He is also working on research on finding spatial determinants of a number of economic, governance and public sector outcomes. He applies mostly quantitative analysis to understand various governance and public policy issues in various sectors. His job market paper looks into effect of monitoring intensity on compliance and corrupt arrangements between a firm and inspector in Bangladesh. Recently, he worked as a local expert on the USAID anti-corruption assessment, Bangladesh, 2015 which looks into the general and some sector-specific governance vulnerabilities opening up rooms for corruption and makes programmatic suggestions in addressing (some of) the identified vulnerabilities. In a recent International Growth Centre (IGC) working paper, he investigates the role of electronic government procurement on curbing local political capture in Bangladesh and finds that electronic procurement significantly reduces procurement prices of the government through encouraging bidder competition. Finally, he is also interested in outcome and impact evaluations of social sector interventions. Before joining BIGD, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Department of Economics and Social Sciences at BRAC University. He has completed his PhD in Economics from University of Washington in 2011 on Economics of Corruption.

However, inception of his research career started with South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) during the year 2008. His research arena includes subject matters of Macroeconomics, International Economics and Health Economics while his teaching interest consists of the courses like Econometrics, Time Series Econometrics and Statistics. Hence, he completed his MSc in Economics with a special focus in Econometrics from Lund University, Sweden in 2015 with Swedish Institute Study Scholarship (SI). One of his very recent papers titled “Is health care a necessary or luxury product for Asian countries? An answer using panel approach” has been published in Health Economics Review.

He is an adjunct faculty of East West University. Previously, he worked as Head of Programs for WaterAid Bangladesh, as Programme Head for Microfinance, BRAC Healthcare Innovations Programme, Healthcare Financing, Health Nutrition and Population Programme for BRAC. From BRAC he had been the country manager at Tanzania, Manager Microfinance at Africa, Program Organizer at Micro Enterprise Lending, Microfinance and in many other positions.

He was directly involved in framing government policies, acts, national budgets and implementing them. He obtained his B.A. (Honours) and M.A. in Economics from the University of Dhaka.Prior to BFTI, Mr. Ahmed served the government as a Member (Customs) of the National Board of Revenue (NBR). He has several publications, both in Bengali and English. He regularly hosts and participates in television talk-shows and other programmes. Mr. Ahmed joined and presented papers in many international trainings, workshops and conferences, such as, Regional Workshop on Enhancing Capacities for Trade in Services Policy Making and Negotiation in Sri Lanka, International Conference on Trade and Employment Challenges in Asia: Insights for South Asia in India, and, Nepal-Bangladesh Business Forum.

Dr. Ahmed has served for over two decades in senior positions in UNICEF including Senior Education Adviser, and country director in China, Ethiopia and Japan. Earlier he also served as senior researcher at the International Council for Educational Development in Connecticut, USA. Dr. Ahmed was involved in pioneering work led by Philip Coombs on non-formal education that led to seminal publications and internationally adopted concepts and practices in this area. He helped in shaping UNICEF’s education strategy in 1980s and 90s and was involved in planning the World Conference on Education for All in 1990 in Jomtien and the launch of the global EFA movement. He has been Chair of the Bangladesh Early Childhood Development Network (BEN) since 2007,Convenor, 2003-6, of Education Watch Bangladesh and currently the vice Chair of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE). He was the co-manager of four-country research (Bangladesh, India, Ghana and South Africa) CREATE (Consortium for Research in Education Access, Transitions and Equity, 2005-11). This research led to the publication of the book titled Education in Bangladesh, Overcoming Hurdles to Equity with Quality, edited by Dr. Ahmed and published by BRAC University Press. He was the principal writer of Education and Training for Rural Transformation - Skills, jobs, food, green future to combat poverty,a study for UNESCO Institute of Research and Training on Rural Education (UNESCO-INRULED) in Beijing, China. He is the author of several other books on education and development, educational planning, and non-formal education.

