N.B.: All of the regular PFM Blog authors and editors are IMF staff. Their posts are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the IMF, its Board of Directors or the governments they represent. For more information, please see our content policy above.
PFM BLOG CO-FOUNDERS
Michel Lazare is Assistant Director in the African Department (AFR) of the IMF. He co-founded the PFM Blog with Bill Dorotinsky when he was the head of the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department's (FAD) Public Financial Management Division II. After graduating from E.S.S.E.C., I.E.P. Paris, and the French Ecole Nationale d'Administration (E.N.A), Michel started his professional life in the French Ministry of Finance. He joined the International Monetary Fund in 1990. Following assignments in AFR and the Fund's Middle East and Central Asia Department, Michel moved to FAD in January 2004 where he stayed until June 2012. Apart from co-editing the PFM blog, his usual tasks then involved toiling on the latest technical assistance draft report or office memorandum. He has publicly confessed to being a "Crackberry-addict" and his family is still frantically looking for a cure.
Bill Dorotinsky is a lead public sector specialist in the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia region. Bill was the co-founder of the PFM Blog, and until 2008 was the Deputy Division Chief of the IMF FAD's PFM 2 Division. Bill is an honorary FAD staff, whose career spans the World Bank, U.S. Treasury, some overseas PFM assignments, and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Bill styles himself as a Don Quixote of PFM, endlessly tilting at the windmill of PFM reform across the globe. When not working, Bill enjoys insomnia, photography, ancient history, and the latest electronic gadgets for working while mobile.
PFM BLOG CURRENT EDITOR
Holger van Eden is Deputy Division Chief in FAD's PFM 2 Division. He has worked extensively with Ministries of Finance in Eastern Europe, China and the Caribbean. His areas of focus are budget preparation, institutional restructuring, budget law, and government cash management. Holger has worked as team leader and project coordinator in international consultancy, as an economic journalist and editor, and as a financial consultant for a global accounting firm. He started his career in the Dutch Ministry of Finance. While Holger finds Washington DC a quite attractive posting, he does suffer from the lack of good cappuccino in the US and the forced (!) visits to endless shopping malls.
REGULAR BLOG AUTHORS
Richard Allen is a consultant with the World Bank and the IMF. He was Deputy Division Chief in the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department until December 2009. Before joining the IMF he worked at the UK Treasury, the OECD and the World Bank. He has advised the governments of more than 40 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America on public financial management, and is the author of many books and articles on the topic. In his spare time, he enjoys bringing up his young daughter, collecting contemporary art, listening to opera and playing golf.
Guilhem Blondy is a technical assistance advisor in FAD's PFM 2 Division. He worked in the French Supreme Audit Institution (Cour des comptes), and then in the French Ministry of Budget as advisor to the Minister for Transport, Industry and Environmental Policies. More recently, he was the Deputy Chief Financial Officer of IFP, a public research center based near Paris and specialized in energy, transport and environmental issues. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his wife Anne, reading history books, watching rugby games and traveling.
Nina Budina is a senior economist at the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF. Before joining the Fund in 2009, she was a senior economist at the World Bank (1999-2009), with experience in the Economic Policy and Debt Department of the PREM Vice-Presidency, the Europe and Central Asia Vice-Presidency, and the Macroeconomic group of the Development Economic Research Department of the Bank. She also worked for the Dutch Executive Director at the Fund’s Executive Board (2000-2001) and for an Advisory Group at the Office of the Romanian Prime Minister in Romania (1997-1998). She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and has held post-doc fellowships with the Tinbergen Institute and the University of Nijmegen (1994-1998). Her research record and her policy experience have been centered on macro/fiscal policy issues, including macro/fiscal issues in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, issues of fiscal risk management and macro-fiscal management of resource windfalls in resource-rich countries.
Jason Harris is a Technical Assistance Advisor at the IMF. He spent 8 years working in the Australian Treasury, first preparing economic forecasts, then pulling together the Commonwealth Budget. He has worked as an economic and fiscal adviser to the Australian Prime Minister, and was on loan to the Papua New Guinea Treasury for a couple of years to prepare the PNG Budget. All of these experiences have left him with a great thirst for wine, and a need to get out on the water to kayak.
