Researchers & Affiliates

The SME Initiative operates under the direction of Antoinette Schoar (Executive Director), MIT, Sloan School of Management and Dean Karlan (Co-Director), Yale University and Innovations for Poverty Action.

The SME Initiative aspires to foster an integrated network of practitioners and researchers interested in SME policy to ensure:

• new collaborations can be initiated efficiently;
• the focus of the research remains relevant to the private sector and practitioner community; and
• the findings of the research reach those in the best position to apply them.

We are pleased that the following researchers, practitioners, and development professionals have agreed to be a part of our affiliate network.  These individuals will help us shape our research agenda and develop an innovative project portfolio.

Core Affiliates:

Nick Bloom, Stanford University

Nick Bloom is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department and a Courtesy Professor in the Business School at Stanford University. His main research interests are measuring and explaining management and organizational practices across firms and countries. He also works on innovation and IT, looking at factors that affect these, such as competition, tax and regulation. A third area of research is the causes and consequences of uncertainty, arising from events like the 9/11 terrorist attack and the Credit Crunch. He previously worked (in London) as a research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, as a policy advisor at HM Treasury, and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. He lives with his wife and three kids on the Stanford campus, where he has been since 2005.

Sandra Darville, Inter-American Development Bank

Sandra Darville was named Chief of the Development Effectiveness Unit of the Multilateral Investment Fund in July 2010.  She is responsible for implementing measures to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and knowledge assessment of MIF programs, including the implementation of an evaluability strategy for a portfolio of over 600 operations supporting private sector development in Latin America and the Caribbean.   MIF’s new impact evaluation program will include the design and contracting of as many as 20 studies per year and, most importantly, involves a dissemination strategy to leverage impact with other stakeholders in the area.   

Ms. Darville brings a strong microfinance and SME operational background to this function, having previously built and led MIF’s financial inclusion activities for 12 years.   Under her leadership, the MIF became the region’s most important donor and investor in microfinance and early stage equity investing.  Its portfolio grew from seven small, high risk investments to over 100 transactions, including some of the region’s first and most important investments in transforming microfinance organizations, microfinance start-ups, investment funds and other vehicles.  In addition to the development effects of these operations, MIF’s portfolio demonstrated the financial viability of these sectors.

She has served on the Boards of microfinance banks, investment funds and on the investment committee of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (C-GAP).  She has a Master's in International Management from Thunderbird, Phoenix, AZ, and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia.     

Greg Fischer, London School of Economics

Greg Fischer is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the London School of Economics and Co-Director for the finance program at the International Growth Centre. He is a graduate of Princeton University and received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also has ten years of experience in the investment and banking sectors with Centre Partners Management and Morgan Stanley Capital Partners. He is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Economic and Social Research Council’s First Grant (2009-2012), the Robert M. Solow Prize (2008), the Small Grant in Behavioral Economics from Russell Sage Foundation (2007), the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship (2005-2008), and MIT’s Presidential Fellowship (2003-2005). He is also a member of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, the Economic Organization and Public Policy Programme, STICERD at LSE, CEPR and BREAD.

Randall Kempner, Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs

Randall Kempner is Executive Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a global network of organizations that propel entrepreneurship in emerging markets. The network's members provide critical financing and business support services to small and growing businesses (SGBs) that create significant economic, environmental and social impacts in developing countries. As executive director of ANDE, Randall oversees the implementation of ANDE’s extensive program and policy agenda, including efforts to develop standardized social and environmental metrics for impact investment, training seminars on supporting and investing in emerging-market entrepreneurs, and the ANDE Capacity Development Fund, a $1 million facility which supports capacity building and innovation within the SGB sector. Randall has nearly twenty years of experience in the field of national and international economic development.  Most recently, he served as Vice President for Regional Innovation at the U.S. Council on Competitiveness.  Prior to joining the Council, Randall was co-founder of OTF Group, an international consulting firm that advises regions and nations on how to create competitive advantage.  He is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship-based economic development strategies. 

Asim Khwaja, Harvard Kennedy School 

Asim Ijaz Khwaja is Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His areas of interest include economic development, finance, education, political economy, institutions, and contract theory/mechanism design. His research combines extensive fieldwork, rigorous empirical analysis, and microeconomic theory to answer questions that are motivated by and engage with policy. He has been published in the leading economics journals, such as the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has received coverage in numerous media outlets such as the Economist, NY Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and CNN. His recent work ranges from understanding market failures in emerging financial markets to examining the private education market in low-income countries. He was selected as a Carnegie Scholar in 2009 to pursue research on how religious institutions impact individual beliefs. Khwaja received B.S. degrees in Economics and Mathematics with Computer Science from MIT and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. A Pakistani, U.K., and U.S. citizen, he was born in London, U.K., lived for eight years in Kano, Nigeria, the next eight in Lahore, Pakistan, and the last eighteen years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He continues to enjoy interacting with people around the globe.

