Sabah Abdullah, is a former teaching fellow and a current visiting research fellow at University of Bath. She is an environmental economist specializing in market and non-market valuation approaches with regards to energy and the environment in sub-Saharan Africa. Her PhD thesis evaluated some renewable energy technologies for rural electrification programme in Kenya. Her other areas of interest include: global climate change, energy and environmental sustainability and low carbon development for developing countries. Sabah obtained her PhD in Economics from the University of Bath, having previously studied at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), John Hopkins University where she was awarded her MA in International Economics and Energy Policy.

Rabia Ali is a Research Analyst at the World Bank's Research Department (DEC). She completed a Master in Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, in June 2009, and an AB in physics from Princeton University in June 2004. Rabia has previously worked on research projects in health economics and demography in South Africa, and in strengthening health services and capacity in Cambodia and India. She is currently engaged in research projects on pensions and poverty in old age, infrastructure and development, and child outcomes in Indonesia following the financial crisis of 1997.

Pierre André obtained his M.A. from Ecole Polytechnique and ENSAE, in Paris. He has defended his PhD. in Paris School of Economics in december 2009, and he is currently consultant at the World Bank. His current research focuses the organisation of primary school systems in Africa. This includes the pedagogic organisation of primary schools and the reasons underlying the geographic repartition of public infrastructure.

Luis Andres is Senior Economist in the Sustainable Development Department for the South Asia Region of the World Bank. His work at the World Bank involves both analytical and advisory services, and economic input, with a focus on infrastructure, mainly in water and energy sectors, impact evaluations, and empirical microeconomics. He worked with numerous Latin American and South Asian governments on issues on infrastructure and impact evaluation. Before joining the World Bank, he was the Chief of Staff for the Secretary of Fiscal and Social Equity as well as other top positions in the Chief of Cabinet of Ministries and the Ministry of Economy for the Government of Argentina. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Malin Arve is a PhD student at the Toulouse School of Economics. Her advisor is David Martimort and her main research interests are contract theory, mechanism design, regulation and dynamic contracts.

Emmanuelle Auriol studied Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics I where she received her PhD in 1992. After spending one year at the University of California at Berkeley as a post-doc she joined the Economics Department at Toulouse. She passed the French economics aggregation in 1996 and she spent 2 years at the University of Aix-Marseille II. Since 1998 she has been a professor at Toulouse School of Economics. She is a research fellow of the CESifo, CEPR, EUDN and starting January 2010 a member of the EEA Council. Her research interests include industrial organization, regulation, labor economy, and collective decision making. She studies government conduct and performance with a special focus on developing economies. She relies on cross-countries analysis to derive policy recommendations on industrial organization issues such as privatization, regulation or markets design. Since in practice policy implementation matters as much as policy design, she also studies incentive in public organizations and government structure. Throughout the years she received several grants and awards for her publications.

Ahmet Faruk Aysan, Assoc. Prof. of Economics at Bogazici University holds a PhD in Economics from the Department of Economics, University of Maryland College Park, US (2005). He has served as a consultant at the Social and Economic Development Division of Middle East and North Africa region and as well as in Eastern and Central Asia Departments at the World Bank. He also administers projects on banking and credit cards for the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey and The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. He is a specialist in governance, private investment, banking, and financial markets and has authored or co-authored a number of articles on these issues. Currently, he works on governance, institutions, internationalization of banking, foreign bank entry, credit card competition, regulation of financial markets, efficiency and changing structure of banking sector in post-crisis era in Turkey. He is at the editorial board of several academic journals. He also serves as the national delegate of Turkey at FP7.

Lika Ba is an applied financial economist with a special interest in the role of financial markets in economic growth and development. She has work experience in the areas of portfolio management, insurance, and trading in the banking and insurance industries. Currently, she is working on a PhD thesis in Economics at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris in association with the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE). She holds a BS degree in Economics and Statistics and an MS degree in Markets and Financial Intermediaries both from TSE. Her current research is concerned with the financial reforms in developing countries and their impact of financial market efficiency and growth and development.

