Omar Arias

Mr. Omar Arias is a Manager & Lead Economist at The World Bank.
Previously, he was global lead for skills, sector manager and lead economist in the Europe and Central Asia region, sector leader of human development for Chile and the Andean countries, senior economist in the Poverty and Gender Group of the Latin American region, and research economist at the Inter-American Development Bank.
He has coauthored various studies, including regional reports on skills in Africa, jobs and pensions in Europe and Central Asia, and labor informality and poverty in Latin America, as well as numerous country studies.
He has peerreviewed publications on various topics, including returns to schooling and skills, labor markets, income mobility, growth, poverty and inequality, human capital accumulation, tax evasion, and applied econometrics.
He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he obtained his master’s degree and doctorate in economics.