Michael Klein, Harvard Kennedy School 

Michael Klein is Professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany, a Senior Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University and Visiting Professor at Harvard University.  Michael worked at the World Bank (1982-2009), most recently as Vice President for Financial and Private Sector Development for the World Bank Group as well as Chief Economist, International Finance Corporation.  He was Chief Economist of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group (1997-2000) and headed the unit for non-OECD economies at the OECD Economics Department (1991-93). Before joining the World Bank, Michael was active in Amnesty International and served on its German Board (1977-79) and International Executive Committee (1979-82).  Michael studied in Bonn, New Haven and Paris and received his Doctorate in Economics from Bonn University, Germany. 

Josh Lerner, Harvard Business School

Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Finance and the Entrepreneurial Management Areas. He graduated from Yale College with a Special Divisional Major that combined physics with the history of technology.  He worked for several years on issues concerning technological innovation and public policy, at the Brookings Institution, for a public-private task force in Chicago, and on Capitol Hill.  He then earned a Ph.D. from Harvard's Economics Department. 

Much of his research focuses on the structure and role of venture capital and private equity organizations.  (This research is collected in three books, The Venture Capital Cycle, The Money of Invention, and the recent Boulevard of Broken Dreams.)  He also examines policies towards intellectual property protection and how they impact firm strategies in high-technology industries.  (The research is discussed in the books Innovation and Its Discontents and The Comingled Code.)  He founded, raised funding for, and organizes two groups at the National Bureau of Economic Research: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy.  He is a member of a number of other NBER groups and serves as co-editor of their publication, Innovation Policy and the Economy. 

In the 1993-94 academic year, he introduced an elective course for second-year MBAs on private equity finance.  In recent years, “Venture Capital and Private Equity” has consistently been one of the largest elective courses at Harvard Business School.  (The course materials are collected in Venture Capital and Private Equity: A Casebook, now in its fourth edition, and the forthcoming textbook Private Equity, Venture Capital, and the Financing of Entrepreneurship.)  He also teaches a doctoral course on entrepreneurship and in the Owners-Presidents-Managers Program, and organizes an annual executive course on private equity in Boston and Beijing.  He has led an international team of scholars in a multi-year study of the economic impact of private equity for the World Economic Forum. He is the winner of the 2010 Global Entrepreneurship Research Award.

David McKenzie, World Bank

David McKenzie is a Senior Economist at the Development Research Group, The World Bank, where he was a core team member on the 2007 World Development Report. He is a graduate of the University of Auckland and received his Ph.D. in 2001 from Yale University. Formerly an Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University, David is a research fellow at the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and the Institute for the Study of Labor, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Development Economics, as well as serving on the Editorial Board of the World Bank Economic Review. His work focuses on the barriers to microenterprise growth and on the impact of migration on developing countries. He has conducted the first randomized evaluation of migration (of Tongans moving to New Zealand) and experiments on the return to capital in microenterprises in Sri Lanka and Mexico.

Bruce McNamer, TechnoServe

Bruce McNamer is President and CEO of TechnoServe (www.technoserve.org), a non-profit economic development organization that helps entrepreneurial men and women in the developing world to build businesses that provide jobs, income and economic opportunity.  Before joining TechnoServe in 2004, Bruce was a senior executive/founder at start-ups Verified Identity Pass (Clear ID), Appfluent Technology, and Varsity Group. He was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.  Bruce was also a White House Fellow at the National Economic Council and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay. He has an AB from Harvard University and a JD/MBA from Stanford University.  He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Civil Society Leader for the World Economic Forum, and a Montana native.

Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University

Sendhil Mullainathan is Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is a graduate of Cornell University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1998. Sendhil is a co-founder of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (along with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo) and remains a research fellow of the Lab. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research, a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Behavioral Economics Roundtable and a board member at the Bureau of Research in Economic Analysis of Development. Sendhil was awarded the MacArthur Fellow, 2003-2008 and the Sloan Foundation Fellow, 2001-2003, among others. His areas of research include development economics, behavioral economics, corporate finance, and applied microeconomics with particular interests in setting of wages, executive compensation, racial discrimination in the labor market, public policy and social structure in developing nations, and behavioral economics of the poor.

