UN DESA | DPAD | Development Policy Analysis Division
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World Economic and Social Survey 2011—The Team
Diana Alarcón
Diana Alarcón is currently Senior Economic Affairs Officer at UN DESA in the unit that prepares the World Economic and Social Survey. Until August 2010 she was Cluster Leader for Inclusive Development at the Bureau for Development Policy, UNDP and for 7 years she was Senior Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank. She has done research and contributed to the development of programs for employment creation, poverty reduction and social protection. Diana has a PhD in Economics from the University of California and has taught in various universities in Mexico and the United States. She worked at Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a research institution in Mexico in 1988-95 and was director of the Department of Economics.
Christina Bodouroglou
Christina Bodouroglou joined the WESS team as Associate Economic Affairs Officer in May 2010. Prior to this role she served as an Economist in the UK Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs. She has further undertaken analytical work in the fields of maritime, financial and energy economics. Christina graduated with a BA in Economics from the University of Cambridge, holds an MSc in Political Economy of Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) and is currently studying law, part-time, at the London College of Law. Her academic interests include economic development; gender economics; education; HIV/AIDS; agriculture and climate change; human rights; and international law.
Nicole Hunt
Nicole Hunt joined the WESS Team in February 2010 as Statistics Assistant. She has worked in the UN for 13 years, ten at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Trinidad. There she provided research/technical support in statistical capacity building and socio-economic development. She was instrumental in designing the CARIBTRADE Trade & Transport Database and was the focal point for maintenance, quality control and end-user support. Nicole also worked as Monitoring and Evaluation Programme Officer in the areas of HIV/AIDS and health research systems assessment. She holds a BSc in Sociology from The University of the West Indies, Postgraduate studies in Statistics from Sheffield Hallam University and is in the process of completing her MBA at Heriot-Watt University.
Nazrul Islam
Nazrul Islam completed his PhD in Economics at Harvard University and is currently a Senior Economic Affairs Officer at the Development Policy Analysis Division (DPAD) of the UN-DESA. Previously he taught economics at Dhaka, Harvard, Emory, and Kyushu universities. He has contributed to several areas of economics, including economics of growth, transition, and development. He introduced the panel approach to growth empirics. He published five books and numerous journal articles. His edited book, Resurgent China: Issues for the Future (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009), provides an integrated assessment of the issues faced by China. He is an Associate Editor of the Asian Economic Journal and an Adjunct Research Fellow of the International Centre for the Study of East Asian Development (ICSEAD).
Alex Julca
Alex Julca has a PhD in Economics from the New School for Social Research and is currently Economic Affairs Officer at the Development Policy Analysis Division (DPAD). Having previously worked in the private and public sector in Lima-Peru, he taught at the City University of New York and worked as researcher at Columbia University. He has worked at the UN for the past thirteen years, eight of them for the Development Policy and Analysis Division (DPAD), making substantive contributions to the WESS on issues associated to international migration, ageing, finance, economic insecurity, climate change, international aid, and the green economy. He has published extensively and in peer review journals in the areas of international migration, remittances, 'natural' disasters and climate change.
Manuel Montes
Manuel Montes, "Butch" is Chief of Development Strategy and Policy Analysis in United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). Previously, he was UNDP Regional Program Coordinator, Asia Pacific Trade and Investment Initiative; Program Officer for International Economic Policy at the Ford Foundation in New York, 1999-2005; Senior Fellow and Coordinator for economics studies at the East-West Centre in Honolulu, 1989-1999; and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of The Philippines, 1981-1989. He has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Developing Economies in Tokyo, at the United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/IWDER) in Helsinki, and at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS).
Mariangela Parra Lancourt
Mariangela Parra Lancourt joined the WESS team as Economic Affairs Officer in 2008. She has co-authored several articles on economic development and international trade, with emphasis on patterns of specialization and terms of trade. Before joining DPAD, she served as inter-regional advisor for DESA's Under-Secretary General in New York, and as regional advisor for ECLAC's Executive Secretary in Santiago. In Colombia she served as an advisor to the Minister of Transportation, and as part of Corfivalle's Investment Banking research team. She holds an MA in Economics (minor in Mathematics) from Los Andes University in Bogota. Currently she is writing a dissertation for her PhD (ABD) in Economics at the New School University.
Vladimir Popov
Vladimir Popov joined the WESS team in December 2009 and as Senior Economic Affairs Officer and continued in 2011 as an Interregional Adviser. Before joining the UN he worked as a Professor in New Economic School in Moscow and in Carleton University in Ottawa. He also worked as Senior Researcher at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER/UNU) in Helsinki. He is the author/editor of 11 books and numerous articles on economics of transition and development. His last book "Strategies of Economic Development" (Higher School of Economics Publisher, Moscow, 2011, in Russian) discusses UN DESA National Development Strategies in the context of transition economies. His recent area of research is history of economic growth and trajectories of institutional development.
Richard A Roehrl
Richard Alexander Roehrl is a policy analyst with expertise in energy and transport. In 2000, he joined the United Nations and has been posted to ESCAP, IAEA and DESA. At present, he is part of the Secretariat for Rio+20 where he leads analytical work on sustainable development scenarios and clean energy technology. In the 1990s, he worked for IIASA and the EU, as well as served as Lead Author to the IPCC. Alexander has advanced degrees in both physics and economics, from the Universities of Erlangen, Munich, Oxford, and the London School of Economics. He has co-authored several books and many articles on a wide range of policy issues.
Friedrich Soltau
Friedrich Soltau is a Sustainable Development Officer in the Division for Sustainable Development, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. He has worked on a range of issues at the intersection of climate change, energy and sustainable development. From 2000 to 2003, he served in the UN Department of Political Affairs. Prior to joining the United Nations, he taught Constitutional and Administrative Law at University of Cape Town. His research interests in the area of climate change focus on fairness in climate change law and policy, which was the subject of his doctoral dissertation, published by Cambridge University Press as "Fairness in International Climate Change Law and Policy" in 2009.
Shari Spiegel
Shari Spiegel joined the WESS team as a Senior Economic Affairs Officer in May 2010. She is co-author and co-editor of several of books and articles on capital and financial markets, debt, and macroeconomics and has an MA (ABD) in economics from Princeton University and a BA in applied mathematics and economics from Northwestern University. She served as Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think-tank presided over by Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University. She has extensive experience at the private sector, most recently as a Principal at New Holland Capital and as head of fixed-income emerging markets at Lazard Asset Management. She also served as an advisor to the Hungarian Central Bank in the early 1990s.
Rob Vos
Rob Vos joined the United Nations in 2005 as Director of DPAD. Before joining the UN, he was a Professor at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, and at the Free University Amsterdam. He has also worked as a senior economist at the Inter-American Development Bank where he co-founded the Inter-American Institute for Social Development (INDES). His academic and advisory work covers a broad range of development issues, including trade policy, inequality and poverty; financing for development; poverty and social policy analysis; and macroeconomic and general equilibrium modeling for development policy.