Panelists

Professor Francois Bourguignon is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Originally trained as a statistician, he obtained a PhD in economics from the University of Western Ontario, then a doctorate from the University of Orleans. He served as director of the Paris School of Economics from 2007 to the end of January 2013. His work, theoretical and empirical, focuses on the distribution and redistribution of income in developing and developed countries. He is the author of several books and numerous articles in international economic journals. He received several scientific distinctions during his career and taught in several foreign universities. He has a wealth of experience advising several governments and international organizations. From 2003 to 2007, he was the chief economist and the first vice president of the World Bank in Washington. Among his notable works: "The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution: Evaluation Techniques and Tools", (with L. Pereira), Oxford University Press, 2003. "The Microeconomics of Income Distribution Dynamics in East Asia and Latin America" (with F. Ferreira and N. Lustig), Oxford University Press, 2005. "The Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution" (with M. Bussolo and L. Pereira), Palgrave, 2008. "Routes of the economy global”, interviews with F. Boutin-Dufresne, Nota Bene, 2010. The globalization of inequality, Editions Le Seuil, 2012.

Professor Wahiduddin Mahmud is an Eminent Economist of Bangladesh. He was a Professor of Economics at the University of Dhaka. He acted as a member of the caretaker government of Bangladesh in 1996 where he was in charge of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Planning. He is currently a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy (UN-CDP). Professor Mahmud is also acting as the senior country advisor of International Growth Centre (IGC) at London School of Economics, and the Chairman of South Asia Network of Economic Research Institutes (SANEI). He has frequently consulted for many national and international organizations and has held visiting appointments at Cambridge University, IDS at Sussex University, IFPRI, UNDP and the World Bank, amongst others. He was the co-founder and a former chairman of Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), the apex organization for funding the micro-credit programmes of NGOs in Bangladesh. He was also the founder chairman of Institute of Microfinance (InM). He has authored several books and numerous journal papers on a wide range of topics in development economics.

Professor Kunal Sen has over three decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research. He is the author of eight books and the editor of five volumes on the economics and political economy of development. Since 2019 he has been the Director of UNU-WIDER, and he is a professor of development economics at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. Professor Sen is a leading international expert on the political economy of growth and development. He has performed extensive research on international finance, the political economy determinants of inclusive growth, the dynamics of poverty, social exclusion, female labour force participation, and the informal sector in developing economies. His research has focused on India, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Sen’s books include The Political Economy of India’s Growth Episodes (2016), The Process of Financial Liberalization in India (1997), and the Economic Restructuring in East Asia and India: Perspectives on Policy Reform (1995). His is a co-editor of Deals and Development: The Political Dynamics of Growth Episodes (2018) and The Politics of Inclusive Development (2016). He has also written twenty-five chapters in other volumes and published more than ninety peer-reviewed journal articles on topics in his field. In addition to his work as a professor of development economics, Kunal Sen has been the Joint Research Director of the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) research centre, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor Economics in Bonn. He has also served in advisory roles with national governments and bilateral and multilateral development agencies, including the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). He was awarded the Sanjaya Lall Prize in 2006 and Dudley Seers Prize in 2003 for his publications.