Nora Lustig

Nora Lustig is the Shapiro Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She has been Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Professor of Economics at El Colegio de Mexico. In addition, Professor Lustig has been director of the Poverty Group at UNDP, president of the Universidad de las Americas, Puebla and chief of the Poverty and Inequality Unit at the Inter-American Development Bank. She is a member of the boards of the Center for Global Development and the Earth Institute. She was founding member and president of LACEA (Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association) and co-founder of LACEA’s Network on Inequality and Poverty. Lustig has been the author of several books and dozens of articles on poverty and inequality. A sample of her publications include (co-edited with Francois Bourguignon and Francisco Ferreira) The Microeconomics of Income Distribution Dynamics; Mexico; Shielding the Poor; (co-edited with Sebastian Edwards) Labor Markets in Latin America. Combining Social Protection with Market Flexibility; Coping with Austerity: Poverty and Inequality in Latin America. Also, Lustig was co-director of the World Development Report 2000/1, Attacking Poverty. Her fields of expertise are Development Economics; Poverty and Income Distribution; and, Social Protection Policies. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Peter Timmer

Peter Timmer is a scholar-practitioner with interests in economic history and development. As a faculty member at Stanford, Cornell, three faculties at Harvard, and the University of California, San Diego, Timmer taught courses on pathways out of rural poverty, the structural transformation in historical perspective, and the role of agriculture in economic development. As a policy advisor, mostly in Indonesia, China and Vietnam, he focused on the special nature of rice economies and the relationship between domestic markets for rice and price formation in the world market. His work in the 1980s on the design and implementation of stabilization policies for rice prices in large Asian countries remains influential in judging current price policies. Since early in 2007, Timmer has been deeply involved in understanding the causes of the 2007/08 world food crisis, as well as in actions at both national and international efforts to resolve it. This is a role he also played during the world food crisis of 1973/74.

Timmer is currently a non-resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development and can be reached at ptimmer@cgdev.org.

Gilles Mettetal, Director Agribusiness Department

Joined the EBRD in 1993 and has worked continuously in the Agribusiness Team since it began. The Agribusiness Department is viewed as one of the most successful banking teams within the EBRD. Annual commitments increase steadily. The team now includes 28 professional bankers. Its clients range from large multinationals such as Cargill, Danone, Parmalat, and Carlsberg, to local companies and local banks. Previous work experience was with the FAO /Investment Centre, employed as a mission leader 1998 -1993, where he supervised the identification and preparation of projects to be financed by major international financing institutions such as the World Bank or the International Fund of Agriculture (IFAD). 1997-1998 OECD/Clud du Sahel -Analysis of the Competitiveness of Agriculture in the Sahel, Review of Grain policies in Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire and Mali. Gilles became Director of the Agribusiness Department on 1st July 2006.

Education

• 1985: Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier: Diplôme d'Ingénieur Agronome, spécialisation in rural economy, agricultural development project analysis and international marketing of agricultural products (FORMEXA).
• 1983: University degree (Maitrise) in Biology
• 1979: Baccalauréat (A level)