About Me: Alvaro González is the Principal Economist for the Jobs Group at the World Bank. At the Bank, he has advised governments in Africa, East and Central Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America. Alvaro is microeconomist specialized in competition and regulatory issues. For most of his career, his research interests have been in identifying factors that affect the performance and productivity growth of firms in developing economies. At present, he is now focused on how these topics relate to firm-level job creation, destruction and the nature of jobs created and who has the best chance to get (or lose) these jobs. Before working for the Bank, he worked in the ICT sector in the public sector, as a regulator, and in the private sector. He was employed at Bell Labs as a Research Scientist in the Internet Economics and Statistics research group right after finishing his PhD. Alvaro did graduate work in economics at MIT and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. He attributes his childhood experience with hyper-inflation, sharp economic downturns and a modest family conscious of every centavo for his love and interest in development economics.