Matthew Glasser

Matthew Glasser

Senior Advisor

Biography

Matthew D. Glasser is a lawyer by training, and started his professional career as a municipal bond counsel and City Attorney in the USA, in Colorado.

He is now the Director for Municipal Law and Finance at the Centre for Urban Law and Finance in Africa (CULFA); serves as a member of the International Advisory Committee at the Centre for Land Governance in the Indian Institute of Human Settlements; and is an Extraordinary Research Fellow of the South African Chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability, at the North-West University Faculty of Law. 

He was formerly Lead Urban Specialist in the World Bank where he managed urban programmes in Eastern and Southern Africa, and in India.  Glasser has worked with the National Treasury of South Africa over 20 years, advising on policy issues related to local government finances, especially borrowing and financial emergencies.

Glasser has also worked with local and national governments in central and eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, to help them improve local and intergovernmental finance systems, and to improve their capacity to attract private sector investment. 

His most recent publications are:

  • “South African municipalities in financial distress: What can be done?” Law, Democracy & Development, Journal of UWC Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape, vol. 24, pp 413-441, December 2020
  • “Municipal Bonds in Three Countries: India, South Africa and the United States,” Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy, Georgia State University College of Law, Festschrift II Issue, July 2020
  • Financing the New Urban Agenda,” a chapter in Law and the New Urban Agenda, ed. by Davidson and Tewari, Routledge, May 2020.