Rob Vos is the Unit Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions and previously led the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division (MTID), beginning in 2017. Previously, he was Director of Agricultural Development Economics at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), responsible for economic analysis and policy support for sustainable agricultural development and food security. In that capacity, he was responsible for FAO’s flagship publications the State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) and the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA). He also served as Director for social protection, rural employment, and gender equality and as coordinator of FAO’s strategic program for rural poverty reduction during his time at the FAO.
Prior to his appointment to FAO, Rob was the Director of Development Policy and Analysis in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), where he was responsible for the UN flagship publications World Economic Situation and Prospects and the World Economic and Social Survey. He also served as Secretary of the UN Committee for Development Policy and coordinated the Secretary-General’s Millennium Development Goals’ Gap Task Force as well as the UN Task Team for the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda. Rob was also Professor of Finance and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, where he still holds an honorary professorship.
Rob has extensive academic and advisory work experience covering a broad range of development issues, including trade policy, inequality, and poverty; financing for development; poverty and social policy analysis; and macroeconomic and general equilibrium modeling for development policy. His recent book publications include Climate Protection and Development (with Frank Ackerman and Richard Kozul-Wright; Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), Retooling Global Economic Governance (with Manuel F. Montes, Bloomsbury Academic 2013), Financing Human Development (with Marco Sánchez, Bloomsbury Academic 2014), Development Strategies for the Post-2015 Era (with J.A. Alonso and G. A. Cornia, Bloomsbury Academic 2014), and Technology Change for Sustainable Development (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). Rob Vos, a national of the Netherlands, holds a PhD and an MSc with honors in Economics from the Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
