Martin Ravallion
World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington DC 20433, USA;
Education
1974B.Sc. First Class Honors, University of Sydney
1978M.Sc. Econ. Mark of Distinction, LondonSchool of Economics
1981Ph.D., LondonSchool of Economics
Awards/distinctions
1972,73Elizabeth Munro and James Bibby Prizes,University of Sydney (undergraduate prizes)
1974University of Sydney Medal (awarded for outstanding performance in a First Class Honors Degree)
1978Ely Devons Prize for Economics, London School of Economics (awarded for first place in the graduate examinations)
2003Who's Who in Economics, Fourth Edition, Mark Blaug and Howard Vane (eds),
Edward Elgar
Employment
1978-81Lecturer in Economics, LondonSchool of Economics
1982-83Prize Research Fellow, NuffieldCollege, Oxford
1981-84Research Fellow, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford
1984-90Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in Economics, AustralianNationalUniversity
1988-94Economist/Senior Economist/Principal Economist, World Bank
1994-99Lead Economist, World Bank
1999-07Senior Adviser/Senior Research Manager, World Bank.
2007-Director of the Development Research Group (the World Bank’s research department).
Professional
1990-Member of the Editorial Boards/Associate Editor of Journal of Development Economics
(1990-2004), World Development (1997-), Review of Development Economics (1999-),
World Bank Economic Review (1998-2006, 2008-), Journal of Economic Inequality (2001-),Berkeley Electronic Journals on Economic Development and Growth (2001-), ChinaEconomic Review (2001-05), Asian Development Review (2002-), Review of South AsianEconomics (2002-), India Macroeconomics Annual (2003-), Economic Development andCultural Change (2003-), Agricultural Economics (2006-), Journal of Development Effectiveness (2008-), Review of Development Finance (2010-).
2003-Senior Fellow, Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD)
2005-Founding Council Member, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ)
2007-Member of International Advisory Board of UNDP/Government of China, International
PovertyReductionCenter, Beijing
Academic visits/special lectures
1983-84 Visiting scholar to the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Bangladesh
1986International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics, Hyderabad, India
1986Visiting fellow, GadjaMadaUniversity, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
1987Invited Lecture in Political Economy, Department of Economics, HarvardUniversity
1988Visiting fellow, Department of Economics, WarwickUniversity, Coventry, U.K.
1991C.N. Vakil Memorial Lecture, The Indian Economic Association
1992Visiting professor, PrincetonUniversity
1996-98Lectures on Development Economics, GeorgetownUniversity
1999-2000Visiting Professor, University of Social Science, Toulouse
2002Keynote Address to North-East Universities Development Conference, WilliamsCollege.
2002Keynote Address, Annual Retreat, Department of International Development, UK.
2004Deliverer of the annual Max Corden Lecture and Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Department of Economics, University of Melbourne.
2004Distinguished Public Lecture, Academy of Sciences, Australia.
2004Public Lecture, National Council of Applied Economic Research, India.
2006Keynote address to the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Economists Society, Shanghai.
2007Series of Lectures on Poverty and Inequality at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
2007Keynote address to the IFPRI/Government of China conference Taking Action for the World’s Poor and Hungry People, Beijing, China.
2009-2010Series of lectures at the Paris School of Economics.
2009Keynote address opening conference of the CourantCenter, University of Göttingen.
Research grants
1975-76 Research grant from the Commonwealth Bureau of Roads Australia to finance a study of the distributional effects of urban transport policies
1982-83 Research grant from the Overseas Development Administration (U.K.) to support a study of the economics of famine
1983-84 Research grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (U.K.) to finance research on the efficiency of Bangladesh rice markets
1989-Research Support Budget Funding from the Research Committee of the World Bank
to finance numerous research projects under my supervision
Policy advice
1976-Advice on various economic policy issues to the governments of Argentina, Australia,
Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Ethiopia, Great Britain, Hungary, India,
Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Russia, South Africa, Tunisia, Vietnam, Yemen
Principal publications
2010 and forthcoming
“Weakly Relative Poverty” (with Shaohua Chen), Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming.
“Poverty Measurement across the World,” Chapter 3 of the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of
Poverty, edited by Philip N. Jefferson, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
“Understanding PPPs and PPP-Based National Accounts: A Comment,” American Economic Journal:
Macroeconomics, forthcoming.
