Accountability and Transparencyfor Development

ABCDE 2012

May 7 – 8, 2012 Washington, DC | World Bank | Preston Auditorium

Practical Information

V E N U E

Preston Auditorium

World Bank Headquarters | Main Complex

1818 H. Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20433

The Conference

R E G I S T R A T I O N A N D S E C U R I T Y

Registration will open at 8 a.m. on Monday, May 7, 2012.

For security reasons, all visitors to the World Bank are required to pass through a metal detector and all visitors’ bags are X-rayed.

On arrival at the World Bank, please enter through the main entrance of the Main Complex (1818 H. Street, NW). There will be a security guard and signage to guide you. As you pass through security, you will be directed to the ABCDE registration tables (after the metal detectors). Here you will register and pick up your World Bank visitor’s pass (which will grant you access to World Bank buildings until 6 p.m. on May 8), as well as a conference badge and materials.

For non-Bank/IMF staff, visitor’s passes are mandatory.

C O N F E R E N C E M A T E R I A L S

Session papers will be provided on a USB stick in your conference bag, and they will also be available on the ABCDE website www.worldbank.org/abcde2012 after each session. Hard copies will not be provided.

I N T E R N E T A C C E S S

There is free Wi-Fi available at the Bank. To obtain the password, please visit the ABCDE registration desk.

B R E A K F A S T A N D L U N C H

Breakfast will be served on Monday May,7,2012 and Tuesday, May 8, 2012 from 8:30–9:00 am.

Lunch will be served on Monday, 7, 2012 and Tuesday May 8, 2012 in the Atrium.

M O N E Y

Foreign Exchange Facilities: Bank-Fund Staff Federal Credit Union (BFSFCU) is a full service bank and is located in the World Bank’s Main Complex (Room MC C2 300).

ATM machines are located in all Bank building lobbies. More information is available at the registration desk

Monday, May 7, 2012

08:00 – 09:00 Registration and Breakfast

09:00 – 09:15 Opening Address

Justin Yifu Lin (Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Development Economics, World Bank)

09:15 – 10:15 Keynote Address 1: Live, Dead, and Fictitious Capital

Chair: Asli Demirgüç-Kunt (Director, Development Policy, Development Economics and Chief Economist, Financial and Private Sector Development Network, World Bank)

Hernando de Soto (Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Peru)

10:15 – 10:30 Coffee

10:30 – 12:30 Session 1: Accountability and Transparency in the Financial Sector: Issues and Empirical Evidence

Chair: Augusto Lopez-Claros (Director, Global Indicators and Analysis, Financial and Private Sector Development, World Bank)

» Does Trade Globalization Induce or Inhibit Corporate Transparency?. Unbundling the Growth Potential and Product Competition Channels

Hui Tong (IMF) and Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University, US)

Discussant: Caroline Freund (World Bank)

» Understanding the Incentives of Commissions Motivated Agents: Theory and Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market

Santosh Anagol (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, US), Shawn Cole (Harvard Business School, US) and Shayak Sarkar (Harvard University, US)

Discussant: Xavier Giné (World Bank)

» Why Do Firms Evade Taxes? The Role of Information Sharing and Financial Sector Outreach

Thorsten Beck (Tilburg University, Netherlands), Chen Lin (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China) and Yue Ma (Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR, China)

Discussant: Vojislav Maksimovic (University of Maryland, US)

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch

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13:30 – 15:30 Session 2: The Politics of Deforestation and Electricity Theft

Chair: Michael Toman (Research Manager, Development Economics, World Bank)

» Electoral Competition and Deforestation: Evidence from Kenya

Ameet Morjaria (Harvard University, US)

Discussant: Fernando Aragon (Simon Fraser University, Canada)

» The Political Economy of Deforestation in the Tropics

Robin Burgess (London School of Economics, UK), Matthew Hansen (South Dakota State University, US), Ben Olken (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US), Peter Potapov (South Dakota State University, US), and Stefanie Sieber (World Bank)

Discussant: Monica Martinez-Bravo (John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, US)

» Theft and Loss of Electricity in an Indian State

Miriam Golden (University of California, Los Angeles and Princeton University, US) and Brian Min (University of Michigan, US)

Discussant: Philip Keefer (World Bank)

15:30 – 15:45 Coffee

15:45 – 17:45 Session 3: Democracy and Community Participation: Implications for School Quality and Governance

Chair: Elizabeth King (Sector Director, Education, Human Development Network, World Bank)

