Speakers

Professor Stiglitz is a distinguished economist who has made major contributions to the fields of macroeconomics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, and to the theories of welfare economics and wealth distribution. Professor Stiglitz helped create the brand of economics, ‘the economics of information’, which explores the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneered pivotal concepts such as adverse selection and moral hazard. For his work, Stiglitz was awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011.

Professor Stiglitz is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former member and chairman of the (US president's) Council of Economic Advisers. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 2001.

Professor Stiglitz is the author of numerous books and several bestsellers. Recent titles include: Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity and Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being.

Mara is an Economist and Decision Analyst and holds degrees from Bocconi University in Milan and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research is motivated by a desire to improve decision making in government, with a special interest and extensive expertise in the field of healthcare. Mara is one of the lead developers of the STAR toolkit, a socio-technical approach sponsored by the Health Foundation to improve resource allocation in healthcare organisations.

Mara has worked extensively with managers of the English and the Italian National Health Systems. She has also consulted for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in Ontario (Canada), the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the (then) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in England, NATO and the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Dr Clare Leaver is Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Fellow of University College. Prior to this, she was a University Lecturer in Economics in the Department of Economics at Oxford and Fellow of The Queen’s College. Clare completed her PhD studies at the University of Bristol, and remains an associate member of Bristol’s Centre for Public and Market Organisation. She is the Director of the Service Delivery Programme at the Oxford Institute for Global Economic Development, and Research Coordinator of the Research into Improving Systems of Education Programme hosted by the Blavatnik School.

Much of Clare’s research focuses on careers and incentives within the public sector. In previous research, she has studied Public Utility Commissioners in the United States, and the senior judiciary in England and Wales. In current work, she is focusing on incentives for educators in low and middle-income countries. Specific projects include studies of: the effectiveness of paying for locally monitored teacher presence in Uganda; the impact of paying for teacher preparation and pedagogy, alongside more standard metrics of teacher presence and student performance, in Rwanda; and the welfare consequences of school ‘supply-side’ responses to the Right to Education Act in India.

Rodney is responsible for advising on the overall direction and design of the New Zealand public service, and has held senior and executive positions in the New Zealand public service since 2008. During this time, he has led the design of many public institutions, and was lead advisor on the creation of the foundational Public Service Act 2020 and other key legislation.

Rodney has a PhD in System Dynamics and Public Management from the University of Queensland. He has published broadly in the fields of public management, public administration, public policy, public finance, group decision-making, negotiation, behavioural science, system dynamics, management science, and operations research.

His books cover system dynamics, interagency collaboration, institutional memory, and has a forthcoming book on the relationship between performance targets and goal commitment of public servants, to be published by Brookings Institution Press. Rodney was a visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 2017, and the Blavatnik School of Government in 2018.

As the EBRD’s Chief Economist, Beata Javorcik is responsible for advising the President and other senior members of the Bank’s management team on economic issues of strategic or operational relevance to the EBRD regions.
The Chief Economist provides thought leadership inside and outside of the EBRD on economic issues related to the Bank’s work in the countries where it works. The Office of the Chief Economist undertakes and presents its own research, representing the Bank at high-level external policy and academic conferences and workshops, publishes in academic and non-academic outlets, and maintains strong links between the EBRD and academia.

The Chief Economist ensures that the economics research agenda of the EBRD continues to put the Bank at the forefront of understanding the economic and strategic challenges facing the Bank’s regions and to help the Bank formulate effective policy responses.

The Office of the Chief Economist is also responsible for macroeconomic forecasting and contributes to the work of the Bank’s Risk Management in building scenarios for identifying and navigating emergent risks and conducting stress testing, as well as assisting regional economists with timely cross-country macroeconomic analysis and economic forecasting.

Dr Javorcik is on leave from the University of Oxford, where she holds a Statutory Professorship in Economics (the first woman in this position) and is a Fellow of All Souls College. She is a member of the Royal Economic Society’s Executive Committee and a Director of the International Trade Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale and a B.A. in Economics (Summa cum Laude) from the University of Rochester.

Before taking up her position at Oxford University, she worked at the World Bank in Washington DC, where she focussed on research, lending operations and policy advice.

Dr Javorcik specializes in international trade. Her research interests focus on determinants and consequences of inflows of foreign direct investment, implications of services liberalisation, evaluation of investment promotion programmes, propagation of shock through production networks and evasion of import duties. Her research has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of the European Economic Association, Review of Economics and Statistics, European Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of International Economics and Journal of Development Economics.

Avnish leads Instiglio, a non-profit advisory firm founded to ensure the greatest possible impact from every cent spent to alleviate poverty which has funneled over $500 million to deliver impact through results-based financing projects across Africa, Latina America and Asia.

Avnish formerly worked for MIT's Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), for the World Bank, and as a consultant to a DFID challenge fund. Gungadurdoss holds a MPA/ID from the Harvard Kennedy School, a diploma in performance management for non-profits from Harvard Business School, and a BA in economics and math from Dartmouth College. He was awarded the Echoing Green Fellowship and was elected as one of the "30 under 30" social entrepreneurs for his work with Instiglio. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of Impact.

Dambisa Felicia Moyo is a global economist and best-selling author, known for her analysis of macroeconomics and global affairs. She serves on the boards of Chevron Corporation, Condé Nast and the 3M Company. Moyo worked for two years at the World Bank and eight years at Goldman Sachs before becoming an author and international public speaker. She has written four New York Times bestselling books: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (2009), How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices that Lie Ahead (2011), Winner Take All: China's Race for Resources and What It Means for the World (2012), and the most recent Edge of Chaos (book): Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth – and How to Fix It (2018).

She holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry and an MBA from American University, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a DPhil in economics from the University of Oxford.

Karthik Ramanna is Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. An expert on business-government relations, sustainable capitalism, and corporate reporting and auditing, Professor Ramanna has studied how organisations build trust with stakeholders and the role of business in designing sensible and responsible “rules of the game”. He has authored dozens of research articles and case studies on non-market strategies in Africa, China, the EU, India, and the US, and he has consulted with several leading business organisations worldwide, including Fidelity, KPMG, McKinsey, PwC, Sonae, and State Street. His scholarship has won numerous awards, including the Journal of Accounting & Economics Best Paper Prize and twice the international Case Centre’s Outstanding Case-Writer prize, dubbed by the Financial Times “the business school Oscars.”

Previously, Professor Ramanna taught leadership, corporate governance, and accounting at the Harvard Business School in both the MBA and senior executive-education programs. He has a doctorate from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He has served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including as co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal Accounting, Economics & Law.