Oscar Mitnik is the Chief of the Strategic Development Effectiveness Division at the Office of Strategic Planning and Development Effectiveness of the Inter-American Development Bank. He is an economist with extensive of experience in assessing the impact of programs and policies, as well as in impact evaluation practice and methods. At the IDB he has led teams implementing key reforms aimed at enhancing development effectiveness and I have spearheaded initiatives to leverage technology and big data to improve the measurement of project impacts. He is also the Co-Head of the Impact Evaluation Network (IEN) of the Latin American and the Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).

His research interests are focused on the determinants and effects of public social policies, both in developing and developed countries, and on the econometric methods for program evaluation.

At the IDB he has held positions as Lead Economist and Principal Economist, and prior to joining the IDB, he was a Senior Financial Economist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Washington, DC, an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department of the University of Miami, and held research-oriented positions in Argentina and Chile.

He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and M.A. from Georgetown University and a B.A. from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina).

He joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in January 2004 and became a Research Fellow in March 2009.