» Improving Educational Quality Through Enhancing Community Participation: Results from a Randomized Field Experiment in Indonesia

Menno Pradhan (VU University Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam, Netherlands), Daniel Suryadarma (Autralian National University, Australia), Amanda Beatty (Private Consultant), Maisy Wong (University of Pennsylvania, US), Armida Alishjabana (Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia), Arya Gaduh (University of Southern California, US) and Rima Prama Artha (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan)

Discussant: Harry Patrinos (World Bank)

» What Democracy Does (and Doesn’t Do) for Basic Services: School Fees, School Inputs, and African Elections

Robin Harding (New York University, US) and David Stasavage (New York University, US)

Discussant: Deon Filmer (World Bank)

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» Does Local Democracy Improve Local Governance? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan

Andrew Beath (Harvard University and World Bank), Fotini Christia (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US), and Ruben Enikopolov (New Economics School, US)

Discussant: Aart Kraay (World Bank)

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

08:30 – 09:00 Breakfast

09:00 – 10:00 Keynote Address 2: Transparency and Accountability: Interpreting the Evidence

Chair: Martin Ravallion (Director, Development Research Group, World Bank)

Timothy Besley (London School of Economics, UK)

10:00 – 10:15 Coffee

10:15 – 12:15 Session 4: Political Accountability, Politicians’ Rents and Scorecards

Chair: Aart Kray (Lead Economist, Development Research Group. World Bank)

» Policing Politicians: Citizen Empowerment and Political Accountability in Uganda

Macartan Humphreys (Columbia University, US) and Jeremy Weinstein (Stanford University, US)

Discussant: Razvan Vlaicu (University of Maryland, US)

» Using Asset Disclosures to Study Politicians’ Rents: An Application to India

Rikhil R. Bhavnani (University of Wisconsin-Madison, US)

Discussant: Raymond Fisman (Columbia University, US)

» Motivating Politicians: The Impacts of Monetary Incentives on Quality and Performance

Claudio Ferraz (PUC Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Frederico Finan (University of California, Berkeley, US)

Discussant: Thomas Fujiwara (Princeton University, US)

12:15 – 13:30 Lunch

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13:30 – 15:30 Session 5: The Impact of Media and Information Technology on the Provision of Public Services

Chair: Linda Van Gelder (Director, Governance and Public Sector, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network, World Bank)

» Information Technologies and Provision of National Identification Cards by the Bolivian Police: Evidence from Two Randomized Natural Field Experiments

Monica Yanez-Pagans (World Bank and IZA), Alberto Chong (George Washington University, US), and Gustavo Machicado Salas (Institute of Advanced Development Studies, Bolivia)

Discussant: Miriam Bruhn (World Bank)

» Do Informed Citizen’s Receive More…or Pay More? The Impact of Radio on the Government Distribution of Public Health Benefits

Philip Keefer (World Bank) and Stuti Khemani (World Bank)

Discussant: Timothy Besley (London School of Economics, UK)

» Can Information Raising Voter Expectations Improve Accountability? A Field Experiment in Mali

Jessica Gottlieb (Stanford University, US)

Discussant: Stuti Khemani (World Bank)

15:30 – 15:45 Closing Remarks

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Santosh Anagol is an Assistant Professor in the Business and Public Policy Department at Wharton. His research focuses on financial market issues in emerging markets. One recent project studies how the regulation of fees has shaped the Indian mutual fund industry. Another project studies the behavior of life insurance agents and how they respond to changes in regulatory policy. His teaching focuses on the effects of economic regulation on business. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2009 and his undergraduate degree from Stanford in

2002, and was a Fulbright Scholar to India in 2002–2003.

Fernando Aragon is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He received a bachelor degree from Universidad del Pacífico (Peru) and a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics. His research centers on development and political economy, in particular the effect of natural resources on local communities. He is currently studying the effect of mining activities on living standards in Ghana. Before joining academia, he served as an economic consultant in private and public organizations in Peru and U.K.

Andrew Beath is based in Manila, Philippines, and works in the World Bank’s Office of the Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2010, Andrew lived in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he led the randomized impact evaluation of the National Solidarity Program, the largest development program in Afghanistan. During his time in Afghanistan, Andrew also designed and implemented a quasi-experimental evaluation of the National Rural Access Program and advised efforts to build local capacity in impact evaluation and survey

administration. Andrew holds a Master of Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and will receive a Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2012.

