Center for Economic Research & Graduate Education - Economics Institute

PhD Alumni Profiles


Academics in North America, Western Europe, and Asia 

Jakub Steiner (PhD 2006)

altJakub Steiner is currently Assistant Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. After completing his PhD at CERGE-EI in 2006, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Edinburgh until 2009. His research interests, which lie within game theory and economic theory, are focused on studying behavior in strategic situations with a possibility of self-fulfilling prophecies, such as those arising during currency attacks, bank runs, revolutions, etc. Before his postgraduate studies, Jakub worked as a social worker for a Roma community and since then has been interested in the economics of discrimination.

He has two published articles in Games & Economic Behavior,  plus articles in the Journal of Economic Theory, Theoretical Economics, Economics Bulletin. An article on “Communications, Timing and Common Learning” (with Colin Stewart) is forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Theory, and his paper on “Who Matters in Coordination Problems?” (With Jozsef Sakovics) is under revise and resubmit at the American Economic Review.

 

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Galina Vereshchagina (PhD 2004)

Galina Vereshchagina is currently Assistant Professor of Economics at Arizona State University. Prior to 2007, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Iowa. After completing her M.Sc. in Mathematics in 1998 at National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Ukraine, she studied economics at to CERGE-EI, graduating with a PhD in 2004. Her dissertation entitled “Entrepreneurial Choice and Firm Dynamics” reveals Galina’s main research interests, which are Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics. Galina is the author of several working papers and her article “Risk Taking by Entrepreneurs” (with Hugo Hopenhayn) was published in the American Economic Review in 2009.

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Academics in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union

 

Inna Čábelková (PhD 2002)

altInna Čábelková is currently Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanity Studies at Charles University in Prague. She joined the faculty in 2002, not long after it was founded. Being one of the few economists in this innovating new multi-disciplinary faculty, she has taught a wide range of course covering statistics and econometrics for humanities students, cultures and organizations, along with specialized referred readings on Hayek, Friedman, Hazlitt, Grossbard-Shechtman and Knight. Before coming to CERGE-EI in 1997, Inna earned her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science from the National University in Kyiv, Ukraine.


Dmitri Kolyuzhnov (PhD 2008)

altDmitri Kolyuzhnov is an Assistant Professor at Novosibirsk State University in Novosibirsk, Russia. He received his Bachelor's degree in Econometrics in 1999 before enrolling at CERGE-EI that same year. He completed his dissertation titled "Learning and Macroeconomic Dynamics" in 2008. During his PhD studies, he participated in two specialized external research visits to the World Bank Institute (2005) and to the University of Cambridge (2006). His research interests are macroeconomic theory and policy, dynamic macroeconomics, monetary economics, adaptive learning, econometrics, social security and general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents. Recent publications (primarily in Russian) include "Asset Pricing under Adaptive Learning in a Three-Sector Production Economy" (with Vera Tolstova) and "Progressive Tax Reform under the Heterogeneous Agents Framework" (with Andrey Orlov), both in Vestnik NGU.

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International Organizations

 

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Jacek Cukrowski (PhD 1995)

Jacek Cukrowski is an Economic Development and Trade Advisor at the Bratislava Regional Centre of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which covers the Central and Eastern Europe and CIS/Central Asian regions. Previously he has served as Regional Advisor on Millennium Development Goals for the UNDP, and before that, as an expert for the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) in Poland. At CASE, he participated in the evaluation of World Bank assistance to transition economies carried out by the Operation Evaluation Department of the World Bank.

As CERGE-EI‘s first graduate in 1995, he has conducted extensive research on problems of economic transition and international trade. He is an author or co-author of articles on problems of economic transition, post-communist economies and International economics. His recent work (with Manfred M. Fischer) on the efficient organization of information processing was published in Managerial and Decision Economics.
 

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Emil Stavrev (PhD 1999)

Emil Stavrev joined the IMF in 2001 and is currently a Senior Economist there. Prior to his move to Washington, D.C., he was a Senior Economist at the Economic Modeling Division of the Czech National Bank from 1997 to 2001. He was awarded his PhD degree in 1999; his doctoral dissertation was titled “Essays on Transition”, covering topics related to economies in transition, with the first part dealing with continuous time macro-economic modeling and the second part estimating demand systems for households based on household budget surveys. His recent work is focused on inflation, monetary policy, and international macroeconomics.

His most recent external publication is "Measures of underlying inflation in the euro area: assessment and role for informing monetary policy" in Empirical Economics (2010). In addition, he has published numerous IMF Working Papers and Reports over the past decade, including "Euro Area Monetary Policy in Uncharted Waters" in 2009 with fellow CERGE-EI alumni Martin Čihák. Some of his articles with IMF colleagues have appeared in condensed versions on VoxEU.org, a popular economic/public policy analysis website which is frequented by a number of actors in the policy-making sector.

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Government / Public Sector

 

Lubomira Anastasova-Chirmiciu (PhD 2010)

altLubomira Anastasova-Chirmiciu had earned three MA degrees before coming to CERGE-EI from the University of Essex, Central European University in Budapest, and St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. Nearly two years before formally defending her thesis (which was titled "Essays on Social Welfare Systems, Education and Agglomeration across the EU"), she accepted a position as Skills Employment Board Economist at the Greater London Authority (GLA) and then morphed into a similar position, Labour Market Policy Manager, at the London Development Agency, a quasi-government organization focused on public policy strategy within the GLA for the City of London under the auspices of the Mayor of London.

 

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Martina Lubyová (PhD 2002)

Martina Lubyová is currently Member of the Scientific Council and Deputy Team Leader, VEGA Research Project at the Institute of Forecasting at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. After completing her PhD at CERGE-EI in 2002, she worked at the International Labor Organization (ILO) as an Employment Development Specialist in the ILO's Sub-regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia in Moscow, Russia. In 2008 she was appointed Director of that office. Wishing to return to more academic research, in summer 2010 she took a position in her native Slovakia at the Institute of Forecasting at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on labor markets in CEE/CIS countries along with issues of regional migration, human capital development, poverty reduction and informal economies.

In her short time back in the research sector, she has published "Foreign migration and its regional dimensions in Slovakia following EU accession", co-authored with Edita Nemcová in Prognostické práce (2010). In 2009 she authored an ILO working paper titled "Labour market institutions and policies in the CIS: Post-Transition Outcomes". Before that she contributed to the OECD's chapter on the Slovak Republic in "An International Migration Outlook: Annual Report 2006" and a similar report in 2004.

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Business / Corporate

 

Martin Kálovec (PhD 2002)

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Martin Kálovec is currently Partner and Managing Director at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Prague, which he joined in 2001. He graduated with a PhD from CERGE-EI in 2002 after defending his dissertation entitled "Essays on Contracts". Rounding out his education was a stay at Stanford University as a visiting student and a first experience in management consulting with Arthur D. Little. Prior to starting his PhD studies, Martin earned an M.Sc. degree in International Trade from the Prague University of Economics.

 

Dmitry Shemetilo (PhD 1996)

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Dmitry Shemetilo is a consultant at Blackfish Capital Management in London, which operates in the investment banking industry. His interest in banking and finance began during his studies at CERGE-EI, and continued through his dissertation entitled “Essays on the Imperfections of Financial Intermediation during the Transition to a Market Economy”. After completing his PhD at CERGE-EI in 1996, he began his professional career in the banking sector at CommerzBank, where he worked as a trader and Emerging Market strategist. His experience in this field led him to the positions as an emerging market bond broker at Eiger Securities and as Director at Argo Capital Management.