rothbaum is a research economist in the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. He works on the integration of administrative data into the production of income, resource, and wellbeing statistics. His research has focused on nonresponse, measurement error, and data quality in income surveys and on using surveys to study intergenerational mobility in the United States. Prior to joining the Census Bureau in 2013, Rothbaum received his doctorate in economics from George Washington University.
Nora Lustig is Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and the founding Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQ) at Tulane University. She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Dialogue. Professor Lustig’s research focuses on economic development, inequality and social policies with emphasis on Latin America. Her recent publication Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty is a step-by-step guide to assessing the impact of taxation and social spending on inequality and poverty in developing countries. Prof. Lustig is a founding member and President Emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and was a co-director of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000, Attacking Poverty. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Inequality and is a member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality’s Executive Council. Prof. Lustig served on the Atkinson Commission on Poverty, the High-level Group on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress, and the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Guido Neidhöfer is an advanced researcher in the Labor Markets and Human Resources department at ZEW Mannheim, Germany, as well as a fellow at the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (CIDER), visiting scholar at the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS) of the National University of La Plata, and an associated researcher of the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Humano (CEDH) of the Universidad de San Andres in Argentina. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of economic inequality, social mobility, education and migration.
Stephen B. Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.
Dr. Michael C. Wolfson received his B.Sc with honours from University of Toronto jointly in mathematics, computer science and economics in 1971, and then a Ph.D. from Cambridge in economics in 1977. He retired as Assistant Chief Statistician, Analysis and Development (which included the Health Statistics program and the central R&D function) at Statistics Canada in 2009. He was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modeling in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa for 2010-2017. Prior to joining Statistics Canada, he held increasingly senior positions in the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Department of Finance, the Privy Council Office, the House of Commons, and the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office. While a senior public servant, he was also a founding Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program in Population Health (1988-2003). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a member of the recently created Canadian Statistics Advisory Council.
James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in Mexico. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu.
Viral V. Acharya is the C.V. Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business (NYU-Stern) and an Academic Advisor to the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Philadelphia. Viral was a Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) during 23rd January 2017 to 23rd July 2019 in charge of Monetary Policy, Financial Markets, Financial Stability, and Research. His speeches while at the RBI will release in the end of July 2020 in the form of a book titled “Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India” (SAGE Publications India), with a new introductory chapter “Fiscal Dominance: A Theory of Everything in India”. Viral completed Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in 1995 and Ph.D. in Finance from NYU-Stern in 2001. Prior to joining Stern, he was at London Business School (2001-2008), the Academic Director of the Coller Institute of Private Equity at LBS (2007-09) and a Senior Houblon-Normal Research Fellow at the Bank of England (Summer 2008). Viral’s primary research interest is in theoretical and empirical analysis of systemic risk of the financial sector, its regulation and its genesis in government-induced distortions, an inquiry that cuts across several other strands of research – credit risk and liquidity risk, their interactions and agency-theoretic foundations, as well as their general equilibrium consequences. He has published articles in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Review of Finance, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and Financial Analysts Journal. He is currently associate editor of the Review of Corporate Finance Studies (RCFS, 2011-) and Review of Finance (2006-), and was an editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation (2009-12) and associate editor of the Journal of Finance (2011-14).
Liaquat Ahamed is the author of the critically acclaimed best-seller, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, about central bankers during the Great Depression of 1929-1932. The book won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2010 Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Gold Medal, and the 2009 Financial Times-Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award. Ahamed was a professional investment manager for twenty-five years. He has worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and the New York-based partnership of Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, where he served as chief executive. He is currently a director of the Putnam Funds. He is on the board of trustees of the Journal of Philosophy, the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference and a former trustee of the Brookings Institution and the New America Foundation. He has degrees in economics from Harvard and Cambridge.
Rakesh Mohan is one of India’s senior-most economic policymakers and an expert on central banking, monetary policy, infrastructure and urban affairs. Most recently he was executive director at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., representing India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan, and chairman, National Transport Development Policy Committee, Government of India, in the rank of a Minister of State. He is also a former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India. As deputy governor he was in charge of monetary policy, financial markets, economic research and statistics. In addition to serving in various posts for the Indian government, including representing India in a variety of international forums such as Basel and G20, Mohan has worked for the World Bank and headed prestigious research institutes. He is also Senior Advisor to the McKinsey Global Institute and Distinguished Fellow of Brookings India. Mohan has written extensively on urban economics, urban development, Indian economic policy reforms, monetary policy and central banking.
Maggie Chen is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. She has served as Director of GW’s Institute for International Economic Policy and worked as an economist in the research department of the World Bank and a consultant for the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Professor Chen’s research areas include multinational firms, international trade, and regional trade agreements. Her work has been published in academic journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of Development Economics. She is a co-editor of Economic Inquiry and an associate editor of Economic Modeling.