He started his career as a lecturer in Economics at Dhaka University in 1970. Joining the erstwhile Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP), he served in various capacities in field of administration in the government of Bangladesh. He worked in the Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP), a regional inter-governmental organization with its headquarters in Dhaka. Dr. Ahmed was the Director General of Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD), Comillaand also Director General of the NGO Affairs Bureau of the Office of the Prime Minister. During 1996-2005 Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed was the Managing Director of Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), the apex funding agency of micro credit operations in Bangladesh. He has authored more than 60 books, reports and journal articles which have been published at home and abroad. He is on advisory bodies of several government and non-government agencies in Bangladesh.

He also worked as a Visiting Research Fellow at Tsukuba University, Japan during 2002-04. Some of his research articles have been published in peer-reviewed international and national academic journals. He has been working as a reviewer of a number of national and international academic journals and also acting as a member of Editorial Board of several academic journals. Recently he is working as the Associate Editor of Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science (AJRS), Springer, Japan. Currently working as the Economic Adviser of Bangladesh Bank (since June 2010) Akhtaruzzaman is responsible for providing direct contributions to the central bank’s monetary policy formulation and management as well as supervision and overall guidance for policy research and analysis to BB researchers. Akhtaruzzaman is a member of the following important BB and Government high-powered policy making committees: the Monetary Policy Committee for formulating, evaluating and controlling Monetary Policy Framework and Stance; Investment Committee for Forex Reserve management; Auction Committee for BB's reserve money and public debt management, the Working Group for Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation of PRSP-II, MDGs and SDGs, GoB; Committee of Panel of Economists for 7th Five Year National Plan, the National Sovereign Bond Working Committee and Director, Board of Directors, Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), MoC, GoB.

During the tenure at SANEM his research activities in such as working in SANEM’s research paper for IDRC (International Development Research Centre), Canada on “Dynamics of Employment in the Urban Informal Sector in Bangladesh. He also worked as a Research Assistant for the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) project in collaboration with University of Manchester, UK: “The Political Determinants of Economic Growth.” At present, he is involved in a project as a member of the East West University for SEIP (Skill for Employment Investment Program) Executive Development Program Implementation Arrangement Committee. SEIP project is being implemented under Finance Division, Ministry of Finance. This project is financed jointly by the Asian Development Bank, Swiss Agency for Development and corporation and Government of Bangladesh. Mr. Mir Tanzim Nur Angkur received his Bachelor Degree from the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka in 2011 and obtained his Master Degree in Economics at University of Dhaka in 2012.

He is also the Vice President at Bangladesh Football Federation, a Board Member at Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Dhaka (MCCI), Dhaka Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI), and President at Feni Soccer Club. He received his graduate and undergraduate degrees from George Washington University, USA.

He has more than 37 years of experience in research and consultancy with IRRI, ADB, World Bank, Danish embassy and The Netherlands embassy. He has authored several books, articles and has a long list of journal publications to his credit. He did his Masters in Economics from the University of New England (UNE), Armidale, Australia and also from Dhaka university. He has a post graduate, diploma in Economics from the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra. His research interest includes Agriculture, International Trade (Exchange Rate, Industry Policy), Rural Development and Rural Livelihoods.

A Master's degree holder in Economics from Dhaka University, she completed her post-graduate Diploma in International Economics and Institutions and received training from AIT,Thailand on Project Implementation and Management. She attended Training on Services and International Trade Law and development in Esami, Arusha and Tanzania. She has previously acted as the In-Charge of the DCCI Research Cell for several years and served as Secretary of the DCCI for some time, as well as working as Executive Director of the SAARC Chamber of Commerce & Industry for a number of years. She has managed numerous projects and coordinated a number of national and international programmes, contributingher extensive expertise in the areas of policy research and advocacy, SME development and promotion, research on Multilateral Training System (MTS),project management, women entrepreneurship development, chamber management etc.She has also worked for CIPE, ITC, JETRO, GIZ in different capacities.

She has worked as an International Consultant and authored, along with another colleague from BIDS, the first Global MDG report for Bangladesh, in January 2004. She has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, IOM, UNIFEM, UNDP, NORAD, SDC, UNICEF and DFID. For last 19 years, she has been an active researcher on rural, urban and international migration, having a wide interest in development issues: female entrepreneurs, gender equality and empowerment of women, employment and income programmes, rural and urban area development priorities, formal and informal industry worker conditions, informal service sector and poverty issues, housing and settlements and the problems of social and economic deprivation of urban and rural poor dwellers, formal and technical education, human resource development and rural-to-urban migration.

