Our bios

Founding Members

Costas Azariadis is affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis and with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He has taught at Brown, Pennsylvania, Princeton, UCLA and elsewhere, and has conducted research on contract theory, poverty traps and multiple equilibria.

Harris Dellas holds the chair of Macroeconomics and is director of the Institute of Political Economy at the University of Bern (Switzerland).  He is also a Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London, Co-editor of Open Economies Review and Αssociate Εditor of the Journal of Money Credit and Banking. He has served on the faculty of Vanderbilt University (USA), the University of Maryland (USA), the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), and the University of Bonn (Germany). He has been a consultant to several Central Banks (ECB, Banque de France, SNB, USFRB, Hong Kong, etc) and international organizations.  His main research interests are in monetary and international economics.

Nicholas Economides is Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and Founder and Executive Director of the NET Institute.  His research focuses on the economics of network industries, antitrust, public policy,  telecommunications, and the Internet. He has previously taught at Columbia University and Stanford University. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the NET Institute, http://www.NETinst.org, a world-wide focal point for research on the economics of network and high technology industries. His web site on the Economics of Networks at http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/ has been ranked as one of the top four economics sites worldwide by The Economist magazine. He has advised the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the governments of Canada, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, and Portugal, the Attorneys General of New York and Texas, Federal Reserve Banks, the Bank of Greece, Financial Exchanges, and major telecommunications and high technology companies.

John Geanakoplos is Professor of Economics at Yale University.

Michael Haliassos holds the Chair of Macroeconomics and Finance at Goethe University Frankfurt and is Director of  the CEPR research network on Household Finance. He is also Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR in London), and International Research Fellow of NETSPAR (The Netherlands). He is an advisor to the European Central Bank on the creation and analysis of the Eurozone Survey on Household Finances and Consumption (HFCS) and an advisor to the European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) on issues of investor protection. He has taught at the Universities of Maryland, Cyprus, and Frankfurt and has repeatedly visited the European University Institute as Part Time Professor. His main research interests lie in Household Finance. He has served on the Panel of Economic Policy (2010-11) and was member of the Greek National Council on Research and Technology (ESET) in the period 2010-13.

Yannis Ioannides has been at Tufts University since 1995 as the Max and Herta Neubauer Professor in Economics. Previously he taught at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the Athens School of Economics and Business, Athens, Boston University and Brown University. His current research interests are in urban macro economics, social interactions and networks, and housing markets. He served as a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Social Interactions and Economic Inequality,  1998–2006 and has published scholarly articles in many leading journals including: American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic Theory, International Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economic Journal, and  Journal of Urban Economics.

Costas Meghir is Professor of Economics at Yale University and University College London.

Sir Christopher Pissarides is the Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He is also a Professor of European Studies at the University of Cyprus and Chairman of the Council of National Economy of the Republic of Cyprus, and the Helmut & Anna Pao Sohmen Professor-at-Large of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He specialises in the economics of labour markets, macroeconomic policy, economic growth and structural change. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics, jointly with Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University and Peter Diamond of MIT, for his work in the economics of markets with frictions. Prior to that, in 2005, he was the first economist outside the United States to win (jointly with Dale Mortensen) the IZA Prize in Labor Economics. He has written extensively in professional journals, magazines and the press and his book Equilibrium Unemployment Theory is an influential reference in the economics of unemployment that has been translated in many languages. He is frequently quoted in the press on issues concerning the Eurozone and the future of European integration. He is an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society, the British Academy, the Academy of Athens, the Academia Europaea and several other learned societies, and he is a Lifetime Honorary Member of the American Economic Association. In 2011 he served as the President of the European Economic Association. In 2011 he received the Grand Cross of the Republic of Cyprus, the highest honour of the Republic. He was knighted in 2013.

Thanasis Stengos is Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and he is Deputy Director of the Rimini Center for Economic Analysis in Rimini, Italy.  He has held visiting positions at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, the University of Cyprus, the University of Bologna at Rimini  and the European University Institute in Florence as a Jean Monnet Fellow.  He currently serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Econometrics and Empirical Economics, and he is co-editor of the review of Economic Analysis.

