Biographies

Blue Sky Conference

Applying the Odious Debts Doctrine while Preserving Legitimate Lending

Authors
Michael Kremer is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Presidential Faculty Fellowship. Kremer's recent research examines education and health in developing countries, immigration, and globalization. He and Rachel Glennerster have recently published Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases. His articles have been published in journals including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Kremer previously served as a teacher in Kenya. He founded and was the first Executive Director of WorldTeach, a nonprofit organization that places more than 360 volunteer teachers annually in developing countries (1986 to 1989).

Seema Jayachandran is an assistant professor in the economics department at Stanford University. She is also a research affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Her primary research interests are labor, health, and political economy issues in developing countries. Her work has been published in the Journal of Political Economy (“Selling Labor Low,” on labor market risk in India), the American Economic Review (“Odious Debt,” on sovereign debt incurred by dictators), the Journal of Law and Economics (“The Jeffords Effect,” on political contributions in the U.S.), and other journals. Much of her current research is on child health in Asia, including a study of the infant mortality effects of air pollution from large-scale wildfires in Indonesia. Previously, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley, and an assistant professor of economics at UCLA. She earned a Ph.D. and master’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor’s degree from MIT.

Jonathan Shafter is a Principal with the firm of Boston Provident, managing private investment partnerships focused on the financial services industry. Prior to Boston Provident, he was a senior associate with McKinsey & Company. He is currently leading a project of the International Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York examining policy reforms in the area of international odious debt restructuring. Jonathan received his A.B. and A.M. degrees in political science from Brown University and a J.D. degree with certification from the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law from Columbia Law School as a James Kent scholar.

Chair
Mary Jo Bane is Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management, Academic Dean, and Chair of the Management and Leadership area at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Between 1993 and 1996, she was Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. From 1992 to 1993, she was Commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services, where she previously served as Executive Deputy Commissioner (1984-1986). From 1987 to 1992, she was Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Kennedy School. She is the author of a number of books and articles on poverty, welfare, families, and the role of churches in civic life, and co-editor, most recently, of Taking Faith Seriously, Harvard University Press, 2004. She is currently doing research on poverty in the United States and internationally.

Discussants
Eduardo Fernandez-Arias is the Economic Advisor of the Regional Operations Department I of the Inter-American Development Bank (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay). Prior to that, he was Principal Economist of the Research Department at the same institution and Research Economist of the International Economics Department of the World Bank. Mr. Fernández-Arias received a Ph.D. in Economics, as well as an M.A. in Statistics, from the University of California at Berkeley. His publications cover a range of analytical and empirical work on a variety of topics, including financial integration and capital flows, financial crises, and economic reform.

Dr. Ernesto Talvi is the Executive Director of CERES (Center for the Study of Economic and Social Affairs), a not-for-profit independent public policy research institution, located in Montevideo, Uruguay, specializing in the economic analysis of Latin American economies, the design of public policies, and in promoting its debate in international, regional, and local forums. He is also a special advisor to the Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), monitoring and analyzing global factors that have an impact on Latin America’s economic performance and regional economic developments. He teaches Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory and International Economics at the Universidad ORT in Montevideo, Uruguay, and is a visiting professor al the Universidad Torcuatto di Tella in Buenos Aires. Between 1995 and 1997, he was Senior Research Economist at the Research Department of the IADB in Washington, D.C.; and from 1990 to 1995, he was the Chief Economist and Head of Research of the Central Bank of Uruguay. During that period, he was the chief advisor to Uruguay’s economic team and was in charge of the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.

His areas of expertise include: emerging markets macroeconomics with special emphasis in Latin America; stabilization programs; fiscal policy; capital flows and financial crises. He has published several academic and policy articles in books and journals. He is a founding member of the Latin-American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF) and was a member of the Executive Committee of LACEA (Latin American and the Caribbean Economic Association). He obtained his Ph.D. in economics in 1995 and an MBA in 1989, both at The University of Chicago.

Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian is President and CEO of the Harvard Management Company, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Harvard University which is responsible for the management of the University’s endowment and related accounts. He is a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School and Deputy Treasurer of the University. Before joining Harvard in February 2006, Mohamed was a Managing Director and a senior member of PIMCO's portfolio management and investment strategy group. In addition to serving on the firm's seven-member Investment Committee and the three-member Partner Compensation Committee, he led the Emerging Market and Diversified Income portfolio management teams and also had oversight responsibilities for the mortgage, investment grade, high yield, convertibles, and money market desks. Mohamed joined PIMCO in May 1999, having been associated with Salomon Smith Barney/Citibank in London where he was managing director heading the emerging markets economic research team. He previously spent fifteen years with the IMF.