She obtained a Masters from the University of Bath and earned her PhD in Economics from the University of Nottingham. Her research interest lies on development economics, labor economics and environmental economics. She worked for the Planning Commission of the Government of Bangladesh and was closely involved in drafting the Five Year Plans of Bangladesh. She has completed a number of research projects on food security, rural credit, poverty, women empowerment in particular. She published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and also contributed in several book chapters and research reports. Dr. Haque also worked with different international organizations like the World Bank, FAO, IDRC, ILO etc.

His work on innovation in public service has developed interesting and replicable models of service delivery decentralization, public-private partnerships and transformation of a traditional bureaucracy into a forward-looking, citizen-centric service provider. Anir is a member of the Prime Minister’s National Digital Task Force, Education Minister’s National ICT in Education Task Force, Planning Minister’s National Information Management Committee, and Cabinet Secretary’s National Steering Committee on Civil Registry and Vital Statistics (CRVS). In his twenty-three years’ career, he co-founded several software and service companies in the US and Bangladesh focused on enterprise management and IT strategy for Fortune 500 corporations. He also co-founded a number of non-profit organizations focused on ICT4D, e-learning and open source technologies. Anir graduated magna cum laude in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Brown University and did post-graduate work on management, marketing and education reform in Harvard, Columbia and Boston Universities. His interests include co-creation of e- and m-services, crowdsourcing, education reform, wide-scale adoption of open source and open content, public-private partnerships and youth development.

Dr. Ferdous acted as trade consultant for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and engaged herself in producing Bangladesh country paper for Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development. Dr. Ferdous has worked for Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) and Waseda University Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration as research associate. She experienced tutoring for academic writing at the Waseda University Writing Center. Dr. Ferdous achieved her doctoral and MA degree from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. She graduated and also received her MSc. degree in economics from the University of Dhaka.

She is also the Executive Director of ARK Foundation, a research NGO in Bangladesh. She is leading a number of research projects with University of Leeds, University of York and University of Liverpool, UK to support the Communicable Disease - Health Service Delivery (COMDIS-HSD) research program consortium and tobacco research in Bangladesh. She has wide experience in working with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of Bangladesh, local NGOs and international donor agencies since 2002. She was the member of Independent Review Team of Annual Programme Review (APR), 2013 on SWAp financing and financial management. She is also working as international consultant in preparing the Strategic Investment Plan (SIP) for the 4th SWAp of the country. A number of her papers/articles have been published in peer reviewed national and international journals including Nicotine and Tobacco Research, International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, BMJ Open, and World Medical and Health Policy.

He has more than 20 years of consulting experience on these issues for DFID, The Asia Foundation, The World Bank, UNDP, CARE Bangladesh, and other development agencies. He is well versed in conducting political economy analysis, institutional and stake-holder analysis, and using mixed methods. At BIGD, he serves as the Bangladesh country coordinator for the DFID sponsored Research Programme Consortium on ‘Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID)’. He is currently completing a project on quality of education provisioning under ESID funded project. He is also the project lead for research on local governance under the SHARIQUE programme funded by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation. Previously he coordinated a two-year long action research programme conducted by BIGD, on slum upgrading/institutional development programme funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. He also teaches the following courses: Foundations of Social Science Governance and Development, Rights based Development, Public Policy and Sustainable Development in the Masters in Development Studies (MDS) and Masters in Development Management and Practice (MDMP). Mirza completed his PhD in Development Studies from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICS), University of London, UK and his MA in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. He is an honorary Academic Fellow of the Institute of Development Policy Management (IDPM), University of Manchester, UK.

Prior to joining BIDS as a Research Fellow directly in 2008, he was involved in teaching Economics at the American International University Bangladesh. He had international experience of working at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) and Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan as Visiting Scholar (2009). With extensive focus on economic policies, his research interests mainly concentrate towards Macroeconomics, International Trade and Finance, Local government finance, Industrial development (ICT, RMG, SME etc.) and Banking and Financial Sector. He has published extensively in reputed academic journals including Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Applied Economics Letters, Journal of Asian Economics, Journal of Developing Areas, Bangladesh Development Studies etc. He had good experience of presenting papers in many national and international conferences in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, Hong Kong etc.

