Clifford Zinnes Named NORC Senior Fellow
CHICAGO, February 24, 2012—NORC at the University of Chicago today announced the appointment of Clifford Zinnes, Ph.D. as Senior Fellow in NORC’s International Projects (INPRO) department.
“I am delighted to welcome Clifford Zinnes to NORC and the International Project team,” said Jeffrey Telgarsky, Senior Vice President and Director of INPRO. “Clifford’s expertise in impact evaluations and institutional economics brings a new dimension to INPRO’s impact evaluation work and opens up new areas for our work in policy analysis and technical assistance.”
“The International Projects team has undergone tremendous growth over the past few years and the addition of Clifford Zinnes underscores NORC’s commitment to high-quality, objective work supporting international development,” said Dan Gaylin, Executive Vice President of Research Programs at NORC. “With Zinnes’ deep knowledge of so many countries, we anticipate developing new partnerships, both in the countries where NORC is already doing business, as well as areas new to NORC.”
Zinnes specializes in the application of quantitative methods and institutional economics to improve aid effectiveness and economic reform in developing countries. He has a dozen years of experience designing and overseeing experimental and quasi-experimental, randomized evaluations for irrigation, agricultural support services, public sector transparency and governance initiatives, water and sanitation, property rights regulation, land purchase financing, voluntary resettlement activities, pollution abatement, children’s nutrition, and forest land restitution for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), USAID, World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Soros Open Society Forum, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. During his five years as the resident senior advisor to the ministers of environment, privatization, economic reform, and European integration of four governments in Romania, Zinnes designed and drafted both framework legislation as well as follow-up regulations.
Zinnes brings deep understanding and insight to each project, informed by the research and evaluations he has conducted in diverse countries including Afghanistan/Pakistan, Belize, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Cape Verde, The Peoples’ Republic of China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Egypt, The Gambia, Ghana, Indonesia, Mali, Mongolia, Morocco, Peru, The Philippines, Romania, Thailand, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Zambia.
A former Industrial Development Officer at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Zinnes spent a decade at Harvard University where he taught public policy and held the position of Deputy-Director of the International Environment Program at the Harvard Institute for International Development. Prior to arriving at the NORC, he had an affiliate faculty position at the University of Maryland and was a Senior Fellow at The IRIS Center at the University of Maryland, where he also served as Director of Research. He will continue to serve select clients while at NORC.
Zinnes has published extensively in leading peer-reviewed journals. Most recently, the Brookings Institution published Zinnes’ latest book, Tournament Approaches to Public Policy Reform in Developing Countries (2009) and the Center for Naval Analysis and U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute published his “Strategy Framework for the Assessment and Treatment of Fragile States” in Civil Power in Irregular Conflict, (Kramer, et al., ed., 2010).
Clifford Zinnes received his Ph.D. and his M.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. He earned his B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
“I am delighted to welcome Clifford Zinnes to NORC and the International Project team. Clifford’s expertise in impact evaluations and institutional economics brings a new dimension to INPRO’s impact evaluation work and opens up new areas for our work in policy analysis and technical assistance.”
About NORC at the University of Chicago
NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.
Contact: For more information, please contact Eric Young at NORC at young-eric@norc.org or (703) 217-6814 (cell).