Deepa Ollapally is a political scientist specializing in Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, and Asian regional and maritime security. She is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center. She also directs the Rising Powers Initiative, a major research program that tracks and analyzes foreign policy debates in aspiring powers of Asia and Eurasia. Dr. Ollapally is currently working on a funded book, Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indian Ocean Region, which assesses the shifting patterns of geopolitical influence by major powers in the region since 2005 and the drivers of these changes. She is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012) and The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge, 2008). Her most recent books are two edited volumes, Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia (Routledge, 2017), and Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Dr. Ollapally has received grants from the Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Asia Foundation for projects related to India and Asia. Previously, she was Associate Professor at Swarthmore College and has been a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London and at Columbia University. Dr. Ollapally also held senior positions in the policy world including the US Institute of Peace, Washington DC and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She is a frequent commentator in the media, including appearances on CNN, BBC, CBS, Diane Rehm Show and Reuters TV. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.
James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at the George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University and holds a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (Mexico). Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in México. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu. Foster regularly teaches introductory and doctoral courses on international development and each spring joins with Professor Basu in presenting an undergraduate course on Game Theory and Strategic Thinking, to which staff and Board members of the World Bank are also invited. Professor Foster is also Research Fellow at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Department of International Development, Oxford University, and a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) Working Group, Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, University of Chicago. He also previously served as an Advisory Board Member on the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty.
Jennifer G. Cooke is director of the Institute for African Studies at The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. The Institute serves as central for research, scholarly discussion, and debate on issues relevant to Africa. She is a professor of practice in international affairs, teaching courses on U.S. Policy Toward Africa and Transnational Security Threats in Africa. Cooke joined George Washington University in August 2018, after 18 years as director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she led research and analysis on political, economic, and security dynamics in Africa. While at CSIS, Cooke directed projects on a wide range of African issues, including on violent extremist organizations in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin, China’s growing role in Africa, democracy and elections in Nigeria, religion and state authority in Africa, “stress-testing” state stability in Africa, Africa’s changing energy landscape, and more. She is a frequent writer and lecturer on U.S.-Africa policy and has provided briefing, commentary, and testimony to the media, US Congress, AFRICOM leadership and the U.S. military. She has traveled widely in Africa and has been an election observer in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, and Nigeria. As a teenager, she lived in Cote d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic. She holds an M.A. in African studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. in government, magna cum laude, from Harvard University.
Andrew Tiffin is a senior economist at the IMF, working in the regional studies division of the Fund’s African Department. He is also keenly involved in the effort to incorporate artificial intelligence/machine-learning techniques into the standard analytical toolkit of the Fund. Previously, he has worked on Middle Eastern countries, with a particular interest in refugee issues in Jordan and Lebanon, as well as numerous countries in Europe–he was part of the Italy team during the debt crisis of 2012, and part of the Russia team for the global financial crisis of 2008. Raised in Sydney, Andrew is an Australian national. He received his post-graduate training at Princeton University, where he obtained both a Ph.D. in economics and an M.P.A. in international relations. In addition to his work with the Fund, Andrew has held positions at the Reserve Bank of Australia, and with the Australian Government.
Louise Fox is an experienced development economist who specializes in strategies for employment creation, opportunity expansion, economic empowerment, and poverty reduction. She has advised governments in the developed and developing world, international organizations, and philanthropic and non-profit organizations on problem diagnosis, strategies for results, and outcome measurement. She held full-time positions at USAID (as Chief Economist) and at the World Bank. She is currently affiliated with the African Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution and the Blum Center for Developing Economies, University of California, Berkeley. She was previously affiliated with the Overseas Development Institute, where she led a major research project. Louise has published in the areas of inclusive growth, structural transformation, youth employment, the political economy of poverty reduction, gender and women’s economic empowerment, employment, labor markets, and labor regulation, pension reform, reform of child welfare systems, social protection, effective public expenditures in the social sectors, and female-headed households and child welfare. Her most recent book was Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, published by the World Bank in 2014.
Seung Mo Choi is a Senior Economist working on regional surveillance in the IMF’s African Department. He has worked on banking crises, financial market policies, climate change, low-income country issues, and capacity development, including in the IMF’s European Department and in the Institute for Capacity Development. His research has been published in economics and finance journals such as International Economic Review. Prior to joining the IMF, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Washington State University and obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in economics from Seoul National University.
Stephen C. Smith is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. In 2018 he was UNICEF Senior Fellow at the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, Florence, Italy. Smith received his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University and has been a Fulbright Research Scholar, a Jean Monnet Research Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings, a Fulbright Senior Specialist, a member of the Advisory Council of BRAC USA, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. He has twice served as Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at GWU. Smith is the co-author with Michael Todaro of Economic Development (12th Edition, Pearson, 2014). He is also author of Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works (paperback edition Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and co-editor with Jennifer Brinkerhoff and Hildy Teegen of NGOs and the Millennium Development Goals: Citizen Action to Reduce Poverty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He is also author or coauthor of about 45 professional journal articles and many other publications. Smith’s recent research has focused on extreme poverty and strategies and programs to address it; and on the economics of adaptation and resilience to climate change in low-income countries, emphasizing autonomous adaptation by households and communities and its effects, and adaptation financing.
Preya Sharma is a senior economist in the African Department of the IMF where she is Special Assistant to the Director. Her research has focused on structural transformation, the future of work, and digitalization in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as emerging market crises and development. Before joining the IMF she was the Head of Emerging Markets at HM Treasury in the UK. She holds a Masters in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.
Maggie Xiaoyang Chen