Vijaya Ramachandran, Center for Global Development

Vijaya Ramachandran is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. She works on private sector development in Africa and oversees CGD's work program on fragile states. Most recently, Vijaya's research has focused on the analysis of enterprise survey data in Africa, identifying the constraints to doing business from the perspective of the private sector; this work was published as a CGD book entitled Africa's Private Sector: What's Wrong with the Business Environment and What to Do About It. Vijaya served as rapporteur to the Africa Progress Panel in 2008 and continues to serve as a consultant to the Panel. Prior to joining CGD, Vijaya taught at Georgetown University and also worked at the World Bank and in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Her work has appeared in several media outlets including the Washington Post, Voice of America, and the Huffington Post. Vijaya earned her Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1991.

Brian Trelstad, Acumen Fund

Brian Trelstad is the Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund, a $40 million social investment fund investing in innovative social enterprises in South Asia and East Africa delivering critical health, water, housing and energy services to the base of the pyramid.  He also drives Acumen’s work measuring social and financial return and is a founding executive committee member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE).  Prior to Acumen Fund, Brian was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in their New Jersey office.  He has co-founded and advised several early-stage technology companies and social enterprises and was the lead environmental staffer for President Clinton’s Corporation for National Service.  He is a graduate of Harvard College, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the University of California’s College of Environmental Design. 

John van Reenen, London School of Economics

Since October 2003 John Van Reenen has been Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and the Director of the Centre for Economic Performance, Europe’s leading applied economics research centre (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/). In 2009 he was awarded the Yrjö Jahnsson Award, the European equivalent to the U.S. John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the best economist in Europe under the age of 45.  He has published widely on the economics of innovation, labor markets and productivity. He has been a senior policy advisor to the Secretary of State for Health, Downing Street and many international organizations. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a Professor at University College London, a partner in Lexecon Ltd. (now CRA) and Chief Technology Officer of a software start-up.  In 2008-09 he was the Denning Visiting Professor of Global Business and Economics at Stanford University.

Professor Van Reenen received his B.A. from the University of Cambridge, his M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and his Ph.D. from University College London. He has written over 100 articles and book chapters and frequently appears in the media.  He is a Research Fellow of the CEPR, NBER and IZA and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Chris Woodruff, Warwick University

Chris Woodruff is currently a Professor in the Economics Department at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on the challenges faced by small and medium sized firms in developing and transition economies. His most recent work examines returns to capital among microenterprises and explores ways of separating subsistence microenterprises from those with greater potential for growth. Chris is a fellow at BREAD and a director of the Firm Capabilities research program at the International Growth Centre.

Affiliates:

Santosh Anagol, University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School

Santosh Anagol is an Assistant Professor in the Business and Public Policy Department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 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 dissertation studied inefficiencies in the Indian market for dairy cows and buffaloes, which are commonly purchased by microfinance borrowers. 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.

David Atkin, Yale University

David Atkin joined the faculty at Yale as an Assistant Professor of Economics after receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University. His primary fields are trade and development. David's research focuses on evaluating the impacts of trade liberalization on the poor in the developing world by using the microeconometric tools and the large household and firm datasets common in applied economics to analyze trade and development issues. His recent work has studied the role of regional taste differences in altering the impacts of trade reforms in India, and educational responses to the rise of export oriented manufacturing in Mexico. He is currently working on a project to assess the impact of exporting on micro-enterprises in Egypt.

Oriana Bandiera, London School of Economics

Oriana Bandiera is Professor of Economics and Director of STICERD at the London School of Economics and Political Science.  Oriana is co-director of the research program in State Capabilities within the International Growth Centre at the LSE, on the board of editors of the Journal of Economic Literature and Journal of Development Economics, and fellow of CEPR, BREAD and IZA.  Her research focuses on the study of contracts and incentives in a broad range of organizations and countries.  Her work has been published in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.  She is the 2011 recipient of the Carlo Alberto medal, awarded biennally to an Italian economist under the age of 40 for "outstanding research contributions to the field of economics."

Phil Beavers, ShoreBank International

Phil Beavers leads SBI’s Small Business Finance Center of Excellence and is responsible for the development, systemization and quality delivery of the company’s small business finance projects. With 24 years of experience in commercial finance, his career has taken him to a number of transitional countries throughout Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Areas of expertise include performing market reviews, strategic planning, development of profitable risk balanced business models for small business finance, and the effective training and mentoring of staff at all levels.  Past clients and partners include more than 25 global financial institutions, as well as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), European Union (EU), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).  Mr. Beavers is a seasoned expert with a reputation of applying international best practices to local realities in order to create unique solutions for SBI’s clients. 

Shari Berenbach, USAID

Shari Berenbach’s distinguished 30 year career spans from microfinance to international banking. A pioneer in the impact investing field, Ms. Berenbach served as President and CEO of Calvert Foundation, a non-profit financial intermediary that mobilizes capital from social investors to meet critical financing needs in affordable housing, microfinance, fair trade, and other essential community services. In nearly 14 years (1997-2010), Ms. Berenbach grew Calvert Foundation from a pilot project to a $500 million institution serving thousands of investors and hundreds of local financial intermediaries in the U.S. and around the globe.

