PhD Alumni Profiles
- Academics in North America, Western Europe, Asia & Pacific
- Academics in Central Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States
- International Organizations
- Government / Public Sector
- Business / Corporate
Academics in North America, Western Europe, Asia & Pacific
Jan Bena (Czech Republic, PhD 2006)
Jan Bena is currently Assistant Professor of Finance at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Canada. He defended his thesis, titled "Essays on Corporate Finance" in 2006. Three years later, in June 2009, he received a second PhD, this one in Finance, from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He considers his primary research interests to be: Interaction between financial and real economic systems, finance and innovation, finance and product market competition and access to external finance and financial constraints.
His most recent publication is a co-authored paper with Štěpán Jurajda titled "Financial Development and Growth in the EU Single Market," in Economica, July 2011. Before that, he and co-author Jan Hanousek published "Rent Extraction by Large Shareholders: Evidence Using Dividend Policy in the Czech Republic," in the Czech Journal of Economics and Finance, 58, 2008. He has a number of current working papers with Evangelia Vourvachaki, Peter Ondko (both from CERGE-EI) and with Lorenzo Garlappi, Kai Li and Hernan Ortiz-Molina.
Pavlo Blavatskyy (Belarus, PhD 2005)
Pavlo Blavatskyy is currently Full Professor of Experimental Economics at Institute of Public Finance at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Before joining CERGE-EI in 2000, he completed an MPhil degree in Economics at the University of Cambridge. Six months before defending his dissertation, titled "Essays on Cumulative Prospect Theory, Individuals' Preference for the Most Probable Winner, and the Design of Olympic Prizes", Pavlo accepted an Assistant Professorship & Post-Doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. In 2009 he moved to Innsbruck to assume his current position.
A few of his most recent publications include "Probabilistic Choice and Stochastic Dominance" in Economic Theory, "Probabilistic Risk Aversion with an Arbitrary Outcome Set" in Economics Letters, and "Contest Success Function with the Possibility of a Draw: Axiomatization" in the Journal of Mathematical Economics. He is also Coordinating Editor with Theory and Decision and an Advisory Editor for the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. Handelsblatt.com has selected him as 11th in their ranking of economists under the age of 40 in the German-speaking region (Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland).
Zvezda Dermendzhieva (Bulgaria, PhD 2010)
Zvezda Dermendzhieva is a Research Fellow at the Osteuropa-Institut in Regensburg, Germany. Before beginning her PhD studies at CERGE-EI in 2002, Zvezda earned a Baccalaureate degree in Business Administration from the American University in Bulgaria. She defended her dissertation thesis, titled "Essays on International Migration" in 2010 and accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, Japan, before taking up her current position in Germany in autumn 2011. Her primary research interests include labor economics, migration and integration.
Bersant Hobdari (Albania, PhD 2006)
Bersant Hobdari is currently Associate Professor at Department of International Economics and Management, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He entered CERGE-EI in 1996, after completing his MSc degree in Applied Economics at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria. In 2000, he entered the PhD program at the Copenhagen Business School, defending a PhD thesis in Business and Economics there in 2003 titled "Does Owner(s) Identity Matter: An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of Corporate Governance Structures on Capital Allocation, Investment and Financial Constraints". Between 2004-2006, he was an Instructor at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He returned to CERGE-EI to defend another dissertation thesis in 2006 titled "Three Essays on the Effect of Alternative Ownership Structures on Investment and Financial Constraints: An Empirical Investigation".
Some of his recent publications include "Corporate Governance and Liquidity Constraints: A Dynamic Analysis" (with Derek Charles Jones and Niels Mygind) in Comparative Economic Studies and "Export market participation with sunk costs and firm heterogeneity" (with Evis Sinani) in Applied Economics.
Alexander Klein (Slovakia, PhD 2006)
Alexander Klein is a Lecturer at the University of Kent's School of Economics in Canterbury, UK. He joined CERGE-EI's 1999 entry cohort and defended his thesis in 2006, titled "Internal Migration in Bohemia at the Turn of the 20th Century". After completing his dissertation, he began the first of two post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Warwick in the UK. In 2010, he accepted his current position at the University of Kent.
His recent publications include "When and why did eastern European economies begin to fail? Lessons from a Czechoslovak/UK productivity comparison, 1921–1991" in Explorations in Economic History and "Did Children's Education Matter? Family Migration as a Mechanism of Human Capital Investment. Evidence from Nineteenth Century Bohemia" in The Economic History Review.
Jan Novotný (Czech Republic, PhD 2012)
Jan Novotný is a Marie Curie Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Cass Business School in London, UK, after completing a shorter fellowship at Manchester Business School. Before joining CERGE-EI in 2007, he completed a MSc in Experimental Nuclear Physics at the Czech Technical University (ČVUT). He continued his doctoral-level research path in Nuclear Physics while also doing his initial coursework at CERGE-EI in economics; he also worked as a Teaching Assistant in Nuclear Physics between 2005-2011. Jan defended his PhD dissertation, titled "Essays on the Effective Market Dynamics" in February of 2012.