“The Developing World is Poorer than we Thought, but no Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty”
(with Shaohua Chen), Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming.
“A Comparative Perspective on Poverty Reduction in Brazil, China and India,” World Bank Research
Observer, forthcoming.
“The Pattern of Growth and Poverty Reduction in China,” (with Jose Montalvo) Journal of Comparative
Economics, Vol. 38, pp. 2-16.
“Poverty Reduction Without Economic Growth? Explaining Brazil’s Poverty Dynamics, 1985-2004”
(with Francisco Ferreira and Phillippe Leite), Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 93, pp.
20-36.
“Who Cares About Relative Deprivation?” (with Michael Lokshin), Journal of Economic Behavior and
Organization, Vol. 73, No. 2, February 2010, pp. 171-185.
“A Micro-Decomposition Analysis of Aggregate Human Development Outcomes,” (with Sylvie Lambert
and Dominique van de Walle), Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics,Vol. 72, No. 2,
2010, pp. 119-145.
“The Developing World’s Bulging (but Vulnerable) Middle Class,” World Development, April 2010, Vol.
38, No. 4, pp. 445-454 (lead article).
“China is Poorer than we Thought, but no Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty” (with Shaohua
Chen) in Sudhir Anand, Paul Segal, and Joseph Stiglitz (ed), Debates on the Measurement of Poverty, Oxford University Press, 2010.
2009
“How Relevant is Targeting to the Success of the Antipoverty Program?” World Bank Research
Observer, August, Vo. 24, No. 3, pp. 205-231.
“Evaluating Three Stylized Interventions,” Journal of Development Effectiveness, Vol. 1, No. 3, Sept.,
2009, pp. 227-236.
“Dollar a Day Revisited” (with Shaohua Chen and Prem Sangraula), World Bank Economic Review
Vol.23, No.2., pp.163-184 (Lead article).
“Are There Lasting Impacts of Aid to Poor Areas?” (with Shaohua Chen andRen Mu), Journal of Public
Economics, Vol. 93, pp. 512-528.
“Evaluation in the Practice of Development,” World Bank Research Observer, Vol. 24, No. 1, February
2009, pp.29-54.
“Decentralizing Eligibility for a Federal Antipoverty Program: A Case Study for China,” World Bank
Economic Review, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 1-30 (Lead article).
“Bailing Out the World’s Poorest,” Challenge. Vol. 52, No. 2, March, pp. 55-80.
“Poverty and Inequality: The Global Context” (with Francisco Ferreira), in Wiemer Salverda, Brian
Nolan and Tim Smeeding (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
“Are there Lessons for Africa from China’s Success Against Poverty?” World Development, Vol. 37,
No.2, February, pp.303-313.
2008
“On the Welfarist Rationale for Relative Poverty Lines,” in Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur (eds)
The Oxford Handbook of Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen.
Volume I: Ethics, Welfare and Measurement, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2008.
“Global Inequality,” (with François Bourguignon, Francisco Ferreira and Branko Milanovic), in
Kenneth Reinert and Ramkishen Rajan (eds) Princeton Encyclopedia of the World
Economy, PrincetonUniversity Press.
Land in Transition: Reform and Poverty in Rural Vietnam (with Dominique van de Walle), Palgrave
Macmillan.
“Testing for an Economic Gradient in Health Status using Subjective Data” (with Michael Lokshin),
Health Economics, Vol. 17, pp. 1237-1259.
“A Global Perspective on Poverty in India,” Economic and Political Weekly October 25, 2008, Vol.43,
No. 43, pp.31-37.
“Does Rising Landlessness Signal Success or Failure for Vietnam’s Agrarian Transition?” (with
Dominique van de Walle), Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 87(2), pp. 191-209.
“Does the Di Bao Program Guarantee a Minimum Income in China’s Cities?” (with Shaohua Chen and
Youjuan Wang) in Public Finance in China: Reform and Growth for a Harmonious Society,
edited by Jiwei Lou and Shuilin Wang, WashingtonDC: World Bank.
“Winners and Losers from Trade Reform in Morocco.” In Francois Bourguignon, Luiz Pereira da
Silva and Maurizio Bussolo (eds), The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income
Distribution: Advanced Evaluation Techniques and Tools. Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press.
“Miss-Targeted, or Miss-Measured?” Economics Letters, Vol. 100, pp: 9-12.
“Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs,” in Handbook of Development Economics Volume 4, edited by
Paul Schultz and John Strauss, Amsterdam: North-Holland.
“Poverty Alleviation Programs,” in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, Larry
Blume and Steven Durlauf (eds) London: Palgrave Macmillan.
“Poverty Lines,” in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, Larry Blume
and Steven Durlauf (eds) London: Palgrave Macmillan.
2007
“New Evidence on the Urbanization of Global Poverty” (with Shaohua Chen and Prem Sangraula)
Population and Development Review, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 667-702.
“Absolute Poverty Measures for the Developing World,” (with Shaohua Chen), Proceedings of the
NationalAcademy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 104, No. 43, pp.
16757-16762.
“Lasting Impacts of Indonesia’s Financial Crisis,” (with Michael Lokshin), Economic Development and
Cultural Change, Vol. 56, No.1, October 2007, pp. 27-56.
“Inequality is Bad for the Poor,” in Inequality and Poverty Re-Examined, edited by John
Micklewright and Steven Jenkins, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
“Partially Awakened Giants: Uneven Growth in China and India” (with Shubham Chaudhuri) in Dancing
with Giants: China, India, and the Global Economy, edited by L. Alan Winters and Shahid
Yusuf, World Bank, 2007.
“China’s (Uneven) Progress Against Poverty,” (with S. Chen), Journal of Development Economics,
Vol. 82(1), Jan. 2007 (lead article), pp.1-42.
“Achieving Child-Health-Related Millennium Development Goals: The Role of Infrastructure:
A Comment,” World Development, May 2007, Vol. 35, No. 5, pp.920-8.
“An Econometric Method of Correcting for Unit Nonresponse Bias in Surveys,” (with Anton Korinek),
Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 136 (2007): 213-235.
2006
“Testing Poverty Lines” (with Michael Lokshin), Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 52(3), Sept. 2006,
pp. 399-421.
“Looking Beyond Averages in the Trade and Poverty Debate,” World Development (special issue on The
Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor, edited by Machiko Nissanke and Erik Thorbecke),
August, 2006, Vol. 34, No. 8, pp. 1374-1392.
“Poverty and Growth Revisited,” in The Elgar Companion to Development Studies inDavid Clark,
ed.,Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
“Land Reallocation in Vietnam’s Agrarian Transition,” (with D. van de Walle), Economic Journal, Vol.
116 (October 2006), pp. 924-942.
“The Wealth Effect on New Business Startups in a Developing Economy,” (with Alice Mesnard),
Economica, Vol. 73, Issue 291, pp.367-392 (lead article).
“A Model-Based Assessment of India’s Progress in Reducing Poverty” (with Gaurav Datt and
Valerie Kozel), in The Great Indian Poverty Debate, edited by Angus Deaton and Valerie
Kozel, Macmillan Press, 2006.
“Who is Protected? On the Incidence of Fiscal Adjustment,” in Mody, Ashoka and Catherine Pattillo,
eds., Macroeconomic Policies and Poverty Reduction, London: Routledge.
“Survey Nonresponse and the Distribution of Income,” (with Anton Korinek and Johan Mistiaen),
Journal of Economic Inequality, Vol. 4, No.2, pp. 33-55.
“On the Consistency of Poverty Lines” (with Michael Lokshin) in Poverty, Inequality and
Development: Essays in Honor of Erik Thorbecke, edited by Alain de Janvry and Ravi
Kanbur, Springer, 2006.
“Transfers and Safety Nets in Poor Countries: Revisiting the Trade-Offs and Policy Options,” in
Abhijit Banerjee, Roland Benabou and Dilip Mookerjee (eds), Understanding Poverty,
OxfordUniversity Press, 2006.
2005
“What Can Ex-participants Reveal about a Program’s Impact?” (with E. Galasso, T. Lazo and E.
Philipp), Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 40, Winter 2005, pp. 208-230.
“Hidden Impact: Household Saving in Response to a Poor-Area Development Project” (with
Shaohua Chen), Journal of Public Economics, Vol.89, December 2005, pp. 2183-2204.
“A Poverty-Inequality Trade-Off?” Journal of Economic Inequality, Vol. 3(2), August, pp.169-182.
“Externalities in Rural Development: Evidence for China,” in Ravi Kanbur and Tony Venables (eds)
Spatial Inequality and Development, OxfordUniversity Press.
