World Bank Group president Ajay Banga has announced that Nobel laureate Michael Kremer has been appointed World Bank Group chief economist and senior VP for development economics, with effect from October 1, bringing one of the world’s foremost development economists to lead the institution’s research, data and analytical agenda.

“I am pleased to welcome Michael to the World Bank Group. He joins us at a time when the world needs bold solutions to its most urgent development challenges, including creating jobs that meet the aspirations of more than 1.2-billion young people reaching working age in the coming decade.

“Michael has spent his career not just identifying what works in development but proving it at scale – and that is exactly the kind of thinking we need,” says Banga.

The World Bank Group says it has moved deliberately to strengthen the connection between knowledge and impact, ensuring that world-class research and data drive its analytical agenda, shape policies and scalable solutions across the public and private sectors, and inform the full range of investments, partnerships and interventions it pursues around the world.

“The World Bank Group has tremendous research capacity to develop and test innovative solutions to development problems – and the operational reach to scale them up and improve people's lives.

“The challenges ahead are enormous, including creating jobs at scale, unlocking the private capital needed to fund development and ensuring people have the health, education and other services they need to thrive.

“At the same time, new technologies create huge opportunities to boost growth and human wellbeing. Data, evidence and research can help firms and governments navigate both the challenges and opportunities. I am excited to work with staff across the Bank Group and partners around the world on this,” says Kremer.

Kremer currently serves as director of the development innovation lab at the University of Chicago, in the US, where he is a professor. He has conducted research on a broad range of topics, including economic growth, technological change and development economics.

The World Bank Group points out that, in 2019, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo for their “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.

Their work used randomised controlled trials to generate reliable knowledge and identify, test and scale practical solutions.

Kremer’s current research focuses on innovation in education, health, water, finance and agriculture in developing countries.

The World Bank Group adds that, with Rachel Glennerster, Kremer proposed the use of advance market commitments (AMCs) for vaccines and helped launch a $1.5-billion AMC for a pneumococcal vaccine with Gavi and the World Bank Group.

The World Bank Group notes that vaccines bought through the AMCs have reached 60 developing countries, tackling a leading cause of infant mortality.

Further, his research on deworming informed scale-up by governments in Africa and South Asia, providing two-billion deworming treatments to children since 2014.

Additionally, the World Bank Group says his work on digital agriculture and AI-based agricultural weather forecasting informed government programmes reaching more than 50-million people in Africa and South Asia.

Kremer co-founded Precision Development, which leverages digital technology to improve productivity and incomes for smallholder farmers. He also co-founded the US Agency for International Development’s Development Innovation Ventures, which has invested in more than 300 innovations, reaching more than 200-million people.

Among many honours, the World Bank Group explains that Kremer is a MacArthur Fellow, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Presidential Faculty Fellow.

He is a co-founder of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development and a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Prior to working at the University of Chicago, he was the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University.