Education
Paolo studied Economics with a focus on Development Issues at the University of Torino (B.A., 1990), University of Sussex (M.Phil., 1994), and London School of Economics and Political Science (Ph.D., 2000). During his Ph.D. program, he was competitively selected as a summer intern at the United Nations-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER, 1998) and the World Bank (WB, 1999).
Employment
Between 2010 and 2024 Paolo was a staff member at the World Bank where he served as Senior Economist for the Middle-East and North-Africa region (2010-2015) and as Lead Economist and Manager of the World Bank-UNHCR Global Research Program on Forced Displacement. As Program Manager, Paolo coordinated the work of hundreds of researchers and allocated funds for over 16m USD over a period of seven years (2016-2024). He was the co-founder and first interim director of the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Centre (JDC). Between 2003 and 2010 he worked as Adjunct and Visiting Professor at Bocconi University and the University of Torino while advising the EU, UN, and several governments on social protection reforms. Before his Ph.D., Paolo worked as Program Manager in field assignments for private organizations, public organizations, and NGOs in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and countries of the Former Soviet Union.
Research
Paolo's research focuses on poor and marginalized populations in low- and middle-income countries. His publications span across Development, Labor, and Welfare Economics looking at issues of Poverty, Inequality, Deprivation, Forced Displacement, Social Protection, and Health using Micro-econometric and Machine Learning instruments. He worked extensively on poverty and inequality measurement, imputation and prediction models, microsimulation of welfare reforms, and the evaluation of public policies.
