Ruslan Yemtsov is a Lead Economist at the World Bank's Social Policy Practice, West Africa Region. He received his master and doctorat degree in Political Economy from Moscow State University in 1987 and 1991. His doctoral dissertation was concerned with the labor costs in socialist economy. He was involved in a number of research projects on labor market in transition over the period of 1992-1996. He was a co-author of a major rejonal report on Growth, Inequality and Poverty and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (2005), and has worked on poverty and inequality in Russia, Armenia, Serbia, Georgia and Turkey; papers from this work appeared in volumes published by UNWIDER, Economics of Transtion, World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Policy Research Papers, Economic Development Institute monographs and the EBRD Transition Review. He is currently working on informal sector employment in West Africa, on the political eocnomy of subsidies refrom and on evaluaiton of productive inclusion program in Cote d'Ivoire. The work on impact of arreas on the distribution of earnings is being undertaken jointly with Hartmut Lehmann (IZA) and Jonathan Wadsworth.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in December 1999.