- World Bank Appoints Michael Kremer as Chief Economist With Focus on Jobs, Technology and Private Capital
The World Bank Group has appointed Nobel laureate Michael Kremer as its next Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, placing an economist known for turning experimental research into large-scale development programmes at the centre of the institution’s response to jobs, technology and private-capital challenges across emerging economies.
Kremer will take up the position on October 1, succeeding Indermit Gill, who retired last month. He will oversee the World Bank Group’s research, data and analytical agenda at a time when the institution is seeking a tighter connection between economic evidence and the investments and policy interventions it deploys across developing countries.
World Bank President Ajay Banga said the appointment comes as countries face the enormous challenge of creating opportunities for more than 1.2 billion young people expected to reach working age over 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,” Mr Banga said.
The appointment represents a significant choice for an institution attempting to move its development model beyond financing individual projects towards identifying interventions capable of being replicated across countries and reaching considerably larger populations.
Kremer, 61, won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics jointly with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Their work popularised the use of randomised controlled trials to test development policies and determine which interventions produced measurable results before governments and donors committed resources at scale.
Reuters reported that Kremer will be the first economist to arrive at the World Bank chief economist position already holding a Nobel Prize. Former chief economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Romer received the award after their tenures at the institution.
His appointment also aligns closely with Banga’s effort to make the Bank’s research function more operational.
The institution says it has been strengthening the link between knowledge and impact, with research and data expected to shape policy, private-sector solutions, investments and partnerships rather than operate principally as standalone analytical products.
Kremer said the World Bank’s advantage lies in combining substantial research capacity with the operational reach needed to take successful ideas to scale.
“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,” he said.
He also highlighted the opportunities created by emerging technologies, arguing that data, evidence and research could help governments and businesses determine how technology can most effectively support growth and human welfare.
That combination of employment, technology and private capital is becoming increasingly important for African economies.
Governments across the continent face rapidly growing working-age populations while fiscal constraints limit the amount of investment that can be financed directly through public budgets. Job creation will therefore depend increasingly on whether governments can attract private investment, raise firm productivity and use technology to expand economic opportunities.
Kremer’s research record has focused heavily on precisely those questions in developing countries.
He currently directs the Development Innovation Lab at the University of Chicago, where he is a University Professor, with research spanning education, health, water, finance, agriculture, technological change and economic development. Before joining Chicago, he was the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University.
His work has repeatedly focused on creating incentives that allow development solutions to move from research into large-scale implementation.
With economist Rachel Glennerster, Kremer proposed the use of Advance Market Commitments to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop and supply vaccines needed in lower-income countries. That work contributed to a US$1.5 billion commitment for pneumococcal vaccines involving Gavi and the World Bank Group, with vaccines procured through the mechanism reaching 60 developing countries.
His research on school-based deworming also influenced programmes subsequently expanded by governments across Africa and South Asia. The World Bank says about 2 billion deworming treatments have been provided to children since 2014 following evidence generated from that research.
Agriculture provides another example of how his work could resonate across Africa.
Kremer has researched digital agriculture and artificial intelligence-based weather forecasting, contributing to government programmes that the World Bank says have reached more than 50 million people across Africa and South Asia. He also co-founded Precision Development, which uses digital technologies to provide information intended to improve smallholder farmer productivity and incomes.
That background could become increasingly relevant as African governments look to AI, mobile technology and digital platforms to improve agricultural extension, weather information, education and public-service delivery without proportionately increasing administrative costs.
Kremer also co-founded USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures, which the World Bank says backed more than 300 innovations that reached over 200 million people.
The underlying economic philosophy is that limited development resources should increasingly be directed towards interventions that can demonstrate measurable impact and then be expanded.
That approach could influence how the World Bank evaluates programmes at a time when borrowing countries are demanding greater development impact from every dollar of financing.
It may also affect the institution’s push to mobilise private capital.
Development banks increasingly face the challenge of using relatively scarce public and concessional resources to reduce risk sufficiently for private investors to finance infrastructure, businesses and technology. Kremer’s experience designing incentives that change private-sector behaviour could therefore have relevance beyond conventional research.
His arrival comes shortly before the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings in Bangkok, placing him immediately inside discussions over growth, debt, jobs, private investment and development finance.
For the World Bank, the appointment is ultimately a bet that rigorous evidence can become more valuable when paired with the institution’s global balance sheet and operational reach.
The measure of Kremer’s tenure will therefore not simply be the reports produced under his leadership.
It will be whether the Bank can identify interventions that work, mobilise the capital required to support them and move successful ideas from pilot projects into programmes capable of reaching millions.
For developing economies, including those across Africa, that distinction is consequential. The development challenge is increasingly not a shortage of ideas, but the ability to determine which ones work, finance them sustainably and implement them at sufficient scale to create jobs, increase productivity and improve living standards.