Professor of Economics at Universitat de Barcelona (Spain), and guest professor at Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. Graduate studies at University of Chicago and Universitat de Barcelona. Visiting Professor at Cornell University in 2004-05, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in 2005-06, and at European University Institute on Spring/Summer 2009. His academic research focuses on: (1) The Economics and Politics of public sector reform, with special attention to privatization, pos-privatization, and regulation; (2) The Economics and Politics of infrastructure and transport; (3) The Economics and Politics of local public services. On these issues has published and edited several books, and has published articles in academic journals (detailed information in: http://www.ub.edu/graap/beling.htm).

Gunther Bensch studied economics in Bonn and Lisbon and joined the Department "Environment and Resources" at RWI Essen in February 2007. Since that time, Mr. Bensch has worked in several research and consulting projects under the umbrella of the Dutch-German energy partnership Energising Development (EnDev) that is being implemented by GTZ. He was involved in impact monitoring and evaluation of rural electrification and improved stoves programmes in Rwanda, Mozambique, Benin and Senegal. In particular, he realized a baseline and impact study for a micro-hydropower project in rural Rwanda in 2007 and 2008 and a randomized controlled trial on improved stoves in Senegal in 2009. Furthermore, Mr. Bensch supervised two external evaluations in China for GTZ from the field of renewable energies and energy efficiency. Before his occupation at RWI Essen, he taught a two-month summer school course at the Mozambican National University in Maputo. Mr. Bensch commenced his graduate studies at RWI Essen in August 2008.

Nicoletta is a Ph.D. candidate at Toulouse School of Economics. Her main research fields are Development Economics, Labor Economics, Applied Econometrics and Social Networks. Nicoletta Berardi is also a Research Associate at the OECD Development Centre and a Short Term Consultant for the World Bank. She completed a Master in Economic Theory and Econometrics at Toulouse School of Economics. She received her undergraduate education at Universitá Bocconi and visited Universidad de La Habana and University of California in San Diego.

Currently working as a Senior Research Counsellor and Senior Fellow at NCAER, New Delhi. He received his Ph. D in agricultural economics from Iowa State University, Ames. He has worked briefly from 2003 to 2004 as Professor and Head RBI Unit at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. He was working on a project related at assignment during 1998–1999 at the Australia South Asia Research Center, Australian National University, Canberra. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Foundation for Advanced Studies in International Development, Tokyo. His current research program includes macroeconomic modelling and forecasting, poverty dynamics and infrastructure development.

Bruno Biais is CNRS Researcher in Finance at Toulouse School of Economics. He has also taught at HEC, LBS, LSE, Oxford and Carnegie mellon University. He works on market microstructure, corporate finance, contract theory and political economy. He has published papers on these topics in Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of African Economies. He is currently editor of the Review of Economic Studies. He has been awarded the CNRS bronze medal, the NYSE award for the best paper on equity markets, and the Paris Bourse best PHD award. He has been scientific adviser of Euronext-NYSE, the AFG, the ECB, and the City of London.

Flávia Chein (PhD, Federal University of Minas Gerais, with collaborative period in Department of Economics/PUC-Rio) is Associate Professor, Department of Economics, at Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. Her research fields are applied microeconomics and development economics. It includes topics such as migration, labor market, financial deepening, credit rationing, infrastructure and their impacts on development. She has already worked as a short-term consultant for World Bank.

Claude Crampes is Professor of Economics at Toulouse School of Economics (Toulouse School of Economics-Capitole) and Research Director at Institut D'Economie Industrielle (IDEI). His research fields are Research and Development on one hand and the Economics of Networks on the other hand. In the Network Industries, he has worked mainly on electricity but also on water distribution and cable TV. In the field of R&D, he has worked on the innovation process, intellectual property rights (mainly patents), and the pharmaceutical and software industries. He has been a member of section 37 (economics and management science) of the CNRS committee in charge of hiring and promoting researchers in France. He also serves as consultant for Electricité France and the World Bank. Details and publications can be found at http://www.idei.fr/member.php?i=30&lang=en.