“Decentralized Targeting of an Anti-Poverty Program,” (with Emanuela Galasso) Journal of Public
Economics, Vol. 85, April 2005, pp. 705-727.
“Employment Guarantee in Rural India: What Would it Cost and How Much Would it Reduce
Poverty?” (with Rinku Murgai), Economic and Political Weekly, July 30, 2005, pp.
3450-3455.
“Rich and Powerful? Subjective Power and Welfare in Russia” (with Michael Lokshin), Journal of
Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 56, Issue 2, February 2005, pp. 141-195.
“On Measuring Aggregate ‘Social Efficiency’,” Economic Development and Cultural Change,
January 2005, Vol. 53, No. 2. pp.273-92.
2004
“Social Protection in a Crisis: Argentina’s Plan Jefes y Jefas” (withEmanuela Galasso), World Bank
Economic Review, Vol.18, No.3, 2004, pp: 367-399.
“Competing Concepts of Inequality in the Globalization Debate,” Brookings Trade Forum 2004,
Edited by Susan Collins and Carol Graham, WashingtonDC: Brookings Institution, pp.1-38.
“Household Income Dynamics in Rural China” (with Jyotsna Jalan), in Stefan Dercon (ed) Insurance
Against Poverty, OxfordUniversity Press, 2004.
“How Have the World’s Poorest Fared Since the Early 1980s?” (with Shaohua Chen), World Bank
Research Observer, Vol. 19, No.2, Fall 2004, pp. 141-170.
“Who is Protected from Budget Cuts?” Journal of Policy Reform, Vol.7(2), June 2004, pp.109-22.
“Household Income Dynamics in Two Transition Economies” (with M. Lokshin), Studies in
Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, Vol.8, No.3, September 2004.
“Assisting the Transition from Workfare to Work: Argentina’s Proempleo Experiment” (with
Emanuela Galasso and Agustin Salvia), Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol.57,
No.5, October 2004, pp.128-142.
“Welfare Impacts of China’s Accession to the World Trade Organization” (with Shaohua Chen), World
Bank Economic Review, Vol. 18(1), 2004, pp. 29-58.
“Breaking Up the Collective Farm: Welfare Impacts of Vietnam’s Massive Land Privatization” (with
Dominique van de Walle), Economics of Transition, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2004, pp. 201-236.
2003
“Assessing the Poverty Impact of an Assigned Program” in Francois Bourguignon and Luiz Pereira
Da Silva (eds) The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution:
Evaluation Techniques and Tools. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.
“Inequality Convergence,” Economics Letters, Vol. 80(3), pp. 351-356.
“The Debate on Globalization, Poverty and Inequality: Why Measurement Matters,” International Affairs,
Vol. 79(4), July 2003, pp. 739-754.
“Measuring Aggregate Welfare in Developing Countries: How Well do National Accounts and Surveys
Agree?,” Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. LXXXV, August 2003, pp.645-652.
“Who Wants Safer Streets? Explaining Concern for Public Safety in Brazil” (with Menno Pradhan),
Journal of Economic Psychology. Vol. 24(1), pp. 17-33.
“How Can Qualitative Methods Help in Measuring Poverty?” inRavi Kanbur (ed.). Q-Squared:
Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. Permanent Black, 2003.
“Does Piped Water Reduce Diarrhea for Children in Rural India? (with Jyotsna Jalan), Journal of
Econometrics Vol. 112, January 2003, pp. 153-173.
“Estimating the Benefit Incidence of an Anti-Poverty Program by Propensity-Score Matching” (with
Jyotsna Jalan), Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Vol.21(1), Jan. 2003, pp.19-30.
“Measuring Pro-Poor Growth” (with Shaohua Chen), Economics Letters, Vol.78(1), Jan., pp. 93-99.
2002
“Has India’s Post-Reform Economic Growth Left the Poor Behind,” (with Gaurav Datt), Journal of
Economic Perspectives Vol. 16(3), Summer 2002, pp. 89-108.
“Geographic Poverty Traps? A Micro Model of Consumption Growth in Rural China” (with Jyotsna
Jalan”), Journal of Applied Econometrics Vol.17(4), pp. 329-346.
“Self-Rated Economic Welfare in Russia” (with Michael Lokshin), European Economic Review Vol.
46(8), September 2002, pp.1453-1473.
“Are the Poor Protected from Budget Cuts? Evidence for Argentina” Journal of Applied Economics
Vol 5, May 2002, pp. 95-121.
