The World Bank on Wednesday named University of Chicago professor Michael Kremer as its next chief economist. Michael is the founder of the Development Innovation Lab at UChicago and the recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.
Michael will remain involved in the Development Innovation Lab’s research, as well as setting strategic direction for the Lab. He said, “DIL will continue to identify, develop, and test innovations with the potential to scale to millions of people, and I’m excited to see our incredible team push this work forward under the ongoing leadership of Executive Director Emily Cupito.”
Emily said, “DIL’s projects are incredibly exciting and will continue to generate valuable evidence and lead to large-scale impact. These projects include collaborations on AI-based weather forecasting for farmers, safe drinking water treatment technology and management, ed-tech, air filters, and road safety, and we continue to explore new partnerships to improve lives at scale.”