Robert Cull is a lead economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group of the World Bank. His most recent research is on the performance of microfinance institutions, African financial development, Chinese financial development and firm performance, the effects of the global financial crisis on developing economies, and the design and use of household surveys to measure access to financial services. He has published more than thirty articles in peer-reviewed academic journals including the Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. The author or editor of multiple books, his most recent co-edited book, “Banking the World: Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion” was published by MIT Press January, 2013. He is also co-editor of the Interest Bearing Notes, a bi-monthly newsletter reporting on financial and private sector research.