Jean-Luc Helis is a Senior Economist in FAD's PFM Division 2. Jean-Luc participated in or led missions to Africa, Middle East and Central Asia. Prior to joining the Fund, he worked for five years as a European Union pre-accession advisor in the Hungarian Ministry of Finance, following seven years as a public accountant in the Public Accounting General Directorate of the French Ministry of Finance and six years as a public financial management expert in the French association for the Development of Economic and Financial Technologies (ADETEF). He is a fan of the Olympique de Marseille soccer team, which may be quite challenging or occasionally even depressing!
Richard Hughes is Deputy Division Chief in FAD's PFM 1 Division. He worked in the UK Treasury for seven years on a range of international and domestic macroeconomic and fiscal issues, most recently as the head of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. He joined the IMF following a brief spell in Paris where he was advising the French Ministry of Finance on the preparation of their first multi-year budget. In his spare time, he enjoys museums, theatres and the Sunday papers.
Tim Irwin is a Technical Assistance Advisor in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. He has previously worked at the New Zealand Treasury, the OECD, the World Bank, and most recently the Wellington office of LECG, an economic consultancy.
Yang-Hyun Jin is a Senior Economist in FAD’s PFM 2 Division. He worked more than 20 years in the Ministry of Finance of Korea on a range of macroeconomic and fiscal issues. He was also in charge of formulating and expenditure of the Ministry’s budget just before he joined the Fund in September 2009.
Kris Kauffmann is a Technical Assistance Advisor for the PFM Division II of FAD. His background is in the Australian civil service, including the federal Department of Finance and Queensland Treasury. As an employee of an international consulting firm, Kris provided technical assistance on public financial management in emerging markets under contracts with USAID, most notably in Kosovo where he originally served as the co-head of the Treasury. He claims to be a glider pilot but no-one has seen any recent evidence of this.
Camille Karamaga is a new Headquarters Based Consultant working in PFM1. He has come from Liberia, where he was serving as a resident FAD/PFM Advisor in the Ministry of Finance. While in Liberia, Camille developed the country’s first PFM Act-and Financial Regulations-both passed in 2009.He also helped to establish, among other reforms, the PFM reforms coordination unit as well as develop the country’s medium PFM strategy and action plan. Prior to that, he was working as a Director of National Budget of the Republic of Rwanda where he helped to develop the country’s first PFM legislation (Organic Budget Law), implemented key reform such as the MTEF and fiscal decentralization. Camille also spent a number of years working on tax administration in Tanzania.
Camille likes exercising especially outdoor jogging; and is an ardent fan of soccer and basketball.
Abdul Khan is Senior Economist in FAD's PFM1 Division. Before joining the IMF Abdul worked in the Department of Finance and Administration of Australia and KPMG in London. While in Australia he was a key manager of the team that implemented the accrual, outcome, and output budgeting framework. Abdul also led the preparation of the first "whole-of-government" financial statements of the Australian Federal Government. Since joining the Fund Abdul has provided technical assistance to the governments of many countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In his spare time he enjoys music, poetry, and cricket - not necessarily in that order.
Duncan Last is a Senior Economist with FAD's PFM 1 division. He joined headquarters two years ago after 20 years in public finance, including: regional IMF advisor in AFRITAC East and Slovenia, budget advisor in Mali and Papua New Guinea, debt management advisor in Papua New Guinea, and debt management software designer at the Commonwealth Secretariat in UK. He also had three other careers before public finance: teacher of physics, manufacturing engineer, and software designer. In Slovenia, he was one of the prime movers behind the Center of Excellence in Finance. Slovenia was also where Duncan developed the most important passion of his life (after his family) - sailing. Duncan grew up in Ethiopia, where he attended the French Lycée. His interests are travel, history, environment, politics, chess and bridge.
