Richard Newfarmer is the World Bank’s Special Representative to the United Nations and World Trade Organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Prior to assuming this post in June 2007, he was Economic Advisor in the International Trade Department and in the Prospects Group of the World Bank, and led the team that produced Global Economic Prospects 2007: Managing the Next Wave of Globalization. In 2005, he edited Trade Doha and Development: A Window into the Issues published on the eve of the Hong Kong Ministerial. Mr. Newfarmer was also the lead author of three previous Global Economic Prospects reports - on regional trade, the WTO negotiations and investment.
Besides authoring numerous country studies at the World Bank on trade, macroeconomic and public finance issues, Mr. Newfarmer has written on foreign direct investment, with publications in the Journal of World Trade, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Chinese Economic and Foreign Trade Studies, and Foreign Policy, among others. He worked extensively in East Asia and Latin America. He was Lead Economist in the Chief Economist’s Office of East Asia during the Asia crisis (1997-2000), Lead Economist for the China, and Chief of the Industry and Energy Division in the China Department. He was also Principal Economist for Argentina in the Latin American region (1988–1992) and has also worked on Chile, Brazil, and other Latin American countries. He joined the World Bank in 1983.
Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Newfarmer was a Senior Fellow at the Overseas Development Council, and was on the Economics Faculty at the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Newfarmer holds a PhD and two MAs from the University of Wisconsin, and BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He also has served on the NAFTA Commission for Environmental Cooperation’s Advisory Group on Assessing the Environmental Effects of Trade, on the Advisory Board for the Center for Global Development’s Project on “Commitment to Development Index”, and on the Board of Directors of the Washington Office on Latin America.