Mohamed has published on economic and financial issues. He holds doctorate and master's degrees in economics from Oxford University, having completed his undergraduate degree at Cambridge University. He has served on several boards, including the Emerging Market Traders Association (EMTA) and the Emerging Markets Creditors Association (EMCA). He is a member of the IMF's Capital Markets Consultative Group and sits on the Board of the ICRW (International Center for Research on Women).

Mohamed is married to Jamie, a lawyer. They have one daughter, Samia.

Doomed to Choose: Industrial Policy as Predicament

Authors
Ricardo Hausmann is Director of Harvard's Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. He was Professor of Economics at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA) (1985-1991) in Caracas, where he founded the Center for Public Policy. His research interests include issues of growth, macroeconomic stability, international finance, and the social dimensions of development. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.

Dani Rodrik is Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and teaches in the MPA/ID Program. He has published widely in the areas of international economics, economic development, and political economy. His research focuses on what constitutes good economic policy and why some governments are better than others in adopting it. He is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research, Centre for Economic Policy Research (London), Center for Global Development, Institute for International Economics, and Council on Foreign Relations, and he has been the recipient of research grants from the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. Among other honors, he was presented the Leontief Award for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2002. He holds a Ph.D. in economics and an MPA from Princeton University and an A.B. (summa cum laude) from Harvard College.

Chair
Enrique García has been President and CEO of CAF, a multilateral financial institution committed to sustainable development and regional integration throughout the Latin American region, since December 1991. In addition, he is Vice President of Canning House, member of the Inter-American Dialogue, the Group of 50, the Council on American Politics of George Washington University, the Advisory Boards of the CID at Harvard University, the Florida International University’s Latin American and Caribbean Center, and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Administration (IESA, Caracas).

Previous positions include: Minister of Planning and Coordination and head of the Economic and Social Cabinet of Bolivia (1989-1991); Governor at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB); member of the IMF-IBRD Development Committee representing Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, and Paraguay; senior positions at the IADB including Treasurer of the Institution, Division Head in the Project Analysis and Finance Departments, and Representative in Argentina (1979-1989); Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Planning and Coordination and Board member of the Central Bank of Bolivia (1975-1978); Managing Director of Banco Industrial S.A. (Bolivia, 1973-1975); Senior Operations Officer, Advisor to the President, Area Chief Loan Division, and Loan Officer of the IADB (1966-1973). He taught at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and Catholic University in Bolivia (1973-1978).

Mr. García is a Preferred Member of the Academy of Economic Sciences and Council of Science and Technology of the National Academy of Sciences of Bolivia. He is author of several publications. He has received doctoral and other honorary degrees from several universities and has been decorated by the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and the Sovereign Order of Malta. In 2001, he received the Latin American Regional Integration Award by the Consejo Empresario de América Latina-CEAL and in 2004 the Regional Integration Award by América Economía. Mr. Garcia was elected Man of the Year 2005 by Latin Finance Magazine.

Mr. García holds a B.S. and an M.A. in economics and finance from St. Louis University and doctoral studies at American University.

Discussants
Michael Spence is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. From 1990 to 1999, he served as Philip H. Knight Professor and dean of the Stanford Business School. From 1975 to 1990, he was a professor of economics and business administration at Harvard University, also serving as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1984 to 1990. Prior to that, he taught economics at Stanford from 1973 to 1975.

In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Among his other honors, Spence was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983 and was awarded the David A. Wells Prize for outstanding doctoral dissertation at Harvard University in 1972. He is a member of the boards of directors for General Mills, Siebel Systems, Nike, and Exult. From 1991 to 1997, he was chairman of the National Research Council Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy. He is a member of the American Economic Association and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. His publications include Competitive Structure in Investment Banking, with Samuel Hayes and David Marks (Harvard University Press, 1983); Industrial Organization in an Open Economy, with R. E. Caves and M. E. Porter (Harvard University Press, 1980); and Market Signaling: Informational Transfer in Hiring and Related Processes (Harvard University Press, 1974).

