Simeon Djankov is the founder of the World Bank's Doing Business and Women, Business and the Law projects. He was chief economist of the finance and private-sector vice presidency of the World Bank, as well as senior director for development economics. In his 19 years at the World Bank, he worked on regional trade agreements in North Africa, enterprise restructuring and privatization in transition economies, corporate governance in East Asia, and regulatory reforms around the world.

Dr Djankov is author of Inside the Euro Crisis: An Eyewitness Account (2014) and the World Development Report 2002, co-author of Europe’s Growth Challenge (2016) and director of the World Development Report 2019. He is also co-editor of The Great Rebirth: Lessons from the Victory of Capitalism over Communism (2014) and COVID-19 in Developing Economies (2020). He has published over 90 articles in professional journals.

Dr Djankov was associate editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics from 2004 to 2009 and chairman of the Board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2012/13. From 2009 to 2013, he was deputy prime minister and minister of finance of Bulgaria. Currently he is Policy Director of the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics. He obtained his doctorate in economics in 1997 from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.