In this episode, Economists on Zoom Getting Coffee (#ezgc) hosts Dr. Homi Kharas, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution. Homi has published several articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces on global development policy, global trends influencing developing countries, the emergence of the middle class, the role of international organizations in development, and the G-20, among other topics.

Homi has had also a very distinguished public policy career. He served as the executive secretary of the secretariat advising the Untied Nations Secretary General on the post-2015 development agenda, which gave birth to the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. He has served too in a number of different high-level panels advising international organizations and governments. Prior to joining Brookings, Dr. Kharas spent 26 years at the World Bank, serving for seven years as Chief Economist for the East Asia and Pacific region and Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Finance and Private Sector Development, responsible for the Bank’s advice on structural and economic policies, fiscal issues, debt, trade, governance, and financial markets.

As of today he also serves as the principal economic advisor to the World Data Lab (https://worlddata.io), a data enterprise that, among other functionalities, houses the World Poverty Clock (https://worlddata.io/portfolio/world-poverty-clock), a real time tracker of extreme poverty numbers around the globe.

In this episode we talk the current state of poverty around the globe; the emergence of a global middle class; and about the sustainable development goals.

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