 Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests and speakers, my name is Torben Becker. I'm the director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics here at the Stockholm School of Economics. It's my great pleasure to welcome all of you here today to the wider annual lecture. I would like to extend a special thanks to Fin Tarpe and his colleagues as well as Sida who made a connection to allow us here at the Stockholm School of Economics to organize this annual lecture. I would also like to extend a special thanks to Professor Martin Ravallian for coming back here to Stockholm. He's been here in the past and we have always appreciated his good lectures and interesting discussions. I will not introduce him more than this because I know that Fin will later on give you a full introduction of Professor Ravallian. To some extent, this is about helping other people. A lot of it is, of course, people helping themselves, but it's also the more fortunate people helping other people get out of poverty. And I think this is an extremely important theme on a much wider scale than just linked to poverty today in the world. Quite fittingly, this Friday we open an exhibition outside here in the atrium about the Great Famine. This was the Great Famine not in Africa or some of the countries that we used to talk about. This was the Great Famine in Samara, Russia in the 1920s. This was also a time when the Swedish Red Cross put together one of our first humanitarian relief efforts. That was really the starting point for that kind of intervention and helping people in great need not so far away from us. But still, again, it really tells me and shows me and it's an inspiration when it comes to thinking about how we can actually help people in greater need than ourselves at times of troubles. And I think I would welcome all of you to actually take a look at some of the pictures out there. It is a very strong reminder of what some people have to suffer even in the world today. And I think it's also an inspiration in terms of helping others in the world today. And I think this is something that serves us as some inspiration also when I'm involved in developing economics and helping others. So I invite all of you to that. But now back to today's discussion. I will hand over soon to Lena from SIDA. But before I do this, since I'm sort of your local host here at the school, I would like us all to just extend a warm hand of welcome to all the guests from near and far. And thank you again to Finn, to Martin, to everyone involved in organizing. So warm welcome to the school. Thank you. Thank you, Torben, for that. And on behalf of SIDA and also of Sweden, I would also like to warmly welcome all of you to this lecture. And especially of course, warm welcome to Professor Martin Ravallion. And Sweden and SIDA, we have supported UNU-Wider even since it started. And that is now 30 years. And we think it's important that in this era of global challenges, and as you may know, now we have important goals for sustainability, there is increasing need to understand and analyze the mechanisms for policy option and for economic understanding more than ever before. And we, SIDA, we support wider as a node for research and especially in the era of development economics and engaged in important, but also challenging task of linking research to policy making and also contributing to capacity development in low income countries. But we also support wider as a source of knowledge for our own work at SIDA. And so many of wider research areas are of direct relevance for us as an aid agency. And of course, this relevance is, today's lecture is a very clear example of this relevance. And as Sorbjörn correctly pointed out, the overriding objective for Swedish development assistance is to promote better living conditions for people living in poverty and oppression. And the task is still very big. And the task of SIDA to fulfill with the objective of poverty alleviation is of course to fill this with concrete action. And within this, we need to understand the multidimensionality of poverty and understanding what interventions are possible and efficient to counter poverty. So this understanding and this analysis is vital for us to do a good job. And in recent years, we have been increasingly aware that providing direct cash to poor people has a potential to fill financial gaps. And it has the potential to be a tool for empowerment and also to promote market development. But we are also aware that it can be problematic and that successful implementation depends very much on details, context, circumstances. So we need to develop our understanding and skills in this area to understand where it works and what it takes to make it work for poor people. So I'm looking forward to this, not only to have a better understanding, but also I hope that Professor Martin Revellian will really challenge us in this area so that we can do a better job to support poverty alleviation. So a warm welcome to all of you and thank you. And over to Fin. Thank you. Thank you Torbjörn for being both a great host and for a warm welcome, it's appreciated. And thank you Lena and SIDA for support. Without that support, our work would not be possible. Now, dear colleagues, friends, it is really a great honor and a pleasure for me on behalf of the organizers to introduce to you Professor Martin Revellian. He's the 2016 wider annual lecturer and I guess I can't sort of resist of making the point that this is the 20th wider annual lecture. Following up on last year's lecture, Amartya Sen, you will actually find his lecture outside, as well as on the wider websites together with the previous 19 lectures. Martin is inaugural Edmonti Revelliani, Professor of Economics at Georgetown University. And previously, he was the director of the research department of the World Bank where he worked for 24 years from 1988. Now, Martin has researched extensively on poverty in developing countries and policies for fighting poverty. And in 1990, he proposed what has become known as the $1 a day poverty line. And since then, and his colleagues both within the bank and elsewhere have monitored progress against global poverty reduction by this and other measures. There are very few people in the world who has advised so many governments in all regions of the world and its national agencies as Martin. He's also the author of five books and 200 papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes. Now, his new book, Just Out, The Economics of Poverty has just been published by Oxford University Press. And as one sort of looks at the wise words that have been added here, I for one take note of the fact that the chair of the wider board, Professor Ravi Kanpur, says the following. This book is a tour de force covering history of thought, analytical tools and policy issues. It provides an indispensable introduction to the economics of poverty. Martin Ravallian is a global leader in the field of poverty analysis. His book will prove to be of lasting value not only to students, but also to seasoned researchers and policy analysts. I strongly recommend you to have a look, take a flyer if you find it outside. We should have sufficient numbers and then get on reading it. It's a wealth of information and analysis. Martin is also a senior fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. He's a research associate of the NBER. He's a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development and he's president of Society for the Study of Economic Inequality. In 2011, he received the John Kenneth Galbraith Award from the American Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and in 2016, received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA Foundation in Madrid. Much more could be said, but I for one would like to sort of also add that Martin is a prolific teacher. I mean, he is taught economics, for example, the LSE, the ANU, Princeton and Paris School of Economics. So Martin's importance for the profession goes much beyond just the research. It goes on to this very important work of trying to work on building capacity of economic analysis across the world. Now during his lecture, Martin will discuss the economic and political issues of the use of direct interventions such as cash transfers and in-kind contributions against poverty. There's much hope for these interventions, but also much frustration. That performance in reality has often fallen short of policymakers' expectations. The lecture will review the evidence on both the successes and failures based on the many impact evaluations that have been done over the last 15 years. I think the topic could not be more pertinent. Urs has also been referred to, both by Torbjörn and Lene. Martin, we all very much look forward to your lecture. The floor is yours.