Thorsten Beck is Professor of Economics and Chairman of the European Banking Center. Before joining Tilburg University and the CentER, he worked at the Development Research Group of the World Bank. His research and policy work has focused on two main questions: What is the effect of financial sector development on economic growth and poverty alleviation? What are the determinants of a sound and effective financial sector? Recently, his research has focused on access to financial services by small and medium-sized enterprises and households. He is

co-author of “Financing Africa: Through the Crisis and Beyond” and “Finance for All? Policies and Pitfalls in Expanding Access.” His country experience in both research and policy work includes Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Russia and several sub-Saharan African countries.

Timothy Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. From September 2006 to August 2009, he served as an external member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. He is also the Gluskin-Granovsky Fellow in the Institutions, Organizations and Growth Program of the

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Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). Professor Besley was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and Oxford University where he became a prize fellow of All Souls College. He taught subsequently at Princeton before being appointed Professor in the economics department at the LSE in 1995. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the British Academy, and the European Economic Association. He is also a foreign honorary member of the American Economic Association and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2010 he served as the President of the European Economic Association. Professor Besley is a past co-editor of the American Economic Review, and a 2005 winner of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award of the European Economics Association which is granted every other year to an economist aged under 45 who has made a significant contribution to economics in Europe. His research, which mostly has a policy focus, is mainly in the areas of Development Economics, Public Economics and Political Economy.

Rikhil R. Bhavnani is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching focus on inequalities in political representation and corruption among politicians, particularly in South Asia. Other projects examine the effects of migration on political participation and violence in India, the role of the Great Depression in helping the countries of South Asia secure their political independence, the selection and impact of leaders, and the effects of foreign aid on economic growth. His research

is characterized by a close attention to causality, by interests in political and economic development. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review and is forthcoming in The Economic Journal. Prior to his appointment at Wisconsin, he was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. He received a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in September 2010, and an MA in economics in 2008.

Miriam Bruhn is an Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group. She joined the Bank as a Young Economist in September 2007. Her research interests include the effect of regulatory reform on entrepreneurial activity, the informal sector, micro and small enterprises, financial literacy, and the relationship between institutions and economic development. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and a B.A. in Economics from Yale University.

Robin Burgess is a Professor of Economics, a Founder and Academic Director of the International Growth Centre, and a Director of the Economic Organisation and Public Policy Programme all at the London School of Economics, He received a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from Edinburgh University, a M.Sc. in Economics from the LSE and a Ph.D. in Economics from Oxford University. His areas of research interest include development economics, public economics, political economy, labor economics and environmental economics. He has published on a variety of

topics—natural disasters, mass media, rural banks, land reform, labor regulation, industrial policy, taxation, poverty and growth. He is Program Director of the Development Economics Program at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a Member of the Board of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau for

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Economic Research (NBER), a member of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a Fellow of the European Development Research Development Network (EUDN), a member of the Institute for Policy Dialogue (IPR), an Associate Editor of the Economic Journal and is the Founder and Director of the Microeconomics of Growth Research Network.

Asli Demirgüç-Kunt the Director of Development Policy in the World Bank’s Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC), and Chief Economist of the Financial and Private Sector Network (FPD). After joining the Bank in 1989 as a Young Economist, she has been in different divisions of the Research Group, working on financial sector issues and advising on financial sector policy. She is the lead author of the World Bank Policy Research Report 2007, “Finance for All? Policies and Pitfalls in Expanding Access.” The author of over 100 publications, she has

published widely in academic journals. Her research has focused on the links between financial development and firm performance and economic development. Banking crises, financial regulation, access to financial services, including SME finance, are among her areas of research. Prior to coming to the Bank, she was an Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from the Ohio State University.

Claudio Ferraz is Associate Professor of Economics at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). His areas of interest are development, political economy and public economics. In particular, his research focuses on governance and accountability in developing countries and its consequences for politics and public service delivery. His ongoing projects examine how voters react to information campaigns; whether pay-for-performance improve the quality of education; and whether increases in the quality of politicians affect public policies.

Deon Filmer is lead economist in the Human Development unit of the Africa Region of World Bank. He has carried out research that spans topics in education, health, social protection, and poverty, and he has published extensively in these areas. Recent publications include papers on the impact of scholarship programs on school participation in Cambodia; on the roles of poverty, orphanhood, and disability in explaining education inequalities; and on the determinants of fertility behavior. He was a core team member of the World Development Reports in 1995 Workers in

an Integrating World and 2004 Making Services Work for Poor People. He recently co-authored a book Making Schools Work: New Evidence on Accountability Reforms. His current research focuses on measuring and explaining inequalities in education and health outcomes and evaluating the impact of interventions that aim to increase and promote school participation among the poor (such as conditional cash or food transfers) and interventions that aim to improve education service provision (such as policies to improve the quality of teachers in remote areas). He received his Ph.D. in economics from Brown University.

