Simeon Dyankov

At the World Bank, Dyankov was director of development economics. He was involved in the publication of Women Business and the Law, World Development Reports and Doing Business reports. The Doing Business reports were discontinued after an inquiry documented how Dyankov, along with then World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva, pressured staff to make data for China and Saudi Arabia look better. The Board of the IMF, after a separate review, found no evidence for these claims. An improved Doing Business analysis is proposed in Fraser Institute's 2022 Economic Freedom of the World report.

The reports were discontinued by the World Bank, following the release of an independent audit of the data irregularities. The audit documented how Dyankov, along with World Bank head Kristalina Georgieva, pressured staff to manipulate the results of Doing Business Reports, in particular making data for China and Saudi Arabia look better. The Board of the IMF, after a separate review, found no evidence for these claims. An improved Doing Business analysis is proposed in Fraser Institute's 2022 Economic Freedom of the World report. This analysis outlines the start of a new report, to be housed at a top research institution.

Since April 2020, Dyankov has been policy director at the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics. He has also been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Dr Dyankov has written widely on the economic impact of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. This invasion has resulted in significant loss of human capital, destruction of agricultural trading infrastructure, huge damages to productive capacity, and a reduction in private consumption of more than a third relative to pre-war levels.

Dr. Dyankov was one of the creators of the Human Capital Index, first published in the World Development Report 2019, which he co-directed. The academic study describing the index construction was published in the leading science journal "Nature".

Dyankov is the creator of the annual Doing Business report, the top-selling publication of the World Bank Group. The report came out of joint research work with Professor Andrei Shleifer at Harvard University, and was inspired by Dyankov's experience in overly-regulated socialist economies. In a 2016 article for the Journal of Economic Perspectives Dyankov explains how Doing Business started.

In October 2013, it was announced that the board of directors of private Moscow-based university New Economic School (NES) also known as the Russian Economic School had approved Dyankov as its rector. During the tenure of Dyankov as Rector, the New Economic School relocated to a new campus in the Skolkovo Innovation Center.

In February 2013, Dyankov resigned in protest of the decision by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to advance subsidies to farmers. On February 20, 2013, PM Borisov announced the resignation of the government due to increasing levels of violence in the protests due to high electricity prices. Dyankov continued to serve as finance minister until a caretaker government was formed a month later.

On July 27, 2009, Dyankov became Minister of Finance of Bulgaria. He reduced budget spending and managed to cut the budget deficit for 2009 to 4.4%. In 2010 it met the Maastricht criteria – 3%, falling to 2% in 2011 and 0.45% in 2012. On December 1, 2009, Standard&Poors upgraded Bulgaria's investment outlook from "negative" to "stable," the only country in the European Union to receive an upgrade that year.

Dyankov was a proponent of the flat tax, introduced in Bulgaria in 2009 and expanded to dividend tax in 2010-2011 during his term in office. Bulgaria is the only country with a ten percent rate on personal, corporate and dividend taxes.

In 2008, Dyankov established the think-tank Ideas42, jointly with Antoinette Schoar (MIT Sloan), Eldar Shafir (Princeton) and Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard). Dyankov joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics in 2013 and re-joined it in 2020.

He was an associate editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics from 2004 to 2009. Dyankov was a chairman of the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. From 2013 to 2015, he was appointed rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. Since November 2015, Dyankov is a research fellow of the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics.

Dyankov has worked for the World Bank since 1995. In 1997, he participated in a World Bank enterprise restructuring project in Georgia. For his work in the transformation of the Georgian economy, Dr Dyankov was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Tbilisi in June 2021.

Simeon Dyankov (Bulgarian: Симеон Дянков, also Djankov; born July 13, 1970) is a Bulgarian economist. From 2009 to 2013, he was the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Bulgaria in the government of Boyko Borisov. Prior to his cabinet appointment, Dyankov was the chief economist of the finance and private sector vice-presidency of the World Bank.

Dyankov was born in Lovech, Bulgaria on July 13, 1970, Dyankov attended high school "Ekzarh Yosif I" in Lovech (1984–1989). In 1989, he passed the entrance exam to the Karl Marx Institute of Economics (now University of National and World Economy). He holds a 1997 doctorate from the University of Michigan, on the topic "Three Essays on the Economics of Transition". His main thesis advisor was Alan Deardorff.

After leaving the government of Boyko Borisov, Dyankov joined the Harvard Kennedy School as visiting faculty. His teaching is focused on the politics of development. During his time at Harvard, Dyankov edited a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Economics on the 25th anniversary from the start of transition in Eastern Europe. Jointly with Anders Aslund at the Atlantic Council, he co-authored a book on the transformation from communism. The book contains chapters by Leszek Balcerowicz on Poland, Václav Klaus on the Czech Republic, Lajos Bokros on Hungary, Ivan Mikloš on Slovakia, and Mart Laar on Estonia.