Spence was named a Danforth Fellow and a Rhodes Scholar, both in 1966. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1966, a B.A.-M.A. from Oxford University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1972.

Robert H. Wade is professor of political economy at the London School of Economics (since 2001). He is the author of Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asia’s Industrialization (Princeton, 2004); also books about the inner workings of Korean bureaucracy and common property resource management in Indian villages. His recent papers have focused on trends in world poverty and income distribution; international economic governance (WTO, World Bank); the ascendancy of neoliberal-globalization to 'global policy' status; the evolution of the UK-type of capitalism; and open-economy industrial policy.

Bob Davis is an award-winning journalist who has long covered international economic issues for The Wall Street Journal. Currently, he serves as the Latin America bureau chief based in Washington D.C., overseeing Latin American coverage and managing bureaus in Mexico and Brazil. Previously, he was the Washington D.C. news editor responsible for coverage of economic policy-making., and from 2001-2002, he was The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels bureau chief.

Last year, he led a team of reporters that won the Overseas Press Club’s top award for Latin America coverage. In 2000, he was awarded the Raymond Clapper award for Washington reporting for coverage of White House negotiations with China concerning the World Trade Organization. In 1999, he was part of a team of Journal reporters that won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for coverage of the Russian financial crisis. He also placed second in the SAIS award for international reporting for his coverage of the Asia financial crisis. In 1998, he co-authored with Wall Street Journal reporter David Wessel, Prosperity, selected by Business Week as one of the year’s 10 best business books.

A graduate of Queens College in New York, Mr. Davis lives in Washington D.C. with his wife, Debra Bruno, and two children.

Tools to Plan and Coordinate Disaster Relief

Author
Asim Ijaz Khwaja is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. His areas of interest include economic development, corporate finance, education, political economy, industrial organization, contract theory, mechanism design, and computational economics. Combining fieldwork, micro-level empirical analysis, and theory, his recent work ranges from understanding political and informational constraints in emerging financial markets to examining the private education market in low-income countries. He received BS degrees in economics and in mathematics with computer science from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard. A Pakistani citizen, Khwaja was born in London, U.K., lived for eight years in Kano, Nigeria, the next eight in Lahore, Pakistan, and the current eight-plus years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He continues to enjoy interacting with people around the globe.

A New Compensation Mechanism for Preference Erosion in the Doha Round

Authors
Robert Z. Lawrence is Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1998 to 2000 and has also been a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has taught at Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in economics. His research focuses on trade policy. He is the author of Crimes and Punishments? Retaliation under the WTO; Regionalism, Multilateralism and Deeper Integration; Single World, Divided Nations?; and Can America Compete? He is co-author of Has Globalization Gone Far Enough? The Costs of Fragmentation in OECD Markets (with Scott Bradford); A Prism on Globalization; Globaphobia: Confronting Fears About Open Trade; A Vision for the World Economy; and Saving Free Trade: A Pragmatic Approach. Lawrence has served on the advisory boards of the Congressional Budget Office, the Overseas Development Council, and the Presidential Commission on United States-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy.

Tatiana Rosito graduated from the MPA/ID program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in June 2006. She has been a career diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil since 1995. Her last post was at the Brazilian Mission to the United Nations, where she was in charge of economic development issues. Previously, she worked at the Presidency of Brazil, where she served as a representative at the National Foreign Trade Board, among other duties. She studied economics in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of Brasília. Tatiana is currently Head of the Economic and Trade Section at the Embassy of Brazil in Singapore.

Chair
Rodrigo Botero, an economist and historian, is a former finance minister of Colombia. He has also served the Colombian government in other capacities at home and abroad, including appointments as special advisor to the president on economic affairs and economic counselor at the Colombian Embassy in Washington D.C. He was founder and first executive director of Fedesarrollo, a nongovernmental policy research center located in Bogotá of which he is now a trustee emeritus and member of the international advisory board. He was also founder and publisher of Coyuntura Económica, a quarterly economics journal, and of Estrategia, a journal on contemporary economic, social, and political affairs.

He served as a member of the Brandt Commission on International Development Issues and sat on the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation and the Aspen Institute. He is the author of Reflections on the Modernization of Spain; Ambivalent Embrace: America’s Troubled Relations with Spain from the Revolutionary War to the Cold War; La Comunidad Económica Caribe-Andina; and El Discreto Encanto de la Social Democracia.