Prior to joining BIDS as a Research Fellow directly in 2008, he was involved in teaching Economics at the American International University Bangladesh. He had international experience of working at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) and Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan as Visiting Scholar (2009). With extensive focus on economic policies, his research interests mainly concentrate towards Macroeconomics, International Trade and Finance, Local government finance, Industrial development (ICT, RMG, SME etc.) and Banking and Financial Sector. He has published extensively in reputed academic journals including Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Applied Economics Letters, Journal of Asian Economics, Journal of Developing Areas, Bangladesh Development Studies etc. He had good experience of presenting papers in many national and international conferences in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, Hong Kong etc.

Prior to joining the ILO in 1980, he was Associate Professor of Economics at University of Dhaka. Dr. Islam got his PhD in Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science. He specializes in Development Economics with particular focus on employment, poverty and income distribution, and he has published a number of journal articles and books in this field.

Previously, Pial was a global leadership fellow with the World Economic Forum. Prior to that, he worked as a management consultant for several years with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Before that, Pial worked as the assistant country manager for MCI, founded an Internet start-up, and worked as a manager for a technology venture of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Pial has an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was a Mason fellow. He also holds an undergraduate degree in computer science, an MBA, and a professional designation in management consulting, certified management consultant. Pial has been published in Kennedy School Review, Harvard University, interviewed by magazines, and invited to speak at national and international conferences.

She has completed her Master’s degree from the Institute of Statistical Research and Training, University of Dhaka. She has a prior working experience as Graduate Assistant. She has a keen interest in research in preferably in areas such as poverty reduction, food security, consumer behavior, and business statistics. She already has 8 international publications, 17 conference proceedings and achievements of winning two best paper awards. Apart from the academic responsibilities, she also worked as the faculty coordinator of Social Welfare Club at the Eastern University.

He got his M.A and M.Phil Degrees majoring on Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He obtained Ph.D from the same University. His general research interests are Macroeconomics, Growth Economics, Development Economics & Indian Economy and Regional Economics. He was a Medal Finalist at GDN Medals Competition, and 12th Annual Development Conference, Bogotá, Colombia, 2011.

Earlier in 1997 he helped found the Bangladesh Association of Software & Information Services (BASIS) and was its founding Secretary General. He was also elected president of BASIS twice for the terms 2002-2003 and 2008-2009. He currently sits on the executive committees (Boards) of the Bangladesh Employers Federation (BEF) and Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dhaka (MCCI). He is also a member of the Governing Board of the Bangladesh Institute of Management (BIM) on behalf of BEF. He has a BSEE degree from Yale University, USA.

He has published a number of books on Sri Lankan and South Asian economic issues and published extensively in both local and international journals. He is the editor of the South Asia Economic Journal. He serves and had served in a number of government and private sector Boards as an independent member and currently the Chairman of Singer (Sri Lanka) Plc. An Economist by training, he completed his doctoral work at the University of Oxford and masters in Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

He received Australian Leadership Award (ALA) in 2008 to carry out his postgraduation academic degree at University of Melbourne, Australia. He has undertaken researches and published in a number of areas including economic development, international trade, macroeconomic management, fiscal policy, and poverty analysis. He has been the Coordinator of CPD’s Independent Review of Bangladesh’s Development (IRBD) Programme since 2009.

construction of Social Accounting Matrices (SAM), analysis of poverty and income distribution and impacts of trade and tax policy reforms using static as well as dynamic Computable General Equilibrium models. Dr. Khondker was involved in designing and implementing a ‘Generalized Macro Economic’ framework on behalf of UN Regional Bureau for the Asia and Pacific (UN RBAP) to develop MDG financing strategy within the framework of MTBF and LTMF, which has been used in Mongolia and Nigeria to develop their MDG financing strategies. He has presented his analytical works in conferences held in Dhaka, The Hague, Quebec city, Kampala, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Colombo, Nairobi (Kenya), Abuja (Nigeria), Yaoundé (Cameroon) organized by organizations such as UNDP countries offices, UNDP regional Canters in Asian and Africa, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the International Labour Organization.