Omar Osvaldo Chisari is Director of the Instituto de Economía UADE, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Principal Researcher of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Argentina) and member of National Academy of Economic Sciences, (Argentina). Most of his research has been in energy economics, regulatory economics and computable general equilibrium models. He has published his works in Energy Economics, World Bank Economic Review and Review of Network Economics, among other journals. He was editor of the book “Regulatory Economics and Quantitative Methods”. He was also president of the Argentine Association of Economists.

Jean-Jacques DETHIER, a Research Manager in the World Bank's Research Department (DEC), is one of the organizers of this conference. He is also Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University where he teaches a course on development in the Public Policy Institute. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley (1985) and a law degree from the University of Liège, Belgium (1975). He also completed the course requirements for the doctorate (Dr.rer.pol) in political science at the Free University in Berlin, Germany. In 1998 and 1999, he was a Senior Fellow at the University of Bonn, Germany, where he set up the governance program of the Center for Development Research (ZEF). He has published on development policy, governance and public finance (See http://econ.worldbank.org). His recent books are Growth and Empowerment. Making Development Happen, with Nick Stern and Halsey Rogers (MIT Press 2005); Governance, Decentralization and Reform in China, India and Russia (Kluwer 2000) and Public Finance Reform during the Transition (World Bank 1998).

Elodie Djemaï is a PhD candidate at Toulouse School of Economics. Her current research is in applied econometrics, with applications related to Development Economics, Health Economics, Household economics and Education. Her work is motivated by welfare and health issues in developing countries. The leading theme in her research is the analysis of the link between exogenous risks and shocks on the one hand, and individual or household decisions on the other hand, in the developing world. Her research to date can be organized along the following themes: (1) the economics of the AIDS epidemic in Africa; (2) schooling decisions, shocks and informal groups in developing countries.

Eduardo Engel is Professor of Economics at Yale University. He came to Yale in 2001, after a decade on the faculty at the University of Chile, where he taught economics and directed the Center for Applied Economics. At Yale he teaches graduate macroeconomics and an undergraduate senior seminar on Economic Policies in Latin America. Yale's graduate students in economics voted him Teacher of the Year in 2001, 2003 and 2009. He has published widely in the areas of macroeconomics, public finance and regulation. He was awarded the Econometric Society's 2002 Frisch Medal. His current research interests include dynamic macroeconomic models and private participation in infrastructure. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, and various ministries and government agencies in Latin America. Engel holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University, and an engineering degree from the University of Chile.

Marianne Fay is the Chief Economist of the Sustainable Development Network and the co-director of the World Development Report 2010 on climate change. She has held positions in different regions of the World Bank (Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa) working on infrastructure, urbanization, and more recently, adaptation to climate change. Her research has mostly focused on the role of infrastructure and urbanization in development, with a particular interest in issues related to urban poverty. She is the author of a number of articles and books on these topics. Ms Fay has recently been appointed as the new Chief Economist for the Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank—a position she will take after finishing the World Development Report, in the Fall of 2009. Marianne Fay holds a PhD in Economics from Columbia University.

Marie is a Ph.D. candidate at University Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne. After a six-months internship in Senegal where she worked in a local society that provides ITCs services to a wide range of economic agents (farmers, international firms, communities…), she completed a Master in International and Development Economics at University Paris 1 and a Master in Theoretical and Empirical Economics at Paris School of Economics. Her main research field is Development Economics, with a particular focus on empirical research on poverty.

Farid Gasmi is a professor at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) where he is a member of the Atelier de Recherche Quantitative Appliquée au Développement and the Institut D’Economie Industrielle. Prior to joining the Toulouse faculty, he was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Communications Research. He holds MS and PhD degrees from the California Institute of Technology. His research interest and consulting activities are in the areas of industrial organization, regulation, and development, in particular, as they apply to infrastructure sectors.

Carolin Geginat has been with the World Bank since 2003 and joined the Doing Business team in October 2006 to develop the new “Getting Electricity” indicator. She is the main author of the report on the new Doing Business indicator "Getting Electricity". Ms. Geginat holds a master's degree in economics from the University of Cologne and a post-graduate degree in International Economic Policy Research from the Institute of World Economics in Kiel. Before joining the Doing Business team, she worked on issues of debt and fiscal sustainability in low-income countries in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank.

