Bilal Zia is a Research Fellow at CERP. He is the Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank in Washington, DC. His research is focused on financial development at the household, firm, and bank levels, and his work has appeared in top academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Management Science, and Journal of Development Economics. Dr Bilal uses both experimental and non-experimental methods and some of his recent work includes impact evaluations of financial and business education programs, testing innovative methods to improve financial access for households and firms, and applying insights from behavioral economics to development finance. He joined World Bank in July 2006 after completing a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).