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Carlos Felipe Jaramillo is the World Bank Vice President for the Latin America and the Caribbean Region, overseeing Bank relations with 31 countries and a portfolio of ongoing projects, technical assistance and grants of almost US$32 billion. Under his leadership, the Bank¡¯s operations in the region focus on strengthening human capital through education and inclusion programs, increasing resilience to shocks, financing essential infrastructure, and supporting inclusive recovery and green growth.

William F. Maloney is Chief Economist for the Latin America and the Caribbean region at the World Bank. Previously he was Chief Economist for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions, and Trade and Competitiveness; he was also Global Lead on Innovation and Productivity. Prior to the Bank, he was an assistant professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1990-1997) and then Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America until 2009. From 2009 to 2014, he was Lead Economist in the Development Economics Research Group. From 2011 to 2014 he was visiting professor at the University of the Andes and worked closely with the Colombian government on innovation and firm upgrading issues. Mr. Maloney received his PhD in economics from the University of California Berkeley (1990), his BA from Harvard University (1981), and he studied at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia (1982¨C83).

Jaime Saavedra is the Director of Human Development for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Bank. Previously, he led the institution's Global Education Practice.

Between 2013 and 2016 he served as Minister of Education of Peru. During his tenure, he promoted a teachers¡¯ career reform, an expansion of full-time secondary, and a bold university reform. The performance of Peru¡¯s education system improved substantially as measured by international learning assessments.

Prior to assuming this role, he was Global Director for Poverty Reduction and Equity and Acting Vice-President of Poverty Reduction and Economic Management at the World Bank, where he co-led the establishment of the twin goals of Eliminating Extreme Poverty and pursuing Shared Prosperity, which continues guiding the work of the institution.

Mss. Alfaro is the Warren Alpert Professor of Business Administration at Harvard business School. She was Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy in Costa Rica from 2010-2012.?She is Co-Editor of the Journal of International Economics and World Bank Research Observer, Vice-President of LACEA; Faculty Research Associate in CEPR and NBER, and co-chair of NBER¡¯s Economics of Supply Chains. Professor Alfaro has authored multiple articles on international economics, capital flows, FDI, sovereign debt, and trade. Laura Alfaro earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where she received the Dissertation Fellowship award. She received a B. A in economics from the Universidad de Costa Rica and a 'Licenciatura' from the Pontificia Universidad Cat¨®lica of Chile.

Mss. Medina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management. Her research examines how factor-market distortions influence firms¡¯ production and trade decisions and the implications of these distortions for growth and the effectiveness of industrial and trade policies, especially in developing and emerging economies. Pamela holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University.

In March 2024 Daniel Lederman became Deputy Chief Economist for the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions (EFI) Global Practice of the World Bank. Previously he served as Deputy Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa, Deputy Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, Lead Trade Economist in the World Bank's International Trade Department, Senior Economist in the Development Research Group (DECRG), and Senior Economist and Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. Before joining the World Bank in 1995, he worked for the United Nations¡¯ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mr. Zuleta holds a bachelor's and master¡¯s degree in economics from Universidad de los Andes. He also earned a master's and PhD in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), graduating with honors.?

His areas of interest include macroeconomics, economic growth, environmental economics, economic conflicts, and the economics of crime. His extensive knowledge in these fields has allowed him to make valuable contributions to the discipline. Additionally, Zuleta has numerous publications on the topic of factor shares.

Zuleta is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Economics at Universidad de los Andes. He has been a tenured professor since 2018 and has served as director of the Center for Economic Development Studies (CEDE) and the Center for Security and Drug Studies (CESED). He has also held the position of Director of the Technical Unit at the Central Bank of Colombia and Director of Intersectoral Studies at the National Planning Department.

Among his most notable publications are Coca, Cocaine, and Violence, Uniandes Editions (2022); Economic Growth in Discrete Time, Universidad del Rosario (2020); Economy and Security in the Post-Conflict Era (editor), Uniandes Editions; and Economic Growth and Biased Innovations, Uniandes Editions, 2016.

I am an economic historian and an applied-micro economist, whose research focuses on the managerial and technological drivers of productivity and innovation in the long-run run. My research also addresses a key question in economic history: to what extent did the war effort during World War II spur new managerial techniques and production technologies, and how did these innovations persist and diffuse to the rest of the world in the war¡¯s aftermath? I identify the causes and the effects of management and technology adoption by exploiting a wealth of historical policy variation and unique historical data, collected from primary sources. My research has been supported by several grants, including an NSF grant, a Russell Sage Foundation grant and an NBER¡¯s Innovation Policy grant. My work has been disseminated to broader audience through several blogs, such as the NBER Digest, VoxEu, and the popular video in stick figures Econimate, and by podcasts, like Visible Hand, Penn Exchange, and Faculti.net; by Weixin translations in Chinese; and by presentations at the Italian Parliament. My papers on management, innovation and copyrights have entered undergraduate syllabi and are taught in Ph.D. courses at top economics departments, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and LSE.