Luc Leruth, a former member of FAD's PFM 2 Division, is currently a Senior Economist at the Paris office of the IMF Offices in Europe. Prior to that, he was head of FAD's Fiscal Transparency Unit and ran the Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Center between 2002 and 2004. He has published a number of articles in scientific journals. He has also developed a passion for writing (he is notably the author of two acclaimed novels) and for single lens reflex cameras of the 70’s (of which he has many and some work) although he has recently discovered (to his amazement) that cameras no longer needed films these days.
Gösta Ljungman is an Economist in the FAD's PFM 1 Division. He has a background as a government official in the Swedish Ministry of Finance, with a focus on fiscal frameworks and budget preparation issues. In addition to his work in the Swedish government administration, he has worked with a number of governments in Central and Eastern Europe on modernizing expenditure management, including a five year residency in Moscow. Gösta enjoys spending his spare time in the outdoors, rising to any challenge nature has to offer.
Lewis Kabayiza Murara, a Rwandan national, joined the Public Financial Management Division M2 as a Technical Assistance Advisor in July 2011. Prior to joining the Fund, Lewis worked with the World Bank in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management network where he managed public sector governance programs, with particular emphasis on public financial management reforms in Rwanda, Burkina Faso and Burundi. Lewis has also served the Rwandan government, leading financial audits as well championing performance/value for money audits in the Office of the Auditor General of Rwanda. During his spare time, he enjoys playing with his two sons and riding his bicycle.
Sailendra Pattanayak, an Indian national, works at the IMF’s FAD Public Financial Management Division M1 as a Senior Economist. Sailendra holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology (Rourkela, India) and masters degrees in Public Administration and Public Policy from the French Ecole Nationale d'Administration (E.N.A) and Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po) respectively. He has undertaken public financial management missions to a number of countries in Central Asia, Middle East and Africa. Before joining the IMF, he held senior executive positions in financial management with the Indian government. In his spare time, he enjoys Indian classical music, ghazals (love songs put to Indian Ragas) and nature.
Mario Falcao Pessoa, a Brazilian national, was a senior economist in IMF’s Public Financial Management Division M2 before becoming the Deputy Division Chief of the same division in 2011. Mario holds degrees in Economics and in Civil Engineering from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and has a Master in Economics and Social Studies from the University of Wales (UK). He has participated in public financial management missions to Angola, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea, Nepal, and Mexico. While in Brazil, he previously worked at the Brazilian Ministry of Finance (Treasury, Economic Policy Secretariat, and Internal Control Secretariat). In his spare time he enjoys traveling with the family and running.
Xavier Rame is a technical assistance advisor in FAD's PFM 2 Division. He worked a few years at the French Department of Budget dealing with financial information systems. He also spent 7 years in a Big Four, coordinating and providing consulting and auditing services for the French central government. From 2006 to 2009, He was Senior Expert at the French Supreme Audit Institution (Cour des comptes) dealing with issues related to central government accrual accounting implementation and financial statements auditing. He joined the IMF following a brief stopover in a consulting firm involved in the reengineering of the central government financial management processes and the general review of public policies. Xavier is fond of his wife Holy-Tiana and his son Auguste. He likes sipping a glass of wine (both red and white) from the Rhone Valley, traveling and reading history books.
Andrea Schaechter is a senior economist in FAD’s Fiscal Policy and Surveillance Division. Before she joined the department, she spent two years in the Public Finance Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs. Prior to her assignment in Brussels, she was desk economist for Ukraine at the IMF, worked several years on monetary and financial sector issues in the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department and one year as desk economist for Benin. Andrea holds a Ph.D. from Wuerzburg University, Germany. In her spare time, she enjoys playing and watching tennis in DC's sweltering heat and Europe's steady light rain.
