Moderators

Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha is a professor at the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka. She did her bachelors as well as masters from the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka and MSc from the University of Bath, UK. She obtained a PhD in labour Economics from the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research interest lies in labour economics, development economics, population economics and micro econometrics. Her work involves both empirical analysis as well as policy focused research with emphasis on developing countries. In the context of Bangladesh, she worked on a number of research projects on labor market, gender and women empowerment, gender budgeting, migration and remittance earning, credit and food security, population and development, economic growth and exchange rate movements, skill and education, demographic dividend and youth population etc. In addition, Dr Bidisha has also worked closely with the Government of Bangladesh in preparing various policy documents and government flagship objects. In particular, she was actively engaged in drafting several chapters of the 6th Five Year Plan of Bangladesh. (e.g. Education and Training, Agriculture, Health and Nutrition) and also Perspective Plans of the country. She has worked with several international as well as national organizations e.g. the World Bank, IDRC, ILO, FAO, UNICEF, DFID etc. and has published a number of articles/book chapters in peer reviewed publications both at home and abroad.

Dr Deb Kusum Das teaches at Ramjas College, University of Delhi. His research fields are productivity and growth in India, jobs and Labour market, and empirical international trade. He received the EXIM Bank IEDRA Award 2004 for his doctoral dissertation, "Some Aspects of Productivity and Trade in Indian Industry". He holds a PhD from Delhi School of Economics and has studied at Delhi School of Economics and St Xavier's College, Kolkata. He is the co-founder of South Asia Economics Students Meet - a platform for undergraduate Economics students of South Asia. He is also associated with ICRIER (Delhi) as an external researcher.

Dr Selim Raihan is Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and the Executive Director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM). He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK.

He is the Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the alumni of the Harvard University’s program on “Cutting Edge of Development Thinking”. Dr Raihan possesses vast expertise in empirical research on international trade, economic growth, poverty, labour market, macroeconomic policies, political economy, and climate change issues. He has worked quite extensively on applied economics, especially assessing impacts of trade and economic policies, using country- specific and global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, and micro and macro-econometric modelling and estimation techniques. He has a long experience in teaching international trade, economic modelling, quantitative economics, econometrics, development economics, and poverty dynamics. He has more than 15 years of experience in conducting international and national training programmes on economic modelling in various countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Mongolia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Dr Raihan has published several journal articles, books, book chapters and working papers.

Dr Raihan is the editor of “Thinking Aloud” – a monthly digest from SANEM. He regularly writes columns in leading English and Bengali dailies in Bangladesh. Dr Raihan contributed extensively to the preparation of the Sixth and Seventh Five-year National Plans of Bangladesh. He led a research team to prepare the “SDG Financing Strategy: Bangladesh Perspective” -a flagship publication of the Planning Commission of Bangladesh. 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. He has led and has also been a member of a number of regional and international research projects on trade and regional integration issues. Also, he has been working on the political economy analysis of economic issues. The most recent ones are the studies on “Institutional Diagnostics of development in Bangladesh “, which are prepared under his leadership and supervision, for the DFID, UK.