Ms. Berenbach’s microfinance work began in the early l980s when she served as Program Director for Partnership for Productivity International. Throughout the l980s, Ms. Berenbach worked with microfinance operations in more than two dozen countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In the mid 1990s, Ms. Berenbach was engaged in various consultancies – preparing a monograph on banking regulation for microfinance, helping to launch MicroRate, and conducting program design and evaluations on behalf of USAID and the World Bank. Ms. Berenbach served as an Investment Officer at the International Finance Corporation (l990-l994) where she worked with the Business Advisory Services for Latin America and the Caribbean. She has also held private sector positions at Solomon Brothers, Citigroup and a start-up telecommunications firm, Radio Movil Digital.

Ms. Berenbach holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School, an M.A. in Latin American Studies from UCLA and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from UC Berkeley. Ms. Berenbach serves on the Not-for-Profit Advisory Committee of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the Finance Committee of the Needmor Fund, and the Board of Directors of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity.

Chris Blattman, Yale University

Chris Blattman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University, where he teaches courses on African development, applied econometrics, and the political economy of warfare. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Blattman’s research examines the causes and consequences of civil war, post-conflict recovery, poverty alleviation through firms and micro-enterprises, as well as youth employment in Africa – especially among troubled or unstable populations like ex-combatants, street youth and refugees. Much of his work employs field experiments and natural experiments in conflict and post-conflict regions. He has ongoing studies in Liberia, Uganda, and Ethiopia.

Patrick Bolton, Columbia Business School

Patrick Bolton is the Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business and member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He is also Co-Director of the Center for Contracts and Economic Organization at the Columbia Law School. His areas of interest are in Corporate Finance, Banking, Sovereign Debt, Political Economy, and Law and Economics.  He recently published Contract Theory (MIT Press, 2005) with Mathias Dewatripont, and co-edited Credit Markets for the Poor (Russell Sage Foundation, 2005) with Howard Rosenthal. 

Miriam Bruhn, World Bank

Miriam Bruhn is an Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. She joined the Bank as a Young Economist in September 2007. Her research interests include the effects 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.

Mildred Callear, Small Enterprise Assistance Fund

Mildred O. Callear has more than 25 years of experience in the emerging market investment arena.  She serves as the Executive Vice President of SEAF (Small Enterprise Assistance Fund) and as a member of the SEAF Board of Directors.  SEAF has been managing SME funds for 20 years and makes debt and equity investments throughout frontier and emerging markets, with a strong focus on measuring impact.  Prior to joining SEAF, Ms. Callear served for almost 20 years with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, where she served as CFO as well as interim President.  Prior to this she was a lawyer in private practice.

Rodrigo Canales, Yale University, School of Management

Rodrigo Canales is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management. Rodrigo researches the role of institutions in entrepreneurship and economic development. Specifically, his work seeks to understand how individuals purposefully enact organizational and institutional change. In particular, Rodrigo explores how individuals' backgrounds, professional status, and organizational positions affect how they relate to existing structures and the strategies they pursue to change them. His work builds on the different traditions of institutional theory and contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that allow institutions to operate and change. Rodrigo has done work in entrepreneurial finance and microfinance. As he continues his work on microfinance he is also conducting research in the institutional complexities of renewable energy and the institutional implications of the Mexican war on drugs. Rodrigo teaches the core MBA course on innovation at Yale Sschool of Management, sits in the steering committee of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, and advises several startups in Mexico that seek to improve the financing environment for small firms. He earned his MBA and Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Lucio Castro, CIPPEC

Lucio Castro is Director of the Global Integration and Productive Development Programme at CIPPEC (Center for Implementation of Policies for Equity and Growth), based in Argentina.  Lucio was Leader of the Public Finance Practice and Senior Economist in the International Trade Practice at Maxwell Stamp, PLC, a leading economic consulting firm in London.  At Maxwell Stamp, he provided technical assistance to governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America.  Lucio has extensive experience in economic development, both in government and consultancy assignments in Africa, South East Europe, and Latin America.  At CIPPEC, he manages the implementation of impact evaluation and capacity building projects using experimental and semi-experimental econometric methods.  Lucio has been Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Development at Harvard University and recipient of the Fulbright Nexus Scholarship and the IADB MIRA Prize for measuring institutional impact in Latin America.  He received a DPhil (candidate) in Economics at the University of Sussex and a Masters from the Program in Economic Policy Management (PEPM) at Columbia University.