Benoît Taiclet decided after a brilliant military career in the French marines to become a senior civil servant. Graduate of the ENA, he worked at the administrative and financial directorate of the ministry of Defense before moving to the Ministry of Finance's Budget Directorate, where he was a Division chief until 2009. These assignments gave him the opportunity to work on the tail end of the implementation of the France’s 2001 organic budget law and other public finance reforms, and to develop a strong technical expertise, in particular on performance and program budgeting. He joined the IMF as a resident advisor in the regional Center AFRITAC West (Bamako, Mali) where he worked extensively with West African governments on Public Financial Management reforms. Since 2011, Benoit Taiclet has been appointed to the IMF’s fiscal affair department (Washington DC) as a TA advisor, he is mostly committed to assisting Francophone sub-Saharan countries in the areas of budget preparation and execution.
Justin Tyson is an Economist in FAD's Expenditure Policy Division and was previously an Econmist in FAD PFM 2 Division. Prior to joining the IMF Justin worked at the UK Treasury, focusing on the government's spending reviews, and before that at the Inter-American Development Bank. Justin spends much of his time working on Afghanistan, but enjoys providing technical assistance in other countries when the opportunity arises.
GUEST BLOG AUTHORS
Frits Bos is senior economist on public finance at CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. He worked for about fifteen years in national accounting. This included research on links with economic theory, writing European guidelines, monitoring the quality of GNP-estimates in Europe, responsible for Dutch public finance statistics and member of the editorial board of the Review of Income and Wealth. Since 2001, he works at the CPB analysing and forecasting Dutch public finance, analysing policy proposals and advising about fiscal principles, e.g. invented the typically Dutch "robust budget balance". He is fond of his wife, four children, Eritrean food and reading biographies and history. He is probably CPB's most backward looking economist!
Jim Brumby is the lead public specialist on public financial management issues in the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) network.
Dick Emery is a consultant to FAD who in February participated in the review of the Mongolian budget system. Dick also has served as in interim consultant to the OECD; the US representative to the peer review of Greece and the unnamed OECD consultant to the Greek Government Budget Reform Unit. In 2005, Dick retired after almost forty years in budgeting in the US, the last eight as Assistant Director for Budget Review at OMB. He represented the US in the OECD’s Working Party for Senior Budget Officials for a number of years, the last three serving as chair of that group. When not consulting, Dick lives in southern New Mexico on the edge of the Chihuahuan desert where he is attempting to master cooking with chilies.
David Gentry is the IMF's resident Budget Planning Advisor in Mongolia where he works with the Budget Office on strengthening the core budget planning process, and deepening program budgeting and MTEF reforms. He began his career in the Alaska Office of Management and Budget. He has held resident budget and treasury advisor assignments in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, primarily through the US Treasury Department. Trained in finance, he is particularly interested in decision making processes in large institutions and the role of information systems. In addition to a well constructed budget, he admires art deco and Chicago School architecture.
Lewis Hawke is an international advisor on public sector management. In his career of more than 25 years he has worked as a senior civil servant in Australia and UK, with a particular focus on performance improvement initiatives. He has also worked as an international specialist consultant on major reform projects funded by the IMF, World Bank, UNDP, OECD, ADB, AusAID, DfID and the Ford Foundation in Asia and Europe. He was a member of the Global Reporting Initiative’s international working group on public sector agency aspects of sustainability reporting. He is a national fellow of the Institute of Public Administration, Australia. In addition to his obsession with organisational performance and accountability, Lewis is passionate about his family, football, music and theatre.
Davina Jacobs was a Senior Economist in FAD's PFM 1 Division until 2010. Since joining the IMF in 1999, Davina has been globe-trotting on PFM and fiscal issues across Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Davina's research interests span fiscal indicators of sustainability, corruption, budget classification, and public investment budgeting. Prior to the IMF, Davina served in the South African Budget Office, working on MTEF development, and the South African Central Advisory Services (CEAS), working in macroeconomic policy and modeling. In her spare time she enjoys the theater, music, movies, photography, and is "secretly addicted" to watching home improvement shows on TV.