Prof. Khuda has been holding senior teaching, research leadership, and management positions for over three decades: Professor (since 1984) and former Chairman of the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka; Regional Director for South Asia, University Research Corporation, USA (1989-92); Senior Associate of Population Council (1994-97); and senior research and management positions, including that of Acting Director of ICDDR, B (1997-2004). Also, he served as Visiting Fellows at The Australian National University and other universities and research institutes in the US and Europe. Prof. Khuda has provided consultancy services to, and directed research projects for, various UN agencies, the World Bank, etc. He has contributed to programme design, sector reforms and institutional capacity building; and participates in technical committees, advisory bodies and evaluation teams. Prof. Khuda has published numerous books and monographs; many articles in leading international journals such as Population and Development Review, Studies in Family Planning, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Biosocial Science, International Family Planning Perspectives, International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, International Journal of STD & AIDS, Health Transition Review, and Asian Population Studies; and several chapters in edited books. Also, he serves on the editorial board and is a reviewer of a number of leading international journals.

Mr. Kundu is well acquainted with economic models including econometric modeling, time series and panel data analysis. His areas of interests include: open-macroeconomic & macroeconomic policy issues, international trade, and labor market issues. He is a life member of Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA) and Member at World Economics Association (WEA), Bristol, United Kingdom. Mr. Kundu has completed his graduation and post-graduation from the Department of Economics, Jahangirnagar University.

Previously, he held academic and research positions at Queens University Belfast and Keele University in the United Kingdom and BIDS, BRAC University and Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh. He was also a Visiting Research Professor at University of Tokyo, Japan and Visiting Faculty at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and University of Dhaka. He has publications in reputed journals such as Economica, Economics Letters, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Health Economics, Applied Economics, Plos One, Environmental Science and Technology. Currently, he is a Visiting Scholar to the JICA Research Institute, Tokyo and Visiting Fellow to the Department of Government at University of Essex, UK.

She studied Statistics at Dhaka University and Medical Demography at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She joined Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) in 1974 as Staff Demographer and retired in 2008 as Research Director of the Population Studies Division. She was a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Centre for Population and Development in 1993.

He has frequently consulted for many international organizations and has held teaching and research appointments at Cambridge, IDS at Sussex, IFPRI and the World Bank among others. Together with Nobel peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus, he co-founded, and was chairman for a tenure of ten years of Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF). His recent publications include “Development and Welfare in South Asia”, “Path to Development: Is There Surprise?” One of his edited volumes is “Handbook of the South Asian Economics”.

He also served as the IMF Senior Resident Representative to Pakistan during 1998-2001 and as Fiscal Advisor to the Minister of Finance, Government of Bangladesh (1989-91). During his assignment in Bangladesh, Mr. Mansur was primarily involved with the successful introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) in Bangladesh. Most recently, he served as the Division Chief of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Division and was the IMF Mission Chief for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman. Dr. Mansur has published extensively in various prestigious journals (including Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, and IMF Staff Papers), edited books on special economic topics and in the IMF Occasional Paper and Working Paper series.

He teaches international economics and econometrics to UG, PG and PhD students at IIT Kanpur and has twenty-one years of teaching and research experience. Dr. Mathur has written 7 books on subjects varying from growth convergence, IT Policy and Trade Issues. He has published in several journals including Journal of Economic Integration, World Economy, Review of International Economics (book Review), Journal of Quantitative Economics, Indian Economic Review, Journal of World Intellectual Property Rights, Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, among other refereed international journals of repute.

During his professional career, he also served as the Poverty Monitoring and Analysis Advisor of UNDP in Cambodia; Project Leader of the IDRC’s Program of Micro Impact of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies (MIMAP) in Bangladesh; Director Research of the Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP); Visiting Faculty at the Department of Economics, University of Queensland, Brisbane; National Expert in the Bangladesh Planning Commission; and Associate Professor of Economics, Rajshahi University.