Veronica Chau, Dalberg Global Development Advisors

Veronica Chau is a Partner in Dalberg’s Washington DC office. She leads Dalberg’s work on strategic evaluations of global organizations, impact evaluations of funds and initiatives, and social impact metrics.  She has served as the principal investigator or evaluation advisor for many of Dalberg’s major impact evaluations including independent evaluations for multilateral institutions, bilateral donors and foundations. Veronica has also worked with social impact investors to develop innovative approaches for measuring and communicating the impact of investing in small and growing businesses in emerging markets.  Veronica has been a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, International Trade Canada and the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development.  Veronica holds a Master's of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Waterloo (Canada).

Maya Chorengel, Elevar Equity

Maya Chorengel is a co-Founder and Managing Director of Elevar Equity, a leading global growth investor that provides equity capital to microfinance institutions and other companies focused on the underserved four billion at the base of the economic pyramid.  Prior to co-founding Elevar, she was Managing Director of the Dignity Fund, a private investment fund that provides local currency debt financing to high-growth microfinance institutions in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Previously, Maya was at Warburg Pincus, working in the private equity firm’s New York, Hong Kong and Menlo Park offices.  She also previously worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley (Hong Kong and Singapore) and James D. Wolfensohn, Incorporated (New York).  Maya is a Director of International Association of Microfinance Investors (IAMFI), Caja Rural Los Andes, GloboKasNet, Dignity Fund and Wokai.  Maya graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Shawn Cole, Harvard Business School

Shawn Cole (http://www.people.hbs.edu/scole/) is an Associate Professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches a second-year elective course, “Business at the Base of the Pyramid.” His research examines corporate and household finance in emerging markets, with a focus on banking, microfinance, insurance, and the relationship between financial development and economic growth. He has worked in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and South Africa. He is an affiliate of MIT’s Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. Before joining the Harvard Business School, Professor Cole worked in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has also served as chair of the endowment management committee of the Telluride Association, a non-profit educational organization. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, where he was an NSF and Javits Fellow, and an A.B. in Economics and German Literature from Cornell University.

Asli Demirguc-Kunt, World Bank

Asli Demirgüç-Kunt is the Chief Economist of the Financial and Private Sector (FPD) Development Network and Senior Research Manager of Finance and Private Sector in the World Bank's Development Economics Research Group. 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 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, and 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 an M.A. in Economics from Ohio State University.

Alejandro Drexler, University of Texas, McCombs School of Business

Alejandro Drexler is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include empirical corporate finance and development with a special focus on banking and financial intermediation. He has worked as a consultant for the Chilean Ministry of Economy, the Chilean Central Bank, and the World Bank. Professor Drexler holds a M.A. in Economics from the Universidad de Chile and a Ph.D. in Finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Marcel Fafchamps, Oxford University

Marcel Fafchamps is Professor of Development Economics at Oxford University and Professorial Fellow at Mansfield College.  He is also deputy director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies.  He earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and has degrees in Economics and in Law from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.  In addition to many years in academia, he has also worked for the International Labor Organization and for the World Bank.  After nearly 10 years at Stanford University, he moved to Oxford in 1999.  His current research interests revolve primarily around market institutions, social networks, risk coping strategies, and the allocation of economic activity across space.  Most of his work focuses on Africa and South Asia.

Erica Field, Duke University

Erica Field is an Associate Professor of Economics and Global Health at Duke University specializing in the fields of Development Economics, Health Economics and Economic Demography. She is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research affiliate of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, and a member of JPAL.

Professor Field’s work examines the microeconomics of household poverty and health in developing countries, with an emphasis on the study of gender and development. She has written papers on several topics in development in many different parts of the world, including microfinance contract design and social networks in India, marriage markets in Bangladesh, micronutrient deficiencies in Tanzania, health insurance for the poor in Nicaragua, household bargaining over fertility in Zambia, public housing for the poor in India, and property rights to land in Peru.  Her work has been published in several leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy and theAmerican Economic Journal.  As a member of JPAL, she has spent much of her career pioneering the use of field experiments to evaluate development policy and understand individual behavior. She is currently engaged in large-scale randomized program evaluations of strategies to empower adolescent girls in Bangladesh, an expansion of rural microfinance in India, and the allocation of urban property rights to land in Mongolia.  

Professor Field received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2003. Prior to joining the Economics Department at Duke, she was a John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University. From 2009-2010, Field was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.  She has been a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a Robert Wood Johnson Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Health Policy, and a Fulbright Fellow in Peru. She received her B.A. in Economics and Latin American Studies from Vassar College. In 2010, Field was awarded the Elaine Bennet Prize for Research by the American Economic Association, which honors a woman economist under the age of forty who has made outstanding contributions in any field of economic research. 