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Frederico Finan is an assistant professor at the Economics Department at UC-Berkeley, where he has taught since 2009. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC-Berkeley in 2006, and prior to coming to Berkeley, he was an assistant professor at UCLA. He is also an affiliate of Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a research fellow at IZA and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and an associate editor of Journal of Development Economics. Fred’s research interests span the intersection

of political economy and development economics. His most recent work studies the causes and consequences of corruption; the effect of politicians’ salary on political selection and performance; and the long-term effects of political dynasties. He has conducted fieldwork in Brazil, Mexico, and Paraguay.

Raymond Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and director of the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. His research—on topics ranging from corruption to racial preferences in dating to the impact of corporate philanthropy—has been published in leading economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. He also writes a monthly column for Slate magazine, and is currently working on a book about the economics of office life, to

be published by Twelve in January.

Caroline Freund is the Chief Economist in the Middle East and North Africa Region of the World Bank. She has also worked at the IMF and the Federal Reserve Board. She has worked on economic growth, international trade, and international finance. Her work covers the developing world and transition countries. She is the author of numerous academic and policy papers on international trade, development, and current account adjustment. Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the

Journal of International Economics. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University.

Thomas Fujiwara is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University. His research is in development economics and political economy. Thomas earned his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.

Xavier Gine is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He is currently a BREAD affiliate and Associate Editor for the Journal of Development Economics. Since joining the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002, his research has focused on access to financial services and rural financial markets. In recent papers he investigated the macroeconomic effects of a credit liberalization; the relationship between formal and informal sources of credit in rural credit markets; indigenous

interlinked credit contracts in the fishing industry and the impact of microfinance services such as business training and financial literacy, microinsurance and microsavings. Prior to joining the Bank he

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was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Miriam Golden teaches comparative politics in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. She recently served as Chair of the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section in Political Economy and she serves on the editorial boards of various U.S. and European professional journals. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the International Growth Centre, and the Governments of Quebec and Canada. For the 2011–12 academic year, she is on leave as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at the

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Professor Golden is currently involved in a major research project on the partisan and electoral bases of political corruption in rich and poor democracies.

Jessica Gottlieb is a Ph.D. Candidate at Stanford University researching democracy and government accountability in poor countries. Her current work analyzes sources of democratic failure in the West African country, Mali. To study whether low voter expectations undermine accountability, she conducted a field experiment randomly assigning a civic information intervention to 370 villages. A related paper examines the determinants of variation in public goods provision across Mali’s municipalities. She is also designing a research project in Senegal to

study the extent to which clientelism breeds accountability during the 2012 legislative elections. Gottlieb received an MA in Economics from Stanford in 2011 and will complete her Ph.D. in 2013. She is a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law for 2012–13. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the International Growth Centre and Stanford’s Global Underdevelopment Action Fund.

Philip Keefer is a Lead Research Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. The focus of his work, based on experience in countries ranging from Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic to Indonesia, México, Perú and Pakistan, is the determinants of political incentives to pursue economic development. His research, on issues such as the impact of insecure property rights on growth; the effects of political credibility on policy; and the sources of political credibility in democracies and autocracies, has appeared in journals ranging from

the Quarterly Journal of Economics to the American Political Science Review.

Stuti Khemani is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group and the Africa region’s Chief Economist’s office of the World Bank. Her area of research is the political economy of public policy choices, and institutional reforms for development. Her work is published in leading economics and political science journals, including the American Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics and American Political Science Review. Her research and advisory work spans a diverse range of countries, including Benin, Bolivia, China, India, the

Philippines, and Nigeria. She holds a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Elizabeth M. King is Director of Education in the Human Development Network of the World Bank. In this position, she is the World Bank’s senior spokesperson for global policy and strategic education issues in developing countries. Until January 2009, she was a manager in the Bank’s research department, heading the team that focuses on human development issues. She has published on topics such as household investments in human capital; the linkages between education, poverty and economic development; gender issues in development, especially women’s

education; education finance, and the impact of decentralization reforms. Since joining the World Bank, she has worked on countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and the Philippines, among others, contributing to public expenditure reviews, country economic assessments, policy analyses of the human development sectors, and impact evaluations of policies and programs. She was the Lead Economist for the Bank’s human development department for East Asian countries for three years, and was a co-author of three World Development Reports. Ms. King has a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University and a BA from the University of the Philippines.