Dimitri Vayanos is Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics, where he also directs the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality. Prior to coming to the LSE in 2004, he was faculty member at Stanford and MIT. He is Director of the Financial Economics programme at the Center for Economic Policy Research in London, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States, an Associate Editor of the Review of Economic Studies and the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and a consultant to the European Central Bank. His main research interests are in financial economics and microeconomics.

Nikos Vettas is Professor of Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business and Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. He has taught at Duke University in the US and INSEAD, France. He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association, International Journal of Industrial Organization and Journal of Industrial Economics, and is a member of the Economic Advisory Group for Competition Policy at the Chief Economist Team, DG-Competition ofthe European Commission.

Other Contributors

Michael G. Arghyrou is Senior Lecturer in Economics at Cardiff Business School, where he directs the MSc programmes in Economics.  He has recently been a visiting researcher at the DG-ECFIN of the European Commission. His main research areas are Macroeconomics, International Finance, the Economics of the EMU and the Greek economy.  In recent months he has been doing extensive research on the euro area sovereign debt crisis, jointly with John Tsoukalas and Alexandros Kontonikas. This research has received significant attention from academics, policy-makers and international media.

Nikolaos Artavanis is a senior Ph.D. Candidate in Finance at Virginia Tech. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Finance from the University of Piraeus and continued his studies in Economics and Mathematics at Virginia Tech. His areas of specialization are asset pricing, with emphasis on downside risk and financial economics. He has earned various honors, scholarships and research/teaching awards. He is a member of the Assembly of Representatives of the Economic Chamber of Greece since 2004.

Odysseas Cartalos has earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering and a “Habilitation” from the Institut National Polytechnique of Grenoble, France. He has worked for about 10 years as research manager in the international oil and gas industry, and then moved to consulting, where he acquired senior practical experience in ICT, Public Administration and HR Management. In the last 7 years, the primary focus of his work is on Innovation and Research policy design, evaluation and impact assessment. He has led many assignments for the European Parliament, the European Commission (DG Research and Innovation, DG Regional and Urban Policies, DG Enterprise and Industry, DG HR, Europaid) and other institutions and government bodies dealing with policy making. He was particularly involved in major European initiatives, including the Seventh Framework Programme for RTD (FP7), the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) and Horizon 2020, as well as Structural Funds in Greece and the new EU Member States. He has authored 35 scientific publications, 2 patents and a large number of consulting studies and reports.

Manthos Delis is Professor (Chair) of Financial Economics and Banking at Surrey Business School, in the University of Surrey. Prior to joining Surrey, he taught at Cass School of Business of City University, and at the Universities of Ioannina and of Central Greece. He received his PhD in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business.  His PhD thesis focused on the performance, efficiency and market power of the banking sector, and his more recent work focuses of bank risk, financial stability and regulation. His articles have been published in international academic journals such as the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, the Review of Finance, and the Journal of Development Economics. In December 2009 he was included in the list of IDEAS with the top 100 young economists in the world.

Jacques Delpla is a member of the Conseil d’Analyse Economique in Paris. He has taught in HEC and Institut de Sciences Politiques.

Manolis Galenianos is Professor of Economics at Royal Holloway in the University of London and member of the scientific board of “Generation 700 Euros.”

Nikos Georgantzis is Professor of Economic Theory and Experimental Economics at the Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, Spain), where he has founded the Laboratorio de Economia Experimental (LEE), hosting a 20-member research team. He holds the Chair for Research Excellence sponsored by the Junta de Andalucía at the University of Granada, where he founded the Experimental Economics Lab «Αιγαίο» and is currently the Director of the Postgraduate Programme of the Economics Department. His research covers a broad range of areas such as Industrial Organization, Environmental Economics, Labor Economics, Experimental Economics, and Economics and Psychology.