Discussants
Bernard Hoekman is the manager of the international trade team of the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He has worked extensively on the Middle East and North Africa and economies in transition. Between 1988 and 1993, he was on the staff of the GATT Secretariat in Geneva. He is a graduate of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan, and is a Research Fellow of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Carlos A. Primo Braga is currently Senior Adviser for the International Trade Department of the World Bank. Based in Geneva, he is responsible for covering trade issues of relevance to developing countries vis-à-vis European-based institutions, including OECD, EC, UNCTAD, and the WTO. His previous posts include Senior Manager of the Informatics Program, Director of the Development Gateway initiative (2001-2003), and Manager of infoDev (1997-2001) at the World Bank. Before joining the World Bank, he taught at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. He has degrees in mechanical engineering (1976, Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, Brazil) and economics (M.Sc., 1980, University of São Paulo, Brazil; Ph.D., 1984, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA).

The Globalization of Household Production

Authors
Michael Kremer, Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Stanley B. Watt recently received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University with a focus on international trade and foreign direct investment. He was a Doctoral Fellow at the Center for International Development from 2004-2006; while there he examined issues regarding exchange rate regimes and the forward exchange rate premium. Previously, he has worked at the U.S. Department of State Embassy in Beijing and for Cornerstone Research in Boston. He has a B.A. in economics from Princeton and recently accepted a position with the International Monetary Fund.

Chair
Robert J. Hildreth is president and founder of IBS, Inc., a Boston-based company that trades and services bank loans from Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America. Since its establishment in 1989, the company has traded $4 billion loans with over 500 clients and has assisted over 100 banks in debt collection and loan servicing activity. From 1992 to 1998, he was the principal shareholder in IBS Commodities, Inc., a company he founded to trade food commodities in the Caribbean, Asia, and Latin America. After posting profits for five consecutive years, it was sold to the principal officer. His previous positions include: Senior Vice President, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Los Angeles (1985-1989); Vice President, Citibank, New York (1981-1985); IMF Resident Representative, La Paz, Bolivia (1979-1980); Economist, IMF, Washington DC (1975-1979).

Mr. Hildreth received his undergraduate degree with magna cum laude distinction from Harvard University. He holds master’s degrees from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and The George Washington University (economics).

Discussants
Lant Pritchett is currently Lead Socio-Economist in the Social Development group of the South Asia region of the World Bank, resident in Delhi. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a B.S. in economics and in 1988 from MIT with a Ph.D. in economics. After leaving MIT, Lant joined the World Bank, where has held a number of positions in research complex, including as an adviser to then-vice president Lawrence Summers and in the Bank's operations in Indonesia and India. From 2000 to 2004, Lant was a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and, in 2004, served as Faculty Chair of the MPA/ID degree program there.

Lant has been a co-author and team member in producing books by the World Bank, including two World Development Reports (Infrastructure in 1994, and Making Services World for Poor People in 2004), Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why in 1998, Better Health Systems for India’s Poor: Findings, Analysis, and Options in 2003, and most recently, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reforms in 2005. In addition, he has authored or co-authored over 50 individually signed papers in refereed journals, chapters in books, or articles, and he was (inordinately) pleased when his Google count passed 10,000. He has published widely in economics journals and in specialized journals on demography, education, and health. Finally, he has been engaged in policy dialogue and projects with governments and civil society around the world, both with the World Bank and as a consultant while at Harvard.

Nora Lustig has been Director of the Poverty Group in the Bureau of Development Policy at UNDP since April 1, 2006. Before joining UNDP, Ms. Lustig was the Director of the Center for Studies on Globalization and Development at the Tecnológico de Monterrey; President of the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla; Senior Advisor and Chief of the Poverty and Inequality Unit at the Inter-American Development Bank; and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Between 1975 and 1988, she was professor of economics at El Colegio de México; Visiting Fellow at MIT; and Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Ms. Lustig co-directed the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000/2001 "Attacking Poverty" and was a member of the international Commission on Macroeconomics and Health. She was also president of the Mexican Commission on Macroeconomics and Health. She has published extensively in the fields of economic development and determinants of poverty and inequality and is a member of a number of editorial and advisory boards. She was a founding member and president of LACEA (Latin American and Caribbean Economics Association). Nora Lustig obtained her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

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