Marco Gonzalez-Navarro Obtained his BA in Economics at ITAM in Mexico City, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2009. He is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar at the University of California Berkeley.

Michal Grajek (PhD, Humboldt University of Berlin) is Assistant Professor at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin. His research focuses on empirical industrial organization, and includes topics such as network dynamics, compatibility, and standardization with particular emphasis on information and communication technologies. He was born in Warsaw (Poland) and is a Polish citizen.

Atsushi Iimi, Ph.D., is a senior economist of Finance, Economics and Urban Development Department, The World Bank. He used to work for Japanese aid agency and IMF. His research interests are in empirical auction theory, public finance and development economics.

Elisabetta Iossa is Professor of Economics at Brunel U. and the U. of Rome Tor Vergata and research affiliate of the Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO) at the U. of Bristol, of the Centre for Economic Development and Institutions (CEDI) at Brunel U. and of the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) in Rome. In recent years, Elisabetta’s research has covered a number of theoretical issues related to public procurement, Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and regulation of public utilities. Her papers have been published in the Economic Journal, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, the Journal of Industrial Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, the Rand Journal of Economics, among others. Elisabetta has worked as economic expert adviser for a number of institutions, including the UK Competition Commission, the Office of Fair Trading, the Financial Service Authority and the World Bank.

Dr Marc Ivaldi is professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Research Fellow at the Institut D’Economie Industrielle (IDEI), Industrial Organization Programme Director at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and a member of the Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy at the Directorate General for Competition (European Commission). He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently Director of Communications and External Affairs at TSE, and has served as Scientific Director of the Division of Social Sciences and Humanities at the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. He is specialized in Applied Industrial Organization, applying econometric methods to evaluate firms’ conduct, designing business models, testing theoretical predictions on market equilibrium, and contractual arrangements and regulatory schemes. He has studied different industries, and in particular network industries: transport, energy, telecommunications, banking, and software. He is one of the European experts on empirical methods for competition policy. He has advised competition authorities and firms in cases of merger, collective dominance and arbitrage. He has published many articles in prominent academic journals.

Rémi Jedwab is a PhD student at the Paris School of Economics and a current member of STICERD, at the London School of Economics. His research agenda focuses on using historical and empirical analysis to understand how economic geography and economic development interact. Most of his work is on African countries and his latest work studies the role of cash crops and mining on urbanization in West Africa during the 20th century.

Doh-Shin Jeon is professor of economics in Toulouse School of Economics. He is also research fellow at CEPR. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Université Toulouse 1 and was professor of economics in Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. His research interests have centered on economics of network industries and Internet with particular focus on access pricing in telecommunications markets, bundling a large number of information products, the market for academic journals in the Digital era, two-sided markets, interconnection among networks etc. His work has been published (or accepted for publication) in leading economics journals including the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of the European Economic Association and American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.

Maureen Kilkenny, Professor of Resource Economics at the University of Nevada, USA, is a spatial economist who studies rural development. Her latest journal articles (i) analyze rural development policy in the USA and in the EU, (ii) empirically test the validity of 'the export base hypothesis,' and (iii) investigate the potential 'spatial lock-in' effect of low price rural homes on unemployed rural residents. She is also an adept multi-region Walrasian general equilibrium modeler. For her article "Transport Costs and Rural Development" in the 1998 Journal of Regional Science, the North American Regional Science Association (NA-RSAI) named her the 'Hewings Outstanding Junior Scholar' of the year 2000. Her research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation and she has served as a consultant for the OECD, HIID, and other organizations. Her prior appointments were in the Economics department(s) at Iowa State University; the Economics Institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and prior to that, at The Pennsylvania State University. Her 1987 PhD is from the University of Minnesota.