I am a senior economist at the?Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean?at the?World Bank. Before, I was an Associate Professor of the??at?, and Senior Advisor of the?. I was also a Visiting Associate Professor at??during 2019. My research interests are in the fields of Economic Development and Public Finance. I have studied the response of households to economic shocks, its consequences, and public policies aimed at smoothing such consequences. Related to this, I am interested in the effect of conflict, economics of crime and incentives to innovation. I hold a Ph.D and M.A. in Economics from?; and an M.A. and B.A. in Economics from?.

David McKenzie is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit. He received his B.Com.(Hons)/B.A. from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. Prior to joining the World Bank, he spent four years as an assistant professor of Economics at Stanford University. His main research is on migration, enterprise development, and methodology for use with developing country data. He has published more than?150?articles in journals such as the?Quarterly Journal of Economics,?American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies,?Journal of Political Economy, Science, Review of Economics and Statistics,?Journal of the European Economic Association,?Economic Journal,?American Economic Journal: Applied Micro,?Journal of Econometrics, and all leading development journals. He is currently on the editorial boards of the?Journal of Development Economics, the?World Bank Economic Review, and?Migration Studies. He is also a co-founder and regular contributor to the?.

Nathan is an Associate Professor in Economics at Oxford University and co-founder of the Industrial Policy Group, with Dr. R¨¦ka Juhasz of the University of British Columbia. His interests are at the intersection of industrial development, political economy, comparative historical development, and big data. Currently, he is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Prior to Oxford, Dr. Lane was an economics professor at Monash University, where he was cofounder of SodaLabs.io. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.??

His current research agenda is focused on establishing fundamental facts around industrial policy. This empirical work is focused on understanding the efficacy, determinants, and patterns of these controversial policies. His work has been featured in The Economist, The Financial Times, Trade Talks, and more. Together with his Industrial Policy Group, Dr Lane¡¯s agenda aims to make industrial strategy an object of inquiry within economics. His most recent projects (1) quantify the patterns of global policy practice using mass textual data on commercial policy, and (2) unpack the efficacy of East Asian export promotion policies.?

Tristan Reed is an applied economist at the World Bank's?Development Research Group?working on questions about industrial organization relevant to public policy.?Alongside research, he provides advice to World Bank clients on sector development strategy and trade and competition policy. Prior to joining the Bank, Tristan was a management consultant. A native of California, he holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A.?summa cum laude?from UCLA. He?is an?advisory?board member at?, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the number of Ph.D. students of color in social science.

Marcela Mel¨¦ndez, a Colombian national, is a?Deputy Chief Economist at the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Chief Economist office at the World Bank.

Before joining the World Bank, she served as Chief Economist for the LAC region at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where she led knowledge production to support policy design and decision-making in the region. Before that, she was Managing Partner at ECONESTUDIO, a Colombian boutique economic consulting and research firm recognized for its contributions to the public policy debate. She was also an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Economics of Universidad de los Andes (Colombia).

Mr. Hallak is Professor Titular of International Economics at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and Researcher at the National Commission for Science and Technology (CONICET).? His academic trajectory has focused on the areas of international trade and productive development, publishing his work in top journals in the field. As a public officer, he was Undersecretary for International Insertion (2019) and President of the National Commission of Foreign Trade (2017-2018). Previously, he was Associate Professor at Universidad de San Andr¨¦s (2006-2016), Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan (2002-2005), Visiting Professor at Columbia University (2014), and Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Ufuk Akcigit?served as the Academic Lead for the World Development Report 2024. He is also the Arnold C. Harberger Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on macroeconomics, economic growth, firm dynamics, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is also widely published in the top economic journals. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. Verhoogen is Professor of Economics and of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His primary research area is industrial development ¨C empirical microeconomic work on firms in developing countries. His work has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, and other journals. He is currently serving as a Research Program Director of the International Growth Centre and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). He holds a bachelor¡¯s degree from Harvard, a master¡¯s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.?

His primary research area is at the intersection of international trade and economic development. Most of his work examines the effects of trade exposure or competition on the economic development of regions, industries, and firms. To address these questions, he prioritizes the use of detailed microdata to test and quantify theoretical mechanisms, combining theory with data in the absence of exogenous sources of variation to identify the specific channels.

Ana Margarida Fernandes is a Lead Economist in the Trade and International Integration Unit of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. She joined the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002. Her research interests include the consequences of openness to trade and FDI for firm-level outcomes such as productivity, innovation, and quality upgrading and more broadly the determinants of firm performance, including the role of the business environment. She has also worked on professional services in Africa. Recently her work has been focusing on the impact evaluation of trade-related policy interventions (such as export promotion and customs reforms). Since 2011 she has been managing the Exporter Dynamics Database project and working on the link between exporter growth and dynamics, development and policies. Ana was a core team member of the World Development Report 2020 Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains. She received her M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and a B.A. from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

He is currently the Director for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean Office in Washington, D.C.

