Roger W. Grawe
Country Director for Central Europe
Europe & Central Asia Region
The World Bank Group

Roger W. Grawe, Country Director for the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Slovak Republic, Poland and Slovenia, assumed his current position in Warsaw in August 2002.

Mr. Grawe joined the World Bank in 1975 as part of the Bank's Young Professional program. He subsequently transferred to the India Division as an economist and moved, in 1981, to the World Bank Office in New Delhi, India. He returned to Washington in 1985 where he worked as Lead Economist for Southern Africa until 1992 when he became Chief of the division responsible for human development programs also in Southern Africa. In 1996, he became Manager of the PREM unit for Eastern Africa. In 1997 he was nominated as the Country Director for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia.

Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Grawe worked for two years as a volunteer in the Government of Kenya's Ministry of Land Settlement, and for an additional two years as Kenya Liaison Officer for UNICEF, based in Nairobi.

Mr. Grawe attended Yale College, where he graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Economics/Political Science. He also received an MA and qualified for the MPhil in Economics from Yale University.

Abstract of the speech:

Reforms interact with institutions and politics in quite different ways depending on the nature of the reforms. Given diverse institutional and political environments in the various countries of the enlarged EU, the timing, sequencing and depth of reforms will be shaped by these interactions. Capacity building and communications are two important mechanisms to influence and change this process.