Franck Lecocq is an economist with the AgroParisTech (the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Sciences). He is deputy director of the Laboratory of Forestry Economics, a joint research unit of AgroParisTech and INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research). Franck has published extensively on the economics of climate change, and his current research focuses on the relationships between climate change and sustainable development, the economics of adaptation to climate change, and the economics of the forest/carbon interface. Franck Lecocq has previously been a research fellow at CIRED, France, and at the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank. Franck holds a PhD in economics from AgroParisTech. He is a member of the Economic Council for Sustainable Development of the French Ministry of Environment, Energy, Sustainable Develompment, and a lead author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

Zhigang Li obtained his PhD degree in Economics from UC-San Diego in 2005 and joined the School of Economics and Finance at the University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor. Zhigang's research interests are in Chinese economy, public economics, and regional economics. He has done research on measuring the economic effect of infrastructure investments in China. He has also studied how privatization may affect the tax evasion in China, and how the tax reform in China may have affected the productivity of State-own Enterprises. Zhigang's current research interests are on (1) how transport infrastructure investments in China affect its economy; (2) The public finance system of China; and (3) The environmental consequences of the growth of China. Zhigang is currently teaching Economic Development of China and Applied Econometrics at the postgraduate level.

Nicola Limodio is a final year student at the MSc in Economics at the University of Pisa and research assistant at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. In 2008 he was visiting student at the École Normale Supérieure(Cepremap) and participated in several international research programs (LSE, Peking University, St Gallen University). In 2006 he won the World Bank International essay competition. His research interests include Development Economics, Aid Effectiveness, Income Distribution and Growth Theory. His current work is focused on aid and growth, including capital formation.

Céline Nauges is a senior researcher at the French Institute for Research in Agriculture (INRA) and Toulouse School of Economics (France). The research questions that she has addressed since her Ph.D. dissertation could be summed up under the heading “Applied microeconometrics aimed at informing economic policies for the management of natural resources, with a special focus on water”. She has contributed to the modelling of behaviour of economic actors involved in the water sector, in particular households, farmers, and water utilities, both in developed and developing countries. In the agricultural sector, Céline Nauges has done some research on farmers’ behaviour in areas where irrigation water can be a limiting input, developing models which accommodate production risk and technological innovation. She has also performed several ex-post analyses of environmental and/or agricultural policies in various countries. She has been chosen as a water sector expert by various institutions including the Inter American Development Bank, the OECD, and the World Bank.

Ousmanou Nijkam is senior lecture rat the Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Yaoundé II in Cameroon. He is also in charge of statistics at the Ministry of Higher Education. Nijkam is also the World Trade Organization-WTO regional expert on NAMA-non-agricultural market access issues. His main research interests are (i) trade policies and the development of the industrial sector, (ii) NAMA-non-agricultural market access and development, (iii) trade liberalization and poverty, and (iv) issues of economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Patrick Nolen is a lecturer at the University of Essex. After receiving his PhD from Cornell University he joined the department and has been continuing his research in the areas of Development, Behavioural, and Experimental Economics. He has worked on gender, competition, and risk by examining the effect of single-sex environments such as schooling or one’s peer-group on a student’s propensity to choose a risky outcome or enter a tournament. Dr. Nolen is also currently involved in examining the effect of the Sichuan earthquake on household outcomes in rural China.

Anne Olivier is a Ph.D. candidate at Paris School of Economics and member of DIAL, Paris. She holds a M.A. in Economic Demography from IEP Paris. Her main research topic focuses on access to piped water and tarification issues in developing countries, with field research activities in Morocco and Brazil.

Edouard Perard, PhD, has been working for the World Bank since January 2008. He is specialized in infrastructure economics, particularly in water and in private sector participation in infrastructure. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked for the OECD on private sector participation and regulatory reform in the water sector. He studied at Sciences Po Paris and at Yale University.

Jörg Peters studied economics and statistics in Cologne and Paris. As a member of the Department “Environment and Resources” at RWI Essen and consultant to the World Bank, he is a specialist in access to modern energy in developing countries and the evaluation of development interventions. In this context, Mr. Peters advises GTZ Energising Development projects in Benin, Mozambique and Senegal. Furthermore, he did an independent evaluation of the GTZ energy programme in Senegal. Mr. Peters designed the methodology of the baseline-studies of rural electrification or improved stove dissemination projects in Benin, Rwanda, Mozambique and Senegal. In addition, he is responsible for the methodological coordination of the joint GTZ-World Bank-research project on the productive usage of energy in rural Africa and managed the survey implementation of this study in Benin and Uganda. Furthermore, Mr. Peters analysed economic and environmental consequences of biofuel promotion in both the European Union and developing countries. He has published in refereed journals such as The Energy Journal and Energy Policy.