Previously, he served as the Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica, responsible for the country's foreign trade policies, export promotion, and attracting foreign investment, as well as representing Costa Rica at the WTO. During this time, he partnered with multiple Fortune 100 companies on strategies to improve the business climate, including reforming the Free Trade Zone regime, creating new incentives, and developing talent to continue diversifying exports and foreign direct investment. Under his leadership, Costa Rica became the number one country in the world in greenfield foreign direct investment attraction. He also oversaw the final stages of Costa Rica¡¯s accession process to become the 38th member of the OECD.

Before his role as Minister, he was the Executive President of the Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje, where he managed technical and vocational education in Costa Rica, serving 120,000 students annually through 55 training centers across the country. During this period, he led the most significant transformation the organization had undergone since its founding in 1965. He also worked on the approval of a Dual Education Law, which provided a legal framework for apprenticeships and workplace learning for students in the country.

Oscar Calvo-Gonzalez is Director, Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions for the Latin America and the Caribbean region of the World Bank. Oscar has been with the World Bank since 2006 where he has worked directly with a diverse group of client countries. He has also been a Director in the Independent Evaluation Group, Practice Manager in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice, Program Leader in the Central America Country Department, and country economist, leading lending operations and analytical work for countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe and Central Asia regions.

Santiago Franco is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University. He is a macroeconomist focused on spatial economics, economic growth, and productivity. His recent research examines the influence of market power on firm location across local markets, the impact of labor informality on learning and long-run growth, and productivity estimation in differentiated product markets. Santiago completed his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Chicago in 2024 and holds bachelor¡¯s degrees in Economics and Mathematics from Los Andes University in Colombia.

David Atkin is the Barton L Weller (1940) Professor in the Department of Economics at MIT. His research focuses on firms, trade and development. His recent work has studied the impacts of trade on health, education and income volatility, the costs of distance, the distribution sector in developing countries, difficulties in climbing the ladder of development, and provided experimental evidence for the impacts of trade and industrial policy. He also has interests in studying the determinants and consequences of preference heterogeneity and welfare measurement. Atkin holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

Somik Lall?is Senior Adviser to the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group.

Lall has recently directed the World Bank's??that examines how middle-income countries can break into the ranks of the wealthiest economies.

Previously, he headed the climate economics and policy team in the World Bank¡¯s Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions vice presidency, where he developed and supervised policy research programs on resilience and economic development, the macro-criticality of climate change, and innovations for the low-carbon transition.

Jos¨¦ Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs was appointed Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on 1 September 2022 and took office on 2 October of the same year.?

Having joined the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2005 as Executive Director of its Employment Sector, he later served as Assistant Director General for Policy (2013¨C2015) and as Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean (2015¨C2018). Prior to joining ILO, he was the Director of the Trade Unit of the Organization of American States (1998¨C2005). Mr. Salazar-Xirinachs was also Minister for Foreign Trade of Costa Rica (1997¨C1998), Executive President of the Costa Rican Development Corporation (1988¨C1990) and Chief Economist and then Executive Director of private sector think tank Federaci¨®n de Entidades Privadas de Centroam¨¦rica, Panam¨¢ y Rep¨²blica Dominicana (FEDEPRICAP) (1990¨C1996).??

Christian Volpe Martincus?is?Principal Economic Advisor?and?Head of Research?at the??(INT)?of the??(IADB).?He previously worked for the?Ministry of the Economy?of the Province of Buenos Aires and was advisor at the?MERCOSUR Commission?of the National Representatives Chamber in Argentina.

He?manages and leads?INT research on trade and investment policies and regional integration and INT academic networks and initiatives?,?, and the?. He has also advised several governments in both Latin American and the Caribbean and OECD countries on?trade and investment facilitation and promotion?and the evaluation of the respective programs.

Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, Indermit served as the World Bank¡¯s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he helped shape the Bank¡¯s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020.? Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution¡¯s Global Economy and Development program.

Indermit led the World Bank's influential 2009 World Development Report on economic geography. His work includes introducing the concept of the ¡°middle-income trap¡± to describe how countries stagnate after reaching a certain level of income. The 2024 World Development Report, prepared with his guidance, highlights strategies for countries to escape the middle-income trap¡ªby adopting modern technologies and driving innovation.

Aart Kraay is the Chief Economist of the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions Practice Group. 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 macroeconomics in developing countries; international capital movements; growth, poverty and inequality; institutions and governance; and applied econometrics. His research on these topics has been published in scholarly journals such as the?Quarterly Journal of Economics, the?American Economic Journal:? Macroeconomics,?the?Review of Economics and Statistics, the?Economic Journal, the?Journal of Monetary Economics, the?Journal of International Economics, and the?Journal of Economic Growth. He is a member of the editorial board of the?World Bank Research Observer, former co-editor of the?World Bank Economic Review,?and an associate editor of the?Journal of Development Economics. He has held visiting positions at the International Monetary Fund and the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and has taught at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Dean of the School of Finance, Economics and Government at Universidad Eafit. Previously he held positions as staff economist and researcher at various divisions of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC. He was also Dissertation Intern at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and Economist at Bancolombia and ANIF in Colombia. Mr Tamayo holds a BA (Eafit), MA (Sussex) and PhD (Rutgers) degrees in economics.