Bob Koopman is currently Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming Global Value Chain Development Report, 2027 and he served as Editor-in-Chief the 2025 edition: The GVC Development Report 2025: Rewiring Global Value Chains in a Changing Global Economy, and is currently Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer at American Universities School of International Service where his research focuses on the impact of trade and trade policy on economic development and growth. Bob also serves as a Senior Academic Advisor to the Research Institute for Global Value Chains at the University of Industry and Business Economics in Beijing.

Bob previously served as the Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization and an Adjunct Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva from 2014 to 2022. At the WTO Bob served as Chief Economic Counsellor to the Director General, and provided the WTO Secretariat and Member Countries with analysis and information that promoted a deeper understanding of trade and trade policy’s role in economic growth and development. Bob also served as the WTO representative to the G20 Trade and Investment Working Group and the G20 Framework Group. He is a research associate of CEPR, London, serves on numerous advisory boards, and is an editor of the Springer Series on Advances in Applied General Equilibrium Modeling.

Between 1999 to 2014 Bob served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Economist at the United States International Trade Commission. Bob also previously served as Deputy Administrator for Economic and Community Systems at what is now the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, USDA, and various research leadership and analyst positions at the Economic Research Service of USDA from 1985 to 1999.

Bo Meng is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies–JETRO. He received his Ph.D. in Information Sciences from Tohoku University in 2005. He has served as an economist at the OECD, as well as a visiting scholar at the United States International Trade Commission and Columbia Business School. His research focuses on climate change economics, global value chain analysis, input-output and computable general equilibrium modeling. He also serves on the editorial board of the WTO’s Global Value Chain Development Report. He has published more than 100 articles in journals, including Nature Communications, One Earth, Scientific Data, Energy Economics, Ecological Economics, and Journal of World Business.

Mahinthan Joseph Mariasingham is a principal statistician at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). For the last 11 years he has been leading data systems development, statistical compilation, and technical capacity-building initiatives in key subject matter areas including agriculture statistics, system of national accounts (SNA), global value chains, climate resilience, digital economy, and innovative data. At ADB, the projects he manages span many countries in Asia and the Pacific, and he collaborates with other multilateral organizations on key statistical initiatives. He leads multi-national and multi-specialty teams which work on the cutting-edge of data development to produce knowledge solutions to facilitate evidence-based policymaking. He was instrumental in the development of the ADB multi-regional input-output tables and ADB statistical business register system. He started his career 1999 at Statistics Canada where he worked for 15 years specializing in SNA and input-output economics. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

Neil Foster-McGregor has broad research interests and has worked and published widely on topics including global value chains; preferential trade agreements; structural transformation; innovation and knowledge transfer; trade and labor markets; and new technologies, inequality and labor market outcomes.

Prior to joining the Asian Development Bank, Dr. Foster-McGregor worked at the United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) initially as a Research Fellow (2014-2016) and later as Deputy Director and Professor of Globalization and Innovation (2016-2023).

He obtained his degrees in Economics for Masters (1997) and PhD (2001) from the University of Nottingham.

Bob Koopman is currently Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming Global Value Chain Development Report, 2027 and he served as Editor-in-Chief the 2025 edition: The GVC Development Report 2025: Rewiring Global Value Chains in a Changing Global Economy, and is currently Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer at American Universities School of International Service where his research focuses on the impact of trade and trade policy on economic development and growth. Bob also serves as a Senior Academic Advisor to the Research Institute for Global Value Chains at the University of Industry and Business Economics in Beijing.

Bob previously served as the Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization and an Adjunct Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva from 2014 to 2022. At the WTO Bob served as Chief Economic Counsellor to the Director General, and provided the WTO Secretariat and Member Countries with analysis and information that promoted a deeper understanding of trade and trade policy’s role in economic growth and development. Bob also served as the WTO representative to the G20 Trade and Investment Working Group and the G20 Framework Group. He is a research associate of CEPR, London, serves on numerous advisory boards, and is an editor of the Springer Series on Advances in Applied General Equilibrium Modeling.

Between 1999 to 2014 Bob served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Economist at the United States International Trade Commission. Bob also previously served as Deputy Administrator for Economic and Community Systems at what is now the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, USDA, and various research leadership and analyst positions at the Economic Research Service of USDA from 1985 to 1999.