Pierre M. Picard graduated at the Louvain School of Polytechnics, obtained a M.B.A., after working some years in the telecom industry, and completed a Ph.D. in Management Science and Economics at the University of Louvain in 1998.After 8 years at the University of Manchester, he joined last year the University of Luxembourg where he teaches Industrial Organization, Regional Economics and Public Economics. Pierre M. Picard researches on topics linking the fields of public economics and industrial organization but also spatial economics and economic geography. His research includes theoretical works about the privatization, information technologies, spatial interactions and city formation, firms agglomeration, international trade, fiscal federalism.

Melissa Rekas is an economist specializing in infrastructure - specifically, water and irrigation - and private-sector development. Her work in the water sector focuses on private-sector participation, governance, regulation, financing strategies, and utility reform. She also has experience advising on broader areas of public policy in infrastructure, including improving the way that government agencies develop infrastructure projects. She currently works for the consulting firm Castalia. Prior to joining Castalia, Ms. Rekas worked on trade, investment, competitiveness, and small- and medium-sized enterprise development in Latin America. She holds an M.A. in International Economics and International Development from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Patrick Rey graduated from Ecole Polytechnique (1981) and ENSAE (1983), and holds a PhD (Toulouse School of Economics, 1992). He started his career at ENSAE and CREST (where he established the Laboratoire d'Economie Industrielle), before joining the Toulouse School of Economics. He is also professor at Ecole Polytechnique and a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, has published numerous articles in renowned scientific reviews and serves or has served on the boards of several of them. His themes of interest cover Industrial Organization, competition policy, regulation, and the theory of information, of firms and of organizations. Patrick Rey has served as expert for OECD, the World Bank, the US department of Justice and the European Commission, and also serves on several regulators’ and competition authorities’ advisory committees.

Mark Roberts is a Lecturer in Spatial Economics, Planning and Policy in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, UK. His research interests focus primarily on the applied empirical investigation of disparities in urban and regional economic outcomes, both in developing and developed countries. He has published in several leading regional economics and science journals, including the Journal of Regional Science, the International Regional Science Review and Regional Studies, and he is a co-editor of the journal Spatial Economic Analysis. Mark also has extensive consultancy experience with the World Bank and was a major contributor to the 2009 World Development Report: Reshaping Economic Geography..

Juan Pablo Rud completed his undergraduate studies at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina and his Msc and PhD in Economics at the London School of Economics. He is currently Assistant Professor in Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research interest include Industrial Organization in developing countries, Development Economics and Applied microeconometrics. Before his graduate studies he has worked as a Junior Economist for the Secretary for Competition Policy of Argentina.

Mr. Rusli conducts research in microeconomic theory and public economics at the Center for Research in Economic Analysis (CREA), Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance, University of Luxembourg. He was formerly an investment banker and specialist advisor to government ministries and state-owned companies throughout Asia, and in selected European countries. His work included state-owned company restructurings and privatizations, private- and capital markets financings, mergers and acquisitions, focusing on natural resource and infrastructure industries. He was advisor to the Indonesian government on its banking- and corporate sector debt restructurings in 1997–2000. Mr. Rusli holds MSc. degrees in Management and Chemical Engineering from MIT, and a Diplom Chemiker from Technical University of Berlin.

Paul Seabright is Professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics. Prior to coming to Toulouse he was Reader in Economics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of several books including The Company of Strangers: a Natural History of Economic Life (Princeton University Press, 2004) which was shortlisted for the 2005 British Academy Book Prize and is due out in a second edition in May 2010. He is a Council Member of the European Economic Association and a member of the Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy of the European Commission.

