Rita Ramalho

Rita Ramalho is a Lead Economist in the World Bank Chief Economist Office. Previously she was the Senior Manager for the Global Indicators Group which houses Doing Business, Subnational Doing Business, Enterprise Surveys, Women Business and the Law, Enabling the Business of Agriculture, as well as other pilot indicator projects. Before that Rita Ramalho was the Manager of the joint World Bank-IFC Doing Business Report which provides objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational level. Prior to that she was the program manager of World Bank-IFC Enterprise Surveys and Women, Business and the Law project. Enterprise Surveys provide the world's most comprehensive company-level data for emerging markets and developing economies. Enterprise Surveys data are available on more than 131,000 firms in over 139 countries. Rita Ramalho holds a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on the impact of regulation on economic variables such as growth, where she found that better business regulations can lead to more growth; the impact of regulations on female labor force participation, tax policy and entrepreneurship, labor regulations, and the size of the informal sector. She is currently researching the links between sovereign debt and private sector development, in particular the importance of domestic arrears for firms. She speaks Portuguese and is conversant in Spanish.