Academic advisory group

The main role of Academic Advisory group members is to advise the Copenhagen Consensus project team as they undertake project activities focusing on principles of cost-benefit analysis and academic evidence in the respective member's area of expertise. The Academic Advisory group is structured such that the pool of advisors collectively can cover the topics being researched and disseminated.

The advisors are ambassadors of the project, have offered to provide recommendations for analysts, reviewers or other academic advisors who could contribute to the project, and assist the Copenhagen Consensus team with providing high level advice for country governments on interventions that deliver excellent return on investment within their area of expertise.

Members in alphabetical order:

Bibek Debroy is an Indian economist, serving as the chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. Debroy has made significant contributions to game theory, economic theory, income and social inequalities, poverty, law reforms, railway reforms and Indology among others.

Dean Jamison is an American economist and leader in the study of global health. He is currently Senior Fellow in Global Health Sciences at University of California, San Francisco and an Emeritus Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle.

George Psacharopoulosis is known world-wide for his major contributions to the development of the economics of education. He served at the World Bank as Senior Advisor to the Vice President, Human Capital and Operations Policy, Chief of the Human Resources Division and Chief of the Education Research Division.

John Hoddinott is a Canadian economist and professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University. In 2002–2015, Hoddinott was a Deputy Division Director at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Kodjo Esseim Mensah-Abrampa is a Ghanaian economist, and currently the Director General of National Development Planning Commission (NDPC).

Lant Pritchett is an American development economist. He is the RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Lawrence H. Summers is an American economist who served as the 71st United States secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010.

Lisa A. Robinson’s research and teaching focus on the conduct of benefit-cost analysis. She is the Deputy Director of the Center for Health Decision Science and affiliated with the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

Nashiru Abdulai is a Ghanaian diplomat, and Service Delivery Advisor to the Director General of the African Union.

Nyovani Madise is the current Director of Research and Sustainable Development Policies and Head of the Malawi office of the African Institute for Development Policy. She is an advisor to the World Health Organization and a former professor at the University of Southampton.

Ramanan Laxminarayan Ph.D., M.P.H., FIDSA is an economist and an epidemiologist. He is founder and director of the One Health Trust - formerly known as the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy.

Rathin Roy is Managing Director (Research and Policy) at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). His policy interests and research has mainly focused on fiscal and macroeconomic issues pertinent to human development in developing and emerging economies.

Thomas Chataghalala Munthali is a development economist and the Director General of the National Planning Commission of Malawi.

Vernon Smith laid the foundation for the field of experimental economics, and was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. He is an American economist and professor of business economics and law at Chapman University.

Vishal Gujadhur is an American economist. He leads a group Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that addresses how countries raise, spend, and allocate resources—and how they deal with debt, national planning and budgeting, and digital public finance.