Anupama Sen is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economy, and an MSc in Economic Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her doctoral research focused on the development and implementation of a framework within which to assess the spatial economic outcomes of the differential implementation of electricity reform in Indian states, whilst accounting for India’s unique political economy. Her research has involved extensive field survey work and interaction with key stakeholders in the reforms process. Her current research investigates broader aspects relating to the economics of energy in India, and her research interests include assessments of energy sector reform in developing economies, spatial economics, regional development, and applied econometrics. She is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society and is also affiliated to Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.

Sandra Sequeira is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Development Economics at the London School of Economics. She completed a PhD at Harvard University in June 2009 and was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at NYU during the summer and Fall of 2009. She is currently engaged in research projects on corruption, infrastructure and growth, private sector development, discrimination, consumer behavior and the fair trade industry.

Naoko Shinkai is an associate professor of Graduate School of International Development, GSID, Nagoya University. Her areas of specialization are Development Economics and International Economics. Her recent research interests lie in issues, such as Evaluation of development projects based on micro surveys, Poverty reduction, and the Impact of Trade, FDI policies.She has conducted research based on micro surveys in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam and Latin American countries. She has been carrying out analyses as economists for development assistance projects, writing project reports and annual reports, facilitating international seminars and conferences, serving as a lecturer and a coordinator of training courses etc. She completed her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Michigan in 1999.

Stéphane Straub is a professor at the Toulouse School of Economics, specialized in issues of infrastructure, corruption, and more generally industrial organization in the context of developing countries. After spending 10 years in Latin America (Paraguay), where he worked among others as an entrepreneur, a private consultant, a university professor and a government advisor, he held academic positions in the US, the UK and France. He is also a consultant for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank among others.

Jean Tirole is chairman of TSE (Foundation JJ Laffont- Toulouse School of Economics), and scientific director of the Institut d'Economie Industrielle, University of Social Sciences, Toulouse. He is also affiliated with MIT, where he holds a visiting position. Before moving to Toulouse in 1991, he was professor of economics at MIT. In 1998, he was president of the Econometric Society, whose executive committee he had served on since 1993. He was president of the European Economic Association in 2001.

He holds Doctorate Honoris Causa degrees from the Free University in Brussels (1989), the London Business School (2007), and HEC Montreal (2007). Among other prizes and honors, he received the Yrjö Jahnsson prize of the European Economic Association (granted every other year to an economist under the age of 45 who has made a contribution in theoretical and applied research that is significant to economics in Europe) in 1993, the gold medal of the CNRS in 2007 (the second economist, after Allais in 1978, to receive this medal, attributed to one researcher every year since 1954), and was the inaugural winner of the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in economics, finance and management in 2008. He is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993) and of the American Economic Association (1993). He has also been a Sloan Fellow (1985) and a Guggenheim Fellow (1988).

Jean Tirole has given over fifty distinguished lectures and has published about hundred eighty professional articles in economics and finance, as well as 8 books including The Theory of Industrial Organization, Game Theory (with Drew Fudenberg), A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation (with Jean-Jacques Laffont) , The Prudential Regulation of Banks (with Mathias Dewatripont), Competition in Telecommunications (with Jean-Jacques Laffont), Financial Crises, Liquidity, and the International Monetary System, and The Theory of Corporate Finance. His research covers industrial organization, regulation, game theory, banking and finance, psychology and economics, international finance and macroeconomics.

He received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1981, engineering degrees from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris (1976) and from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris (1978) and a “Doctorat de 3ème cycle” in decision mathematics from the University Paris IX (1978).

Francesc Trillas has a PhD in Economics for the European University Institute in Florence. He was a Research Fellow at the Regulation Initiative of the London Business School (1999-2002), and is currently at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), where he teaches a graduate course on Applied Microeconomics. He was a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley in 2008 and has published in Oxford Economic Papers, International Journal of Industrial Organization and Utilities Policy among other journals. His expertise is on the institutions of regulation and the corporate governance of regulated firms. He has recently done work on independent regulators and on regulatory federalism.