Philip Joyce is Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University. His research primarily focuses on the U.S. federal budget and the use of performance information in the budget process. He is the author of two books—Public Budgeting Systems (8th edition—with Robert D. Lee and Ronald Johnson) and Public Performance: Why Management Matters (with Patricia Ingraham and Amy Donahue), in addition to more than 40 articles and book chapters. Phil has 12 years of public sector work experience, including five years each with the U.S. Congressional Budget Office and the Illinois Bureau of the Budget. He has consulted internationally, both as an individual and with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in the People’s Republic of China, Latvia, Slovenia and Mexico. Professor Joyce is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is a past President of the American Association of Budget and Program Analysis, and a past Chair of the Center on Accountability and Performance of the American Society for Public Administration.
Ismail Manik is a consultant at the World Bank Institute, on leave from Ministry of Finance, Maldives. He is a graduate of Columbia University (MPA, PEPM) and University of Adelaide (B Econ). He joined the Ministry of Finance in 1995 and has worked with World Bank counterparts on public expenditure management including a PER and a CFAA.
Steve Redburn has directed studies for the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Sciences, mostly recently for a joint committee of NAPA and NAS on the fiscal future of the U.S. The study report was published in January 2010 as Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future. He is now directing a study of immigration enforcement for the National Academy of Sciences and consults on budget reform. He is an adjunct professor in the School of Public Policy and Public Administration of George Washington University, teaching the capstone course on the federal budget for graduate students. Dr. Redburn is an authority on financial management, government performance, and public policy with over 25 years of experience as a senior government official in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. From January to August 2007 he served as Senior Budget Advisor on the USAID Kosovo V project, where he assisted the Ministry of Finance and Economy on a range of issues and advised the budget director and staff on program budgeting and improved budget procedures, including development and use of performance information. Redburn is an elected NAPA fellow and active on various panels and projects of the Academy. In 2007, he authored a working paper for NAPA on budgeting practice for fragile states.
Marc Robinson is a European-based senior consultant and trainer specializing in public financial management, performance measurement and budgeting, and fiscal policy. He was Senior Economist in FAD between 2004 and 2009 and, prior to that, an economics professor and senior civil servant in Australia. Dr. Robinson has advised fifteen countries—ranging from Niger to Germany— on budget and performance related matters. In addition to the IMF, his clients have included the World Bank, AusAid, the African Capacity Building Foundation, the Australian Treasury, and a number of national governments. He has published widely on fiscal policy, public financial management, performance budgeting and government accounting, and was editor and principle author of Performance Budgeting: Linking Funding and Results (IMF/Palgrave, 2007). Senior civil service roles in which he served include: director of research of a parliamentary budget commission, membership of the boards of a number of public enterprises, and director of a special unit charged with resolving a financial crisis affecting a worker’s compensation scheme. His website is www.pfmresults.com.
Carlos Santiso is the Manager of the Governance Division of the African Development Bank, based in Tunis. French with Spanish roots, he previously erred in the wetter lands of Scotland, the altitudes of the Peruvian Andes as a governance and public finance adviser to the United Kingdom Department for International Development. He previously explored the many islands of Stockholm as a promoter of democracy and clean elections at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, as well as the more sinuous corridors of politics of the French Prime Minister’s Office in the Hôtel Matignon in Paris. Carlos has worked in over a dozen countries in Africa and Latin America for as many organizations. A graduate from Sciences Pô Paris (IEP MA), Columbia University (SIPA MIA) and Johns Hopkins University (SAIS PhD), he has written extensively on democracy, governance and aid. However, his passion and inspiration are his wife, his poetry, and traveling to enjoy both.
Salvatore Schiavo-Campo, currently an international consultant for various international organizations, is a retired senior staff member of the Fund, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank--with operational experience in leading capacities in some 50 countries on four continents. Previously, he taught in several universities, concluding as full Professor and Chairman of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. A Columbia University Ph.D., his main areas of experience and expertise are public financial management, governance and public administration, trade and development, and M&E. He has published some 30 scholarly articles and 13 books and monographs--including the 1970 classic "Perspectives in Economic Development" (with Hans W. Singer), the widely-known "Managing Government Expenditure" in 1999 (with Daniel Tommasi) and, most recently, "Public Management in Global Perspective" (with Hazel M.McFerson).