Gikas A. Hardouvelis is Professor of Finance at the University of Piraeus, and holds the position of Chief Economist at Eurobank. He is also Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, and member of the Academic Council of the Hellenic Banks Association. He has taught at Columbia University and Rutgers University, and has worked as Research Adviser and Economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He served as the Director of the Economic Office of the Greek Prime Minister of the Coalition Government (11/2011-5/2012), a position he also held during the 2000-2004 Administration. He was Chief Economist & Director of Strategic Planning at the National Bank of Greece from 1996 to 2000 and served as the Adviser to the Bank of Greece (1994-1995). He played a critical role in the establishment of the Athens Derivatives Exchange, when he served as a member of its Board of Directors from 1997 to 2000.

Dimitris Hatzinikolaou is Associate professor of Economics at the University of Ioannina. After receiving his PhD in Economics from the University of Connecticut, he served as Lecturer B at Flinders University of South Australia, where he earned tenure. His main research interests are in macroeconomics and applied econometrics. He has published a number of articles in international refereed journals, including Journal of Development Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Economic Modelling, Empirical Economics, and Labour.

Chrysafis H. Iordanoglou is Assistant Professor of Economics at Panteion University of Athens. He has previously taught at the University of Crete. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Queen Mary and Westfield College, London. His current research interests revolve around the post-war economic history of Greece.

Pantelis Kammas is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Ioannina. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business. His former positions include Visiting Lecturer in Economics at the Universities of Peloponnese and Cyprus. His current research interests include fiscal policy in open economies and political economics. He has published articles in international academic journals, including European Journal of Political Economy, Public Choice and Cesifo Economic Studies.

Loukas Karabarbounis is Assistant Professor of Economics and Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business. He holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. While at Harvard he earned numerous awards and distinctions for his dissertation and his teaching. His research interests include international finance, business cycles, fiscal policy, political economy and labor and gender economics.

Yannis Katsoulacos isVice-rector, Athens University of Economics and Business since 2007 and Professor of Economics since 1994. Post-graduate Studies Director in Applied Economics and Finance (2000 – ). PhD in Economics from LSE in 1984. Was Research Fellow of the Centre of Economic Policy Research (CEPR, 1992 – 2001), Member of the Greek National Committee of Economic Advisors (2002 – 2004) and Commissioner of the Hellenic Competition Commission (1995 – 2005). Has been principal researcher or consultant for the CEU and the World Bank in a large number of projects dealing with various aspects of micro-economic policy since 1991. In the last few years he has served as consultant in competition cases to a large number of the major Greek corporations. Since 2006 he organizes an Annual International Summer School and Conference in Competition and Regulation in Greece (www.cresse.info).

Alexandros Kontonikas is Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow Business School and Deputy Director of the Centre for Economic and Financial Studies.  Prior to joining the University of Glasgow in 2005, he was a lecturer at Brunel University. He has served as Visiting Research Fellow at the DG-ECFIN of the European Commission. His main research interests lie in the area of financial economics with a special focus on the interaction between monetary policy and equity pricing, and the investigation of the factors that determine sovereign bond yield spreads in the Eurozone.

Antonis Kotidis is Ph.D. Candidate at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he received the Karantonis Award as Best Graduate. He was awarded a Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) scholarship to study for an M.Sc. in Economics at the University of Manchester, where he graduated with distinction. He has also been a visiting Ph.D. student at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His research focuses mainly on systemic risk, financial networks and macro-prudential regulation. He is also interested in monetary policy and international finance issues.

Christos Kotsogiannis is Professor of Economics at the University of Exeter Business School, where he is also currently the Head of the Economics Department. He is also a Research Fellow at CESifo, has recently held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, and has been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund and a consultant for the World Bank. His research is primarily in the field of public economics.

Andreas Koutras is a professional in financial derivatives, structuring and debt. He has worked at Lehman Brothers, BMO, RBC and Calyon Credit Agricole. In recent years he has become a specialist on the periphery debt crisis and the ECB operations. He studied Astrophysics, Advanced Applied Mathematics and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity at Cambridge and London University where he got his PhD. He has published in refereed journals in the fields of Mathematics and Astrophysics, and more recently in financial industry magazines like RISK and FOW. Currently, he works at In Touch Capital Markets, a financial information, training and intelligence company based in London, where he is a cofounder.

