HANS TIMMER, a Dutch national, is Director of the Bank's Development Prospects Group. Under his management, the Group produces the World Bank’s annual publications Global Economic Prospects (GEP), Global Development Finance (GDF), and Global Monitoring Report (GMR), in addition to a wide range of monitoring and forecasting publications. The Prospects Group is responsible for the global macro-economic forecasts of the World Bank and focuses on cross-border flows to developing countries, from trade and financial flows to remittances and migration.  With long-term scenario analysis structural issues like trade agreements, climate change policies, migration, global income distribution, and policies aimed at meeting the Millennium Development Goals are being analyzed. 

Before joining the Bank in May 2000, he was head of international economic analysis at Central Planning Bureau (CPB) for ten years. In this role, he supervised the development of two world models: a long-term model of the world economy, and an econometric medium-term model of OECD economies. He has had vast experience working with the European Commission, IPCC and the OECD, as well as with the Indian Planning Commission and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He has participated in international modeling groups like LINK and GTAP. Mr. Timmer studied Econometrics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has been a researcher at the University of Lodz in Poland and at the Netherlands Economic Institute.