Roger Scott-Douglas is Executive Director at the Treasury Board Secretariat. For the last three years he has been on assignment in Paris, as Chargé de mission, auprès du Directeur général, Direction générale de la modernisation de l’Etat. Nobody at TBS feels sorry for him. He has worked as a senior executive on a number of major management reform initiatives, as well as innovation in service improvement. He has served as a senior consultant for the OECD and as a technical advisor for the IMF. After over 20 years in the public sector, he fears that, at some point, the need to get a real job will catch up to him.
Gérard Séguin has spent over 35 years in the public administration field, most of them with the Canadian federal Government as a senior manager in large departments such as Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada. He also served in strategic organization such as the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister Office. His main field of expertise is public resource management. He also actively participated in large Canadian public service reforms such as in the 90’s the implementation of Program Budgeting and more recently the Management Accountability Framework (MAF). For the last 6 years, as a senior consultant, he has shared his program budgeting knowledge with countries such as Algeria, Mali, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Djibouti. At this time, his biggest challenge is to learn how to retire.
Sanjay Vani is a lead financial management specialist in the World Bank's Operations Services Financial Management Anchor. Sanjay has over 27 years of experience in several regions (Europe and Central Asia, South Asia, and East Asia). He has contributed to PFM reforms in several countries. Sanjay, together with a colleague from the PREM anchor, lead the work on PFM agenda of the Bank.
Vera Wilhelm is a senior economist with the Poverty Reduction Group at the World Bank, where she has been leading work on the implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategies. Vera is a German national and graduated from the University of Cologne after spending some time at NYU and HEC in Paris. After joining the Bank, she's worked on a few countries in Africa and the Baltic States, both at headquarters and in the field. She has an interest in capacity building issues which she pursued as part of her assignments with PREM and the World Bank Institute . She spends most of her spare time with her two girls and enjoys cooking, yoga, movies and discovering new places.
Andy Wynne (andywynne@btinternet.com) is working with Lagos State Government, Nigeria, on budgeting. He will soon also be working with five Nigerian states to improve the quality of their audit services on the six year DfID funded SPARC project. He is a member of the AFROSAI-E Technical Committee and an advisor for the Federation of Accountants and Auditors General of West Africa. He is also editor of the International Journal of Governmental Financial Management.
BLOGGER EMERITUS
Franck Bessette had been a Technical Assistance Advisor in FAD's PFM 2 Division since June 1, 2009, and has since joined the World Bank in 2011. Between August 2006 and May 2009, Franck was a PFM expert in the PEFA Secretariat. After an academic career as a specialist in Arab studies and Islamology and as a teacher, Franck graduated from the French Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). During his career in the French Supreme Audit Institution (Cour des comptes), he worked as an expert for the European Commission in Palestine (Ramallah, 2003-2004) and for the Board of Auditors of the United-Nations.
Dominique Bouley was a senior economist in FAD's PFM Division 2 until May 2009. Dominique graduated from the French Ecole Nationale du Trésor. After a career in the Accounting Directorate of the French Ministry of Finance, he worked for FAD between the 1983 and 2009, alternating positions at headquarters and in the field, as a resident long-term expert in Mali, Benin, Lebanon, and Lao, P.D.R.. Dominique is a recognized guru on PFM systems in Francophone Africa. When he is not fixing a budget functional classification in Africa, Dominique is usually armed with a screwdriver and a hammer completing some repairs or home improvement project. During his stopovers in France, you can also find him on the banks of the Dordogne river constructing his sail boat.
Teresa Dabán, a Spanish national, is a Senior Economist in WHD. She transferred to WHD in May 2009 after working as a Senior Economist in FAD’s PFM Division M2. In her eight years with the IMF, Teresa has worked in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia, in a variety of assignments including on macrofiscal analysis, fiscal transparency and public finance management. Prior to joining the Fund in 2000, she served for eight years as an advisor in the Spanish Ministry of Finance. Teresa holds a Master degree on monetary and financial economy from the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI, Madrid, Spain) and an MSc on Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the L.S.E.. Her current research work includes oil revenue management in low-income countries. In her spare time she likes reading history books, blogging, and playing with her little dog Leila.
