Ruslan Yemtsov is a Lead Economist at the World Bank's Social and Economic Development Group, Middle East and North 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. More recently, 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 earnings mobility and poverty dynamics in Egypt and on political eocnomy of subsidies refrom in the Middle East. The work on impact of areas 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.