“On the Urbanization of Poverty,” Journal of Development Economics Vol. 68 (2002): 435-442.
“Why Has Economic Growth Been More Pro-Poor in Some States of India than Others?” (with
Gaurav Datt), Journal of Development Economics Vol. 68 (2002): 381-400.
“Is Literacy Shared Within Households?” (with Kaushik Basu and Ambar Narayan), Labor
Economics Vol.8, 2002, pp. 649-665.
“An Automatic Safety Net?” Finance and Development, Vol. 39,June 2002, pp. 21-24.
2001
“How Did the World’s Poor fare in the 1990s?” (with Shaohua Chen), Review of Income and Wealth,
Vol.47(3), September 2001, pp.283-300.
“Growth, Inequality and Poverty: Looking Beyond Averages,” World Development, Vol. 29(11),
November 2001, pp. 1803-1815.
“Behavioral Responses to Risk in Rural China” (with Jyotsna Jalan), Journal of Development
Economics, Vol. 66, 2001, pp.23-49.
“On Assessing the Efficiency of the Welfare State,” Kyklos, Vol. 54(1), pp. 115-123.
“Identifying Welfare Effects from Subjective Questions” (with Michael Lokshin), Economica,
Vol.68, August, pp. 335-357.
“The Mystery of the Vanishing Benefits: An Introduction to Impact Evaluation,” World Bank
Economic Review, Vol.15, No.1, pp. 115-140.
2000
“Carbon Emissions and Income Inequality” (with M. Heil and J. Jalan), Oxford Economic Papers,
Vol. 52, pp. 651-669.
“On Decomposing Changes in Poverty into Growth and Redistribution Components,” Journal of
Quantitative Economics, Vol. 16(1), pp. 105-118.
“Measuring Poverty Using Qualitative Perceptions of Consumption Adequacy” (with Menno
Pradhan), Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 82(3), August 2000, pp. 462-471.
“Prices, Wages and Poverty in Rural India: What Lessons do the Time Series Data Hold for Policy?”,
Food Policy, Vol. 25(3), June 2000, pp. 351-364.
“Should Poverty Measures be Anchored to the National Accounts?” Economic and Political Weekly,
Vol. 34(35&36), August 26 2000, pp. 3245-3252.
“Welfare Impacts of Russia’s 1998 Financial Crisis and the Response of the Public Safety Net” (with
Michael Lokshin), Economics of Transition, Vol. 8(2), 2000, pp. 269-295.
“Is Transient Poverty Different? Evidence for Rural China” (with Jyotsna Jalan), Journal of
Development Studies, Vol. 36(6), August 2000, pp. 82-99.
“Banking on the Poor? Branch Location and Non-Farm Rural Development in Bangladesh” (with
Quentin Wodon), Review of Development Economics, Vol. 4(2), June 2000, pp.121-139.
“Monitoring Targeting Performance when Decentralized Allocations to the Poor are
Unobserved,” World Bank Economic Review Vol. 14(2), May 2000, pp. 331-45.
“Who Wants to Redistribute? The Tunnel Effect in 1990s Russia” (with Michael Lokshin), Journal
of Public Economics Vol. 76(1), April 2000, pp: 87-104.
“What is Needed for a More Pro-poor Growth Process in India?”, Economic and Political Weekly,
Vol. 35, No. 13, March 25-31, 2000, pp. 1089-1093.
“Does Child Labor Displace Schooling? Evidence on Behavioral Responses to an Enrolment
Subsidy” (with Quentin Wodon), Economic Journal Vol. 110, March 2000, pp: C158-C176.
1999
“Poor Areas, or Just Poor People?” (with Quentin Wodon), Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 39(4),
1999, pp. 689-711.
“Are Poorer States Worse at Targeting their Poor?” Economics Letters, Vol. 65, 1999, pp. 373-377.
“Is More Targeting Consistent with Less Spending?” International Tax and Public Finance,
Vol. 6, 1999, pp. 411-419.
“Benefit Incidence and the Timing of Program Capture” (with Peter Lanjouw), World Bank
Economic Review, Vol. 13(2), May 1999, pp.257-274.
“China’s Lagging Poor Areas,” American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Vol.
89(2), May 1999, pp.301-305.
“Are the Poor Less Well Insured? Evidence on Vulnerability to Income Risk in Rural China” (with