He became World Bank Chief Economist in October 2016. He resigned on 24 January 2018, following a controversy in which he stated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on January 12, that during the tenure of Chile's socialist President Michelle Bachelet from 2014 onwards, Chile's ranking for ease of doing business had been downgraded by the World Bank as a result of changes of methodology which he claimed may have been politically motivated, a claim denied by the former World Bank economist responsible for compiling Chile's ranking, Chilean economist Augusto Lopez-Claros.
