Mr. David Dollar, a US national, becomes the World Bank's new Country Director for China and Mongolia in the East Asia and Pacific Region. He is based in Beijing, China starting on July 1, 2004. 

Prior to his present assignment, Mr. Dollar worked as Director for the development research department of the World Bank, overseeing the Bank's research on the investment climate and growth. He heads up the Bank-wide effort to systematically collect data from firms and to analyze the impact of the investment climate on investment, job creation, and growth. He co-authored the recent World Bank reports Globalization, Growth, and Poverty and Improving City Competitiveness through the Investment Climate: Ranking 23 Chinese Cities. His earlier work focused on aid and growth, and the determinants of the success and failure of reform programs supported by structural adjustment lending. He has been a key World Bank spokesperson on investment climate, globalization, and the effectiveness of aid.

Mr. Dollar joined the Bank in 1990 as an Economist in the Asia Region.  He worked as the country economist for Vietnam through 1995. He advised the economic leaders of that country during a period of stabilization and transition to a market economy, and prepared the first World Bank country assistance strategies to support that transition.   

Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Dollar was on the faculty of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles; he has published widely in the areas of productivity growth, technology transfer, and development in East Asia. As a professor, he spent a semester teaching at the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He has a PhD in economics from New York University and a B.A. in Chinese history and language from Dartmouth College. 

In this new position, Mr. Dollar's key priorities will be to further strengthen the Bank's growing partnership with China on analytical and operational efforts directed at the country's integration into the global economy while addressing remaining social and economic disparities; and to lay the groundwork for a new stage in the Bank's relationship with Mongolia as set forth in the recent Country Assistance Strategy.

(China.org.cn July 1, 2004)