He has continued to work on food policy while at the same time branching out into a number of other research areas, including infrastructure and irrigation, informal and rural credit markets, agricultural markets and value chain finance, human resource development and policy research. He has published extensively in top development journals including the Bangladesh Development Studies, the European Journal of Human Development, World Development, Journal of Agrarian Change, Economic and Political Weekly and the Journal of Development Studies. He also has to his credit numerous other publications in the form of research reports, monographs and contributions to various edited volumes. Dr. Murshid combines extensive research experience with familiarity with a wide range of development settings in addition, including Bangladesh, sub-Saharan Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

He holds Ph. D. degree in Economics and Master’s Degree in both Business Management and Economics. He was a Member of the National Planning Commission of Nepal, an apex policy making body of the Government of Nepal. He was one of the negotiators for Nepal’s accession negotiation for WTO membership. He is in the indicative panelist of WTO Dispute Settlement Body. Dr. Pandey worked with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Nepal on the issues of multilateral trade integration and trade related capacity building. He has also taught Economics for nearly a decade at the Tribhuvan University, the largest public university in Nepal. He has published research papers on international trade, macroeconomics and development in various national and international journals/books.

Mr. Quadir is currently heading the company bKash which is now world’s second largest and fastest growing mobile financial services company. Mr. Quadir is a founding member of Open World Initiatives, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based organization of young thinkers. He is involved with Anwarul Quadir Foundation which recognises innovations in developing countries. He is a First Mover Fellow of The Aspen Institute. In 2009, TED selected himr a TED Fellow and the World Economic Forum recognized him as a Young Global Leader. He received awards like Schwab Foundation's Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2015, "Young Global Leader (YGL)" by the World Economic Forum of Davos, MIT Ideas Award etc.

He also works in public health field to understand how promotion using local women leaders and also monitoring and incentive can motivate better hand hygiene behaviors. Recently, he has also worked on evaluating an employer-based mandatory health security scheme to understand how incentives can alter households’ health seeking behavior. He has a number of papers published in international peer-reviewed journals like Journal of Regional Science, American Economic Review P&P, The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Biosocial Science, Health Services Research and Archives of Internal Medicine, among others. Atonu Rabbani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Dhaka.

Prior to this, he completed his PhD in Government (Political Economy) at the London School of Economics. Dr. Rahman has an MPA in Public and Economic Policy and BSc in Economics (Hons) from the LSE. He has been a consultant for a number of government bodies and other institutions, including the Planning Commission of Bangladesh, World Bank, UNDP, DFID and Japanese International Cooperation Agency [JICA]. His research interest is in the field of political economy, working extensively in areas such as development and governance with a key focus on the implications of political and economic shocks. At present, his work empirically examines the nature of concentration of political power and its role in shaping economic and political outcomes within the political arena of Bangladesh. Mr Rahman is also specialized in undertaking microeconomic program evaluation and institutional diagnosis.

He started his professional career in Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) in 1975 and joined the Asian Development Bank in September, 1992. He retired from the ADB as Director General, South Asia in June 2012, which was the senior most position held by any Bangladeshi in an international organization. Dr. Rahman served in BIDS from 1975-92. He is a reputed economist and has published on a wide range of economic and policy issues. He was also the Editor of Bangladesh Development Studies (the highly valued journal of BIDS). His current research interests are in the areas of economic growth and inequality, macroeconomic policy, governance, decentralization, regional integration and sustainable development. Dr. Rahman obtained his Ph.D. and M.A degrees from Stanford University and Vanderbilt University. He was also educated at University of Dhaka, Chittagong University and Faujdarhat Cadet College.

He led the drafting of the poverty reduction strategy of the government in 2005 and was a member of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation (ISACPA). He founded the Dhaka-based think-tank Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC)in 1996 and prior to that was for over twenty years a leading researcher at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). On 9 January 2008, he was appointed as an adviser (cabinet minister) to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh, led by Fakhruddin Ahmed and was entrusted with the ministries of commerce and education. He was an Inspire Fellow at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University, USA and was awarded the Dr. John Meyer Global Citizenship Award by the Institute in November, 2009. In 2013, he was awarded Gold Medal by Rotary International Bangladesh. Dr. Rahman's newest area of engagement is sustainable health-care.

His recent research focus has been on Bangladesh’s macroeconomic performance, trade policy and external sector performance, WTO negotiations and interests of the LDCs, regional cooperation and economic integration in South Asia. Professor Rahman has published widely in Bangladesh and abroad. He was a member of Dhaka University Senate and served as a member of various national bodies set up by the Government of Bangladesh including Regulatory Reforms Commission, Core Committee on Connectivity and Panel of Economists for the Sixth and Seventh Five Year Plans of Bangladesh.

