Sacha Wunsch-Vincent

Dr. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent is Senior Economist at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He joined WIPO in 2010 to help set up WIPO’s economics work under the Chief Economist. At WIPO, he is one of the main authors of the World Intellectual Property Report and Editor of the Global Innovation Index. His primary research foci and cur­rent area of work are concerned with the interaction of inno­vation, intellectual property, and economic development. As part of his work at WIPO he regularly conducts national innovation system assessments. He also regularly contribute to building domestic research and statistical capacity in developing countries. Most recently, he was charged with overseeing the WIPO project on “Leveraging Public Research for Innovation and Growth – An international Comparison of Knowledge Transfer Policies and Practices”.

Before joining WIPO, he was an Economist at the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology, and Industry for seven years. Before he was the Swiss National Science Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (University of California, Berkeley) and the Washington, DC–based Peterson Institute for International Economics. He has served as advi­sor to organizations such as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, and has testified before national govern­ments and parliaments, mostly on copyright and innovation issues. Sacha sits on several editorial boards and is reviewer to a number of publications such as the Science and Engineering indicators Report of the US National Science Foundation. He has published a series of peer-reviewed and other journal articles and is the author of several books, notably a recent one “Innovation in the Informal Economy of Developing Counties – Hidden Engine of Innovation?”, published by Cambridge University Press.

Sacha holds a Master of International Economics from MERIT, University of Maastricht, and a PhD in Economics from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He teaches International Economics at Sciences Po Paris, and the World Trade Institute in Bern.