About
Contributors - AL20

Martin Ravallion – Speaker
Martin Ravallion is a leading economist in the research of poverty and policies for fighting it. Ravallion is best known for his proposal of the ‘$1 per day’ poverty line, which resulted as the universal measurement for monitoring progress against global poverty. He has done extensive research on poverty, linking economic policies to the welfare of poor people, and the evaluation of anti-poverty programmes. 

Ravallion is the Edmond D. Villani Chair of Economics at Georgetown University. Previously he was the Director of the World Bank’s Development Research Group and has advised numerous governments and international agencies on poverty reduction policies. Currently, he is the President of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, a Senior Fellow of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, USA, and a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Global Development.

Torbjörn Becker – Introduction

Torbjörn Becker has been Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) at the Stockholm School of Economics since August 2006. He is also a board member of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, chairman of the board of the Kyiv Economics Institute (Ukraine), and a member of the International Faculty Committee at the International School of Economics in Tbilisi.

Prior to starting at SITE, Dr Becker worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for nine years. He holds a PhD in economics from the Stockholm School of Economics, and has also studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and Manchester Business School. His work covers macroeconomics, international economics, financial markets, debt management, fiscal policy, and development issues.

Finn Tarp – Chair
Finn Tarp is Director of UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland. He is also a professor of development economics at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen. He founded the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) in 1996, and since then has co-ordinated DERG’s extensive academic research and teaching activities alongside a large portfolio of externally funded development economics research and capacity-building projects. Professor Tarp is also a member of the Council of Eminent Persons (CEP) advising the Chief Economist of the World Bank.