Gary Fields, Cornell University

Gary Fields is the John P. Windmuller Professor of International and Comparative Labor and Professor of Economics at Cornell University.  He specializes in labor markets and poverty in the developing world.  His next book, Working Hard, Working Poor: A Global Journey, will be published by Oxford University Press this Fall.

Ray Fisman, Columbia Business School

Raymond Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and director of the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. Professor Fisman received his Ph.D. in Business Economics at Harvard University. He worked as a consultant in the Africa Division of the World Bank for a year before moving to Columbia in 1999. 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. Professor Fisman’s work has been covered widely in the popular press, from Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times to al Jazeera to the Shanghai Daily. He also writes a monthly column for Slate magazine.  Professor Fisman’s first book, Economic Gangsters: Violence, Corruption, and the Poverty of Nations (co-authored with Edward Miguel), was published by Princeton University Press, and he is currently working on a book about the economics of office life, to be published by Twelve in 2012.

Xavier Gine, World Bank

Xavier Giné is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. 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 weather insurance. Prior to joining the Bank he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Jasmina Glisovic, CGAP

Jasmina Glisovicic is a Microfinance Specialist at CGAP, an independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world's poor. It is supported by over 30 development agencies and private foundations who share a common mission to alleviate poverty. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP provides market intelligence, promotes standards, develops innovative solutions and offers advisory services to governments, financial service providers, donors, and investors. Jasmina works with the Donors and Investors and Clients teams in CGAP’s Paris office. She provides strategic advice on microfinance to donors and investors and serves as CGAP’s lead on the work related to micro and small enterprises (MSEs) and savings agenda. Before joining CGAP, she worked as a credit manager for the Danish Refugee Council (Serbia) and for the Micro Development Fund. She has a Master’s degree in Economics and speaks Serbian (native), English, and French.

Christopher Grewe, Treasury Department

Dr. Christopher Grewe is the senior economist in the Department of Treasury's International Affairs Office of Western Hemisphere. Since joining the office in June 2010, he has primarily been engaged in the U.S. contributions to the G-20's financial inclusion initiative, focusing primarily on the SME Finance Challenge in 2010 and the women entrepreneurs work stream in 2011. Dr. Grewe joined Treasury in 2001 as the desk officer for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, and has covered the Inter-American Development Bank and been an advisor to the U.S. Executive Director of the Asian Development Bank in Manila. Prior to joining Treasury he taught for the University of Colorado-Denver's international college program in Beijing, China and Moscow, Russia. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Lucy Heady, Building Markets

Lucy Heady is an Economist with Building Markets (formerly Peace Dividend Trust).  Prior to working with Building Markets, Lucy spent four years at New Philanthropy Capital in London where she led the Measurement team, helping charities to collect and analyze evidence of their impact. She has written several reports looking at the costs and benefits of charities' work and approaches to measuring effectiveness in areas such as children's well-being and family ties. Lucy also spent four years at Cambridge University, first writing a Ph.D. thesis in theoretical physics and then completing further research in the area. Lucy holds an M.Sc in Economics from the University of London and wrote her dissertation on the macroeconomic effects of overseas aid.

Rob Henning, Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners 

Partner and Co-Founder of Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners (ESPartners), Rob has spent much of the past 15 years advising SMEs in developing countries on enhancing their competitiveness. Rob is currently based in Washington, DC where he advises corporate, government and international donor clients on a range of entrepreneurial solutions for prosperity including business strategy, SME finance, cluster & value chain competitiveness, and private sector development policy.  Prior to founding ESPartners, Rob was a Director with OTF Group, the first venture-backed advisory firm focused on emerging markets. During his eight years with OTF Group, he developed a particular expertise in the application of business strategy and innovation to solve competitiveness challenges in post-conflict economies such as Haiti, Rwanda, Burundi, and Afghanistan.  Before joining the OTF Group, Rob worked for the Peace Corps in West Africa, where he supervised micro-credit and small enterprise development programs in Benin and Guinea-Conakry.

Rob earned an MBA from The McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University as a John F. Connelly scholar. He also earned a B.A. from the University of Vermont with a double major in Economics and French. He is a recognized expert in private sector development and is currently authoring several publications for USAID on best practices and techniques for value chain upgrading. He is a contributor to an original book of essays focused on private sector development, called “In the River They Swim”, released by Templeton Press in April 2009.

Raj Iyer, MIT, Sloan School of Management

Raj Iyer is an Assistant Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan School of Management. His research interests include banking and contract theory. He is particularly focused on understanding the role of interbank markets in the provision of liquidity. Recent research projects include examining the factors that mitigate depositors' incentive to run on banks and how market participants overcome friction in contracting. He has received a M.S. in Finance and Economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in Finance from INSEAD.