Currently, he is leading several international collaborative research projects focusing on ecosystem service-poverty alleviation linkages, climate change vulnerability and adaptation in deltaic settings, and disaster prevention/mitigation measures against floods and storm surges, in which the fundamental approach integrated assessment of bio-physical and socio-economic processes. He obtained MSc and PhD from Kyoto University and joined Institute of Water and Flood Management (IWFM), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 1999. He was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow during 2002-2004 in Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University funded by Japan Society of Promotion of Science (JSPS).

He has worked quite extensively on Applied Economics, especially assessing impacts of trade and economic policies, using country specific Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, GTAP models, Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) techniques, WITS/SMART partial equilibrium models, and dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. He has experience in research on poverty and labour market dynamics using household survey data and micro- and macro-econometric modeling and estimation techniques. His research interests also include analysis of economic growth and political economy analysis of growth and development. He has a long experience in teaching international trade, economic modeling, quantitative economics, econometrics, development economics and poverty dynamics at Dhaka University. Dr. Raihan has worked for several national and international organizations including the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, UNDP, UNESCAP, UNCTAD, IFPRI, the Commonwealth Secretariat, FAO, European Commission, ILO, IDRC, DFID etc.

hydro geologic analysis of coastal aquifers, groundwater and seawater intrusion modeling, flood hazard, vulnerability and risk analysis, harmonization of multiple uses of water resources, assessment of ecosystem service-poverty alleviation linkages, biophysical vulnerability of coastal hazards and implications to water and food security, and trans boundary river water management. At BUET, Professor Dr. Salehin teaches postgraduate courses on Groundwater Resource Assessment, Hydrogeology and Groundwater, Environmental Analysis, Integrated Water Resources Management, and Interdisciplinary Field Research Methodology in Water Management.

She was one of the key members that drafted the National “Overseas Employment Policy” and “Overseas Employment and Migration Act 2013” of Bangladesh. In the past she served as chair of the Asia Pacific Migration Research Network (APMRN), South Asia Migration Resource Network (SAMREN) and also served as one of the directors of Migrant Welfare Bank of Bangladesh.

He has played an active advocacy role and made many contributions outside the world of academe, including serving as Envoy Extraordinary with special responsibility for Economic Affairs (1971), Member of Bangladesh Planning Commission (1972-74), Member of the Advisory Council of the President of Bangladesh in charge of the Ministry of Planning and Economics Relations Division (1991), Founding Chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) since 1993, and as Chairman of the Board of the Grameen Bank (1996-2002). He has received a number of awards including, the Bangladesh Bank Purushkar (2000) for services to the economics profession in Bangladesh, and the Bangladesh Shadinata Purushkar (2008), the highest civil award in Bangladesh.

He obtained his M.A. from Fordham University, New York, in 1987. He then obtained M.Phil. in 1990, and Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Cambridge, UK. He joined BIDS in 1989 as Research Associate. He has conducted several research projects with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, the Overseas Development Institute, London, DFID etc. He has worked as consultant to several organizations including DFID, World Fish Center, FAO, UNDP. He has contributed to many seminars and conferences both at home and abroad and has also published in international journals such as World Development, Land Economics, Food Policy, South Asia, Economic and Political Weekly of India and the Indian Economic Journal. He has co-authored a book titled "Hands not Land: How Livelihoods are Changing in Rural Bangladesh" with Cate Turton.

He joined the BIDS in 1992 as Research Associate and he is currently working as Senior Research Fellow. His current research interests include taxation, state and local government fiscal policies, fiscal decentralization, food security and poverty alleviation, exchange rate issues, tobacco consumption and knowledge about its health hazards, applied econometrics (time-series and panel data).

He joined the BIDS in 1992 as Research Associate and he is currently working as Senior Research Fellow. His current research interests include taxation, state and local government fiscal policies, fiscal decentralization, food security and poverty alleviation, exchange rate issues, tobacco consumption and knowledge about its health hazards, applied econometrics (time-series and panel data).