Aart Kraay is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 1995 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1995), and a B.Sc. in economics from the University of Toronto (1990). His research interests include international capital movements, growth and inequality, governance, and the Chinese economy. His research on these topics has been published in scholarly journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Monetary

Economics, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of the European Economic Association. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics, and is an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has also held visiting positions at the International Monetary Fund and the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Justin Yifu Lin is the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, a position he has held since June 2008. In his current position, Mr. Lin guides the Bank’s intellectual leadership and plays a key role in shaping the economic research agenda of the institution. Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Lin served for 15 years as Founding Director and Professor of the China Centre for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking University and is the author of seventeen books including the Chinese Miracle (1996), State-Owned Enterprise Reform in China (2001), and

Economic Development and Transition (2009). He is a fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy of Sciences.

Augusto Lopez-Claros is the Director of Global Indicators and Analysis at the World Bank Group in March 2011. Previously he was Chief Economist and Director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was the editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication, as well as a number of regional economic reports. Before joining the Forum he was Executive Director with Lehman Brothers (London) and Senior International Economist. He was the International Monetary Fund’s resident

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representative in the Russian Federation during 1992–95. Before joining the IMF, he was professor of economics at the University of Chile in Santiago. Lopez-Claros was educated in England and the United States, receiving a diploma in Mathematical Statistics from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University.

Vojislav (Max) Maksimovic is the Dean’s Chair Professor of Finance at the Smith School. His recent research focuses on how a firm’s organizational structure affects the flow of resources across its divisions. He has also worked on how competition in high technology industries determines the timing of initial public offerings. Maksimovic is interested in international finance, specifically in how a country’s legal and institutional environment influences the financing and investment by firms. Maksimovic’s research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Review of

Financial Studies, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. He is an associate editor of Journal of Financial Intermediations and a past member of the board of directors of the Western Finance Association.

Monica Martinez-Bravo is Assistant Professor of Economics in Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. Her research focuses on the political economy of development. She has studied the role of different local political institutions as determinants of the extent of voter manipulation in new democracies, providing evidence from Indonesia. She has also studied the effects of the introduction of local elections in economic outcomes in

the context of rural China. She received scholarships from the Rafael del Pino Foundation and Ramón Areces Foundation and served as a consultant of the World Bank (2007) and the University of Western Cape, South Africa.

Ameet Morjaria is a Harvard Academy Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard Kennedy School. His interests are in the economics of developing countries, in particular Sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently working on the political economy of deforestation in Kenya, Ethiopia’s industrial policy in non-traditional agriculture and on the efficiency of the Rwandese coffee sector. He received a PhD in Economics (2010), MRes Economics (2005), and BSc Econometrics

and Mathematical Economics (2002) from the London School of Economics. Prior to joining the Harvard Academy, Ameet was a Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in the Sustainability Science Program (2011). He has consulted for Kaiser Associates and worked in investment banking at Deutsche Bank.

Harry Anthony Patrinos is Lead Education Economist at the World Bank. He specializes in school-based management, demand-side financing and public-private partnerships. He manages the Benchmarking Education Systems for Results in East Asia, the role of non-state provision in education, and equity and inclusion work programs. He also leads the Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Development research program. Previously he managed education programs in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Publications include Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Development

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(Cambridge University Press), Making Schools Work: New Evidence on Accountability Reforms (2011), The Role and Impact of Public-Private Partnerships in Education (2009), Emerging Evidence on Vouchers and Faith-Based Providers in Education (2009), Decentralized Decision-Making in Schools: The Theory and Evidence on School-Based Management (2009), Indigenous People and Poverty in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis with George Psacharopoulos (Ashgate). Mr. Patrinos has many publications in the academic and policy literature, with more than 60 journal articles. He has also worked in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. He previously worked as an economist at the Economic Council of Canada. Mr. Patrinos received a doctorate from the University of Sussex.

Menno Pradhan is a professor at the VU university Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His research focuses on impact evaluation of health and education interventions in developing countries. He holds a PhD from Tilburg University, and has since then worked at the Free University in Amsterdam, Cornell University and the World Bank. He has investigated the effects of health insurance, social funds, teacher training and early childhood development interventions on human development outcomes. He also has investigated poverty more broadly, by

including dimension such as subjective poverty, health inequality and conflict.

