Biography

Harris Selod is a Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank in Washington, DC. His current research focuses on urban development, including issues related to transport and land use, as well as land tenure and land markets in developing countries, with a specific interest in sub-Saharan Africa. His publications cover a variety of topics in urban and public economics including theories of squatting and residential informality, the political economy of transport infrastructure choice, the effects of residential segregation on schooling and unemployment, or the impact of land rights formalization and place-based policies. He currently coordinates urban and transport research programs at the research department of the World Bank and organizes the annual World Bank and Poverty Reduction Research Conference.

Over the past years, he has held various positions within the World Bank, including as an invited Visiting Scholar, as a land policy expert seconded by the government of France, and as staff, and was the chair of the World Bank's Land Policy and Administration thematic group (2011-2013). Prior to joining the World Bank in 2007, he was a researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research and an Associate Professor at the Paris School of Economics (where he taught microeconomic theory and urban studies). He also taught economics at various other institutions in France, including the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique (ENSAE).

He holds a PhD in Economics from Sorbonne University, a BSc/MSc in statistics from ENSAE, and a BBA/MBA from ESCP Europe.

Main research interests

• Urban and regional economics (land use models, urban structure, rural/urban transformation)

• Land economics (land markets, land and housing informality)

• Transportation economics (big data in transport, impact of infrastructure investment)

• Labor economics (job search, labor market discrimination, social networks, spatial mismatch)

• International economics (foreign direct investments, large-scale acquisition of agricultural land)