Lubin Doe was a senior economist in FAD's PFM Division 2. He is a citizen of Togo; as Lubin puts it: it is a small country in West Africa, so small that you may need a magnifying glass to locate it on some maps...Lubin was schooled in Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire, post secondary education), Rennes (France, BA, MS), and Tucson (Arizona, MS and PhD). In previous lives, he was Alternate Advisor to an Executive Director at the IMF Board of Directors, IMF resident representative in Cameroon, Deputy Director of Research at the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) in Dakar (Senegal). He has published or co-published several articles on macroeconomic and tax policy issues. He spends his spare time raising up his children and reading, notably Christian books. His secret wishes (not so secret anymore...) are to educate children and farm after his retirement from paper work.
Pokar Khemani was a Senior Economist in FAD's PFM1 Division until 2011. For the last fifteen years he had been working with the International Monetary Fund, both at the Headquarters, as well as a resident advisor to a number of countries. Over these years, he was primarily engaged in providing advice and technical assistance in public financial management to a range of member countries in Europe, Asia-Pacific, Central Asia and Africa. Before joining the IMF, he held senior executive positions in financial management with the Indian government. In his spare time, he enjoys music, movies and nature.
Ian Lienert worked in FAD's PFM 2 Division for 12 years until May 2010. After beginning his career in the New Zealand Treasury and the OECD Economics Department, he worked in the IMF's African Department and the IMF Institute as a macro economist. During 1998-2010 he advised government officials in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean of good public financial management practices. Now retired and living in Toulouse, France, he continues to keep fit by running and cycling Tour de France mountains, is involved in various Christian activities, plays the piano, and tries to keep up with his son in Latin and table tennis.
Francois Michel was an Economist in FAD’s PFM 2 Division. He began his career within the industrial conglomerate Alstom before joining the French Ministry of Finance and then, the Office of Budget and Planning at the IMF. Francois was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines de Paris. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his wife Amy, reading, and playing guitar(s) (since recently a 1957 Gibson ES145).
Taryn Parry was a senior economist in the IMF's Office of Internal Audit and Inspection before leaving the Fund in May 2009. She received her MA in economics (University of Colorado) and a Ph.D. in public administration (Syracuse University). Before joining the Fund in 1997, she was an assistant professor at the University of Georgia, and also worked at the World Bank and USAID. In her 12 years at the Fund she worked in the areas of macrofiscal analysis, fiscal transparency and public financial management. In her free time she enjoys playing with her three children, visiting with family and friends, riding her horse and bonding with nature.
Christian Schiller worked at the IMF between 1983 and 2009. He was Resident Representative (Madagascar, Croatia) and in the IMF Offices in Europe. He headed many missions, recently PFM missions to Africa and Europe. Prior to joining the IMF, he taught at the University of Mainz, from where he also received his PhD. He has published widely, including on expenditure arrears and medium-term public finance frameworks. Christian is interested in art and enjoys Saturday mornings on the internet following German football.
Eivind Tandberg was Deputy Division Chief in FAD's PFM 2 Division, and co-editor of this PFM blog before his early retirement in mid-2009. He held the same position in FAD from 2002 - 2005, and from 2005 – 2008 was the IMF’s regional public financial management advisor for South East Europe, located at the Center of Excellence in Finance in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Prior to joining the IMF, Eivind was Chief for the Carbon Offset unit in the World Bank and a Deputy Director General in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. He enjoys social gatherings, music from February 1982, reading, skiing and long walks in unknown cities.
Jon Shields is a Senior Economist with AFR. He previously served as Head of the Fiscal Transparency Unit in FAD. Before that, Jon headed missions in the IMF African Department to Malawi, Liberia, The Gambia and Angola. In past lives, he was an Alternate Executive Director of the IMF, Senior Economic Adviser in both the Bank of England and HM Treasury, Chief Economist (Europe) for Mitsubishi Bank, and Director of the Employment Institute. Before family, he enjoyed drama, walking, music and photography.
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