Martin Ravallion is Director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He has held various positions in the Bank, since he joined as an Economist in 1988. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics, and has taught economics at L.S.E., Oxford University, the Australian National University, and Princeton University. His main research interests over the last 25 years have concerned poverty and policies for fighting it. He has advised numerous governments and international agencies on this topic, and he has written

extensively on this and other subjects in economics, including three books and over 180 papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes. He currently serves on the Editorial Boards of ten economics journals, is a Senior Fellow of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development and a Founding Council Member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

Hernando de Soto is President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy headquartered in Lima, Peru considered by The Economist as one of the two most important think tanks in the world. Time has chosen him as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century. Forbes has chosen him as one of 15 innovators “who will reinvent your future.” Forbes, Time and The Economist have chosen him on separate occasions as one of the leading innovators in the world. More than 20,000 readers of Prospect and Foreign Policy ranked him as one of the

world’s top 13 “public intellectuals”. He has served as President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization, as CEO of Universal Engineering Corporation (one of Europe’s largest consulting engineering firms), also as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank. He has published several articles and papers on economic policy. He is the author of The Other Path: the Economic Answer to Terrorism and his seminal work The Mystery of Capital.

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David Stasavage is Professor and incoming Chair of the Department of Politics at New York University. He specializes in the political economy of democratic institutions, with a particular focus on issues of representation and accountability. In addition to numerous journal articles, most recently he is the author of States of Credit: Size, Power, and the Development of European Polities, Princeton University Press 2011.

Michael Toman is Lead Economist on Climate Change in the Development Research Group and Manager of the Energy and Environment Team. His current research interests include alternative energy resources, policies for responding to risks of climate change catastrophes, timing of investments for greenhouse gas reduction, and mechanisms for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through reduced deforestation. During his career Mike has done extensive research on climate change economics and policy, energy markets and policy, environmental

policy instruments, and approaches to achieving sustainable development. Prior to joining the World Bank in fall 2008, he held senior analytical and management positions at RAND Corporation, Inter-American Development Bank, and Resources for the Future. His teaching experience includes adjunct positions at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the School of the Environment, University of California at Santa Barbara. Mike has a B.A. from Indiana University, a M.Sc. in applied mathematics from Brown University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Rochester.

Hui Tong has been an economist at the Research Department of the IMF since 2006. He was an economist at the Bank of England from 2004 to 2006, after receiving Ph.D. in economics from University of California at Berkeley in 2004. His research covers international finance, finance and macroeconomics, and has been reported in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy and China Daily. He has published in academic journals including American Economic Review, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of International Economics.

Linda Van Gelder is the Director for Governance and Public Sector at the World Bank. In her 18-year career at the World Bank, she has held various positions including Manager of the East Asia and Pacific Economics Department, Economic Adviser in the Africa Region, and country economist in Egypt, Yemen and Afghanistan. Her work has ranged across the governance and public sector management, economic policy, and poverty reduction. In her current position, she provides strategic leadership on the Bank’s work on governance and public sector

management. Ms. Van Gelder is an American national and holds a PhD in Economics from Cornell University.

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S P E A K E R S

Razvan Vlaicu is Assistant Professor, received his PhD in economics from Northwestern University in June 2006. He joined the faculty of the University of Maryland in the same year. His research interests include political economy, applied microeconomics, development and applied econometrics. His research has focused on political accountability in collective choice institutions, such as executive bodies and legislative assemblies, and the political economy of development and clientelism. Recent research papers include “Executive Performance under Direct

and Hierarchical Accountability Structures: Theory and Evidence,” “Executive Control and Legislative Success” (forthcoming in the Review of Economic Studies, joint with Daniel Diermeier), and “Democracy, Credibility and Clientelism” (published in the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, joint with Philip Keefer). At Maryland, Razvan teaches courses in undergraduate econometrics and graduate political economy.

Jeremy M. Weinstein is Associate Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He serves as director of the Center for African Studies, and is an affiliated faculty member at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy

of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Journal of Democracy. Weinstein recently returned to Stanford after serving as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House between 2009 and 2011.

Monica Yanez-Pagans is currently a consultant at the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Equity Group (PRMPR) and will be joining the Young Professionals Program in the summer of 2012. Prior to joining PRMPR, she was a Research Fellow at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank and an Associate Economics Affairs Officer at the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies of UNCTAD. Her research interests are in the area of political economy and institutional reforms for development, with a special interest

in field experiments on the topics of governance, politics, and institutions. She holds a M.Sc. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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