Alexander S. Kritikos is Research Director at the German Institute for Economic Research since 2011, Professor for Industrial and Institutional Economics at the University of Potsdam, Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn and of the Institute for Employment Research, Nürnberg. He is member of the Economic Policy Committee and of the Social Sciences Committee of the German Economic Association. Since 2010 he is Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Psychology and of Small Business Economics. In 2013 he became member of the Council for Innovation at the Greek Ministry for Development. His research interests are Entrepreneurship Research, Experimental and Behavioral Economics, and Institutional Economics.

Miltiadis Makris is an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, UK. After finishing his MSc studies at the Athens University of Economics and Business, he was awarded a PhD in Economics by the University of Essex, UK. He has taught at the UK Universities of Bristol, Exeter and Leicester. He has published in leading international academic journals. His main research interests are in microeconomics, public economics, international economics and political economics. He has commented in UK media and has taken part in panel discussions on the Greek economy.

Spyros Pagratis is Lecturer of Financial Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Department of Economics. Prior to coming to the AUEB in 2009, he was a Member of Staff at the Bank of England, where he worked in Financial Stability, Systemic Risk Assessment, with an emphasis on the UK Banking System. He completed his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Hyun Song Shin, with sponsorship from the Bank of England. His research interests include international finance, credit cycles and policies to promote financial stability.

Elias Papaioannou is Assistant Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. During 2010-2012 he is Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University’s Department of Economics. He holds a PhD in economics from the London Business School. Prior to joining Dartmouth, he worked at the Financial Research Division of the European Central Bank. His research covers the areas of international finance, political economy, growth and development. It has been published in many leading peer-refereed journals and has been recognized with the 2005 Young Economist Award by the European Economic Association and the 2008 Austin Robinson memorial prize by the Royal Economic Association. Elias consultants regularly for the EU Commission, the European Central Bank, for Ana-Lysis, and institutional investors

Emmanuel Petrakis is Professor of Industrial Organization and Policy in the Department of Economics, University of Crete, where he has founded the Business Economics and New Technologies Lab (BENETeC). He is Vice-rector of Economic Planning and Development and Head of the Special Research Account of the University of Crete from 2007.  He was Visiting Professor in Universities of The Netherlands, Cyprus and Spain (where he taught for six years in U. Carlos III de Madrid). His research covers a wide range of fields in Economics, such as Industrial Organization, Environmental Economics, International Trade, Labor Economics, and Economics of Innovation and New Technologies.

Vasilis Sarafidis is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University. He received his PhD at the University of Cambridge and previously held positions at the University of Sydney and, as a Visiting Scholar, at the University of Amsterdam. Currently he holds the positions of Special Advisor at Europe Economics and Consultant for Frontier Economics. His main areas of research lie in the analysis of panel data, factor models, cross-sectional and spatial dependence, and clustering analysis, with applications to crime, the analysis of water demand and empirical I.O.

Georges Siotis is Associate Professor of Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and CEPR Research Fellow. He has taught at Université Libre de Bruxelles and at the Institute of European Studies, Macau, China.  From October 2011 to June 2015, he was Senior Economic Advisor and Technical Assistance Coordinator for the EU Commission Task Force for Greece (TFGR).  From  2008 to 2011, he was a member of the Chief Economist Team of the EU Commission’s Directorate General for Competition.

Vasiliki Skreta Professor of Economics at University College London. She has taught at the Stern Business School of New York University, at the University of Minnesota and at the University of California in Los Angeles, and has served as an adjunct consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Her work has been acknowledged by an Andrew Mellon Fellowship and has been funded by NSF and by other grants.  She is a microeconomic theorist working primarily on mechanism design.

Margarita Tsoutsoura is Assistant Professor of Finance and PCL Faculty Scholar at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.  She earned her PhD in finance from the Columbia University, Graduate School of Business with distinction, her MSc in financial engineering from the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, and her BSc  in economics from the University of Piraeus. She studies empirical corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance, family firms, and household finance. She has earned various honors and scholarships, among them the Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Fulbright Fellowship and the WFA Trefftzs Award.