Mudit Kapoor, Indian School of Business

Mudit Kapoor is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. His primary research interest is in Development Economics. Some of his recent research projects are a study of Chit Funds (an indigenous finance industry in India) as an innovative access to finance for low-income households; the impact of interest rates on household consumption; and the impact of financial constraints on firm productivity. 

Rocco Macchiavello, Warwick University

Rocco Macchiavello is Assistant Professor at Warwick University, in the U.K. Rocco's research interests mainly focus on the microeconomics of industrial development. His recent projects analyze the process by which exporters from developing countries acquire valuable reputations in foreign markets as well as the upgrading of production processes linked with international trade. During the 2010 calendar year, he was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Before joining Warwick, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics. Rocco is a research affiliate of BREAD, CEPR, EUDN and IGC.

Chrys Miliaras, RTI International

Chrys Miliaras serves as the lead financial specialist of RTI's economic growth team with responsibilities for new business development, project management, and technical assistance. He also heads a RTI-sponsored research initiative focused on developing new, systemic strategies for financing high-growth SMEs. Mr. Miliaras has advised microfinance institutions and banks in more than twenty countries on building capacity, improving performance, and attracting investment. In addition, he has counseled financial sector regulators on making legal and regulatory changes that increase access to finance for both microenterprises and SMEs. Before joining RTI, Mr. Miliaras held leadership positions in the field and home offices of Chemonics International, DAI Europe, and ACCION International. He began his career with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Dilip Mookherjee, Boston University

Dilip Mookherjee teaches economics at Boston University, where he has been serving as Director of the Institute for Economic Development since 1998. He is currently President of BREAD, and Lead Academic of the India Central Program of the International Growth Centre located at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and has been recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal of the Indian Econometric Society. His current research interests are development economics, contract and organization theory, and the Indian economy. Current projects include effectiveness of new forms of microfinance and provision of price information to farmers; land acquisition for industrialization and compensation of displaced farmers; effects of  reforms in bankruptcy and contract enforcement laws on credit markets; land  reforms; deforestation; government accountability; decentralization; trade middlemen and effects of globalization; and theories of education, inequality and development.

Adair Morse, Chicago Booth School

Adair Morse is Assistant Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, where she teaches Global Entrepreneurial Finance. Her research covers the areas of household finance, financial institutions, governance, and asset management. A number of her recent works concern low income financial products in the Unites States and the interaction of individual financial decision making and well-being. She also studies the venture capital and private equity industry and the role of sovereign pools of capital in directing ventures and promoting development agendas. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and Masters degrees in statistics and agricultural economics from Purdue University.

Ramana Nanda, Harvard Business School

Ramana Nanda is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.  He teaches Entrepreneurial Finance in the second year of the MBA program and in HBS executive education offerings. Ramana's research focuses on the ways in which the financial sector impacts innovation and entrepreneurship in the economy.  One strand of research examines the role of financial intermediaries such as banks and VCs in shaping the founding and growth of new ventures in a region. A second, related strand, examines how government policy towards the financial sector impacts innovation, entrepreneurship and productivity growth in the economy. A current project that draws on both these strands of research relates to the challenges of financing clean-energy startups and the appropriate role for government policy in facilitating the commercialization of new technologies in this sector.  

Ramana is a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International Development and the Center for the Environment at Harvard University and a Research Associate at the Center for Corporate Performance in Arhus, Denmark.  He received his Ph.D. from MIT's Sloan School of Management and has a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He is a recipient of the 2010 Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research.  Prior to starting his Ph.D., Ramana was based in the London and New York offices of Oliver, Wyman & Company, where he worked primarily with clients in global capital markets as well as in small-business banking.  He continues to advise startup ventures on their financing strategies, with a focus on the biotechnology and clean energy sectors.  He also works with philanthropic investors who use market-based solutions to address poverty and promote entrepreneurship in developing countries. 

Rohini Pande, Harvard Kennedy School

Rohini Pande is the Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, and co-Director of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at the Center for International Development, Harvard University.  She heads the Governance Innovations for Sustainable Development Group at Harvard Kennedy School an co-chairs the Political Economy and Government Group at JPAL.  Her research examines how the design of democratic institutions and government regulation affects policy outcomes and citizen well-being, especially in South Asia.  Her work emphasizes the use of real-world evidence to test economic models, often through large-scale field experiments in developing countries.  She has worked extensively on electoral accountability, mechanisms, political affirmative action for women and minorities and on the design and impact of financial access initiatives in low-income settings.  Current projects include examinations of: information disclosures via politician report-cards; health and economic impacts of microfinance; the efficacy of environmental regulations in India; and the costs and benefits of an emissions trading market in India.  Her research has been funded by NSF and private foundations.  Pande received a Ph.D. in economics from London School of Economics, an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, and a BA in economics from Delhi University.