Martin Valdivia, Ph.D. Applied Economics, University of Minnesota. Martin is a senior researcher at GRADE (http://www.grade.org.pe) since 1993, and his main research interests are rural development, microfinance, health inequalities and impact evaluation of social programs. He currently performs as director of research at GRADE, director of the Latin American Office of the Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) Network (http://www.pep-net.org) and as a member of the steering committee of the Policy Impact Evaluation Research Initiative (PIERI). He is an active member of research networks such as the Global Development Network (GDN), the Latin American and Caribbean Economics Association (LACEA), the Network of Inequality and Poverty (NIP), the Impact Evaluation Network (IEN), among others. He also often serves as consultant to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, the IADB, PAHO, WHO, FAO, among others.

Timo Välilä is Senior Economist in the Economic and Financial Studies Division of the European Investment Bank. His published research work has focussed on issues related to infrastructure finance, public investment, fiscal federalism and public finance more broadly. Before joining the EIB in 2003 Timo spent seven years at the International Monetary Fund, both in Washington, DC, and in Moscow. Timo earned a PhD in economics from Gothenburg University, Sweden, in 1996.

Vanessa Valero is a Ph.D. student at the University of Montpellier and a junior lecturer (A.T.E.R.) at the Toulouse School of Economics. Vanessa's research interests include contract theory, economics of regulation and applied econometrics. Her current research projects focus on Public-Private Partnerships. After completing her Ph.D., Vanessa plans to pursue a career in academic research.

Dominique Van De Walle is a Lead Economist in the World Bank's Gender and Development Group. She holds a Masters in Economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph. D. in economics from the Australian National University, and began her career at the Bank as a member of the core team that produced the 1990 World Development Report on Poverty. Her research interests are in the general area of poverty and public policy, encompassing rural development, infrastructure (rural roads and water), poverty and women's labor force participation, impact evaluation and safety nets. The bulk of her recent research has been on Vietnam.

Laura Recuero Virto is an economist at the Africa and Middle East Team at the Development Center where she is currently in charge of the project on Innovation in ICTs in Africa for the African Economic Outlook 2009. She is also giving courses and supervising thesis on a professional master on telecommunications regulation in collaboration with the World Bank and regulatory agencies in Burkina Faso, Senegal and France.Prior to joining the Development Center in October 2008, Laura was a research associate at Télécom ParisTech in charge of the program on Telecommunications Infrastructure and Economic Performance in the Chair on Innovation and Regulation in the Digital Economy sponsored by Télécom ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique, and France Télécom. Her professional experience includes Nortel Networks, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the European Space Agency in the field of radio communications (mobile and satellite). She has collaborated with the World Bank Institute on the topic of regulatory institutions in Africa and Latin America, and with Vodafone on an analysis of cellular demand in South Africa. She has also collaborated with the Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate at the OECD on budgetary institutions in OECD and Latin American countries. Laura holds a B.A. degree on telecommunications engineering and an MBA on international trade from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. She also holds a PhD in economics from Toulouse School of Economics.

John S.Wilson is a Lead Economist in the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank. He joined the Bank in 1999 and directs empirical and policy research on trade facilitation, standards, and regulatory reform issues, as they relate to economic development. He has participated in Bank projects under preparation and completed totaling over $1.3 billion. Mr. Wilson is supporting the establishment of a new public-private partnership on aid for trade facilitation at the World Bank Group.

He was previously Vice President for Technology Policy at the Information Technology Industry Council in Washington, D.C. and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Economics. He was also a Senior Staff Officer at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council and Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University. He has degrees from Wooster College and Columbia University in New York.

Liam Wren-Lewis is a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Oxford. His focus is on how institutional differences in developing countries present challenges for the regulation of infrastructure. He also carries out research on the determinants of income inequality and has worked as a consultant at the World Bank and the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Stefan Zeugner is a 3rd-year PhD candidate at ECARES, Brussels. In 2007, he graduated from the post-graduate program in economics at IHS Vienna. Before his studies he gained practical experience in fixed income trading at WestLB, Düsseldorf - complemented by an internship with the IMF. His current research interests cover economic geography theory, econometric model sampling, and international monetary systems.