Daniel Paravisini, Columbia Business School

Daniel Paravisini is the Gary Winnick and Martin Granoff Associate Professor of Business at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has devoted in his research particular attention to the incentives of agents in financial institutions and to the role of banks in the transmission and amplification of real shocks, with a focus on the effect of credit fluctuations on international trade. Daniel is a research affiliate of the NBER, BREAD, and IGC.

Francisco Pérez-González, Stanford University

Imran Rasul, University College London

Imran Rasul obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics in 2003. He is now a Professor at University College London, co-director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute of Fiscal Studies, and research co-director of the Human Capital Research Group of the International Growth Centre. His research interests include labor, development and public economics and his work has been published in leading journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies. He is a co-managing editor of the Review of Economic Studies journal. He was awarded the 2007 IZA Young Economist Prize and the 2008 CESIfo Distinguished Affiliate Award.

Russell Toth, University of Sydney

Russell Toth is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he moved in 2011 after completing a Ph.D. in Economics at Cornell University. He is a development economist with primary research interests in the economics of entrepreneurship in developing countries. He is particularly interested in the emergence of enterprises with high growth potential, with ongoing work focusing on the role and formation of human capital specific to entrepreneurial activity. He has ongoing projects based in Indonesia and East Africa (Kenya and Ethiopia). Russell is also Research Associate in the Economic Growth and Development program at the Center for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) at the Australian National University.

Chris Udry, Yale University

Christopher Udry is the Henry J. Heinz, II Professor of Economics at Yale University. He is a development economist whose research focuses on rural economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa. He has conducted extensive field research in West Africa on technological change in agriculture, the use of financial markets, asset accumulation and gift exchange to cope with risk, gender relations and the structure of household economies, property rights and a variety of other aspects of rural economic organization. He spent two years as a secondary school teacher in northern Ghana and has been a visiting scholar at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and at the University of Ghana at Legon. At Yale, Udry has directed the Economic Growth Center and served as Chair of the Department of Economics. He teaches graduate courses on development economics and undergraduate courses on economic development in Africa. Course syllabi and a description of some of his current research can be found at his website: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~cru2.

Eric Verhoogen, Columbia University

Eric Verhoogen is Associate Professor of Economics and of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His main research interests are in the area of industrial development – applied microeconomic research on firms in developing countries. A recurrent theme is the process of quality upgrading in the manufacturing sectors of developing countries – its causes, consequences, and broader implications. His work has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, and the Review of Economic Studies, among other journals. He holds a B.A. from Harvard College (1991), an M.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2001), and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (2004).

Sujata Visaria, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Sujata Visaria has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology since August 2009. Her research interests include contract enforcement and the repayment and lending behavior of firms, the effects of price information and credit on farmer revenues and what they can tell us about contracting between farmers and agricultural intermediaries, and agent-intermediated lending, a form of micro-credit designed to be used for agriculture. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University.

Daniel Wolfenzon, Columbia Business School

Daniel Wolfenzon is the Stefan H. Robock Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School. He received a Masters and a PhD in economics from Harvard University and holds a BS in economics and a BS in mechanical engineering from MIT. Professor Wolfenzon previously taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and NYU. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests are in corporate finance and organizational economics. He has studied control sharing in small firms, the effects of investor protection on ownership concentration, and the structure of business groups around the world. His most recent research focuses on family firms. He has examined the consequences of family succession on firm performance and also the importance of managerial talent in family controlled firms. His work has been published in top economic and finance journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Professor Wolfenzon received the Jensen Prize (second place) for best paper on corporate finance and organizations published in the Journal of Financial Economics both in 2002 and 2005.

Dean Yang, University of Michigan

Dean Yang is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, where he holds appointments at the Ford School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics. His areas of interest include international migration and remittances, microfinance, human capital, disasters, international trade, and crime and corruption.  He is currently running survey work and field experiments among Central American migrant workers in the U.S., among potential overseas migrants in the Philippines, and on microfinance in Malawi and Mozambique. He teaches courses in development economics and microeconomics at the undergraduate, master, and Ph.D. levels.  He was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 2006-07 and has worked as a consultant on development issues for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the UNDP, and in El Salvador and Peru.  A native of the Philippines, he received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Harvard University.

Bilal Zia, World Bank

Bilal Zia is an Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Research Group at the World Bank. His research focuses on the behavior of firms, banks, households and their financial interactions, using both experimental and non-experimental methods. His work has appeared in top academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. Some of his recent work includes rigorous impact evaluations of financial and business literacy programs, de-biasing financial and behavioral biases, network effects in SMEs and optimal contract structure in microfinance loans. He holds an M.C.P. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.Sc. (Hons.) from the London School of Economics.