Filip Pertold (Czech Republic, PhD 2010)
Filip Pertold is currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Economics, Aarhus Business School in Denmark. He earned his MSc degree in Finance at the Prague University of Economics before joining CERGE-EI in 2004. While pursuing his PhD, he worked as a junior economist at the Czech National Bank and as a research fellow at the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He defended his dissertation, titled "Essays on Social Interactions and Policy Evaluation" in late 2010 just before moving to Denmark to take up his current post-doctorate position.
He is working on a project titled "Friends or foes? – Understanding the role of firms and workplaces for worker health" at present. His most recent publication is a working paper at the Aarhus School of Business titled "Don’t Drink and… Avoid Risky Sex of Your Peers : The Influence of Alcohol Consumption of Opposite-Gender Peers on Youth Risky Sexual Behavior". His research interests, broadly defined, include labor and health economics, policy evaluation, social interactions and health outcomes and labor supply of older workers.
Ondřej Rydval (Czech Republic, PhD 2007)
Ondřej Rydval is Deputy Director for Public Relations and Development at CERGE-EI. Before accepting that position, he served as a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena, Germany. He also retains his Postdoctoral Fellow status at the Economics Institute, Academy of Science of the Czech Republic. Before his graduate studies at CERGE-EI, Ondřej earned a BA with honors in Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK. During his studies at CERGE-EI, he spent time as a visiting student researcher at California Institute of Technology. He received his PhD degree in 2007 with a dissertation thesis entitled "The Impact of Financial Incentives on Task Performance: The Role of Cognitive Abilities and Intrinsic Motivation."
His primary research interests are Microeconomics, Applied Econometrics, Experimental Methods and Cognitive Sciences. He has contributed with a number of working papers, publications in refereed journals and chapters in books, including "How Certain Is the Uncertainty Effect", with Andreas Ortmann, Sasha Prokosheva and Ralph Hertwig in Experimental Economics and "Three Very Simple Games and What It Takes to Solve Them", with Andreas Ortmann and Michal Ostatnický in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
Dmitry Ryvkin (Russia, PhD 2006)
Dmitry Ryvkin is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. He entered the PhD program at CERGE-EI in 2000, after having completed his BS and MS degrees in Physics at Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, Russia. He defended his thesis at CERGE-EI in 2006, titled “Essays on Tournament Design”. In that same year, he also defended another PhD dissertation in Physics at Michigan State University. He took the position at Florida State University which he still holds that same year.
His primary research interests focus on the areas of microeconomic theory, experimental economics and economic psychology. Some of his recent publications include "How corruptible are you? Bribery under uncertainty" in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, "The optimal sorting players in contest between groups" in Games and Economic Behavior and "The selection efficiency of tournaments" in the European Journal of Operational Research.
Petra Sevčiková (née Brhlíková) (Slovakia, PhD 2007)
Petra Sevčíková is Senior Research Fellow in Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy and a Lecturer at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK. She joined the CERGE-EI PhD program in 2000 after graduating from Comenius University in Bratislava. She defended her thesis, "Essays on Competition and Entrepreneurial Choice between Nonprofit and For-Profit Firms," in 2006. Her primary research interests are regulation of pharmaceutical industry and non-profit firm research. She is also involved in the project titled "Accessing Medicines in Africa and South Asia (AMASA)", funded by EU FP7, which was stimulated by her earlier research on three pharmaceuticals in India and Nepal, jointly funded by DfID and the ESRC.
Two of her recent publications include "Trust and the Regulation of Pharmaceuticals: South Asia in a Globalised World" with I. Harper, R. Jeffery, N. Rawal, M. Subedi, and M.R. Santhosh, in Globalization and Health and "Global Burden of Disease Estimates of Depression - how reliable is the epidemiological evidence?" with A.M. Pollock and R. Manners in The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, both published in 2011.
Natalia Shestakova (Russia, PhD 2011)
Natalia Shestakova is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Vienna, Austria. She joined the PhD program at CERGE-EI in 2005, after having completed her BA degree in Economics at Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, Russia. She defended her thesis at CERGE-EI in December 2011, titled "Boundedly Rational Consumers and Complex Pricing Schemes". She was a Visiting Researcher at the Center for Experimental Social Science at New York University in the fall of 2010. She was offered a position at the University of Vienna in early 2011 and currently teaches there.
Her primary research interests are Behavioral Economics, Contract Theory and Experimental Economics, and her most recent working papers (both in the CERGE-EI working paper series) are "Overcoming Consumer Biases in the Choice of Pricing Schemes: A Lab Experiment" and "Pricing-Scheme Choice: How Process Affects Outcome".
Jakub Steiner (Czech Republic, PhD 2006)
Jakub Steiner is an Assistant Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at the Kellogg School of Management, and a 2011 recipient of the J. E. Purkyně Fellowship from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, which will allow him to return to CERGE-EI as tenured faculty member in 2012. 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 József Sákovics) is under revise and resubmit at the American Economic Review.
George Vachadze (Georgia, PhD 1999)
George Vachadze is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Economics and Philosophy at the College of Staten Island (CUNY) in New York City. Before coming to CERGE-EI, he received his MSc degree in Mathematics from Tbilisi State University in his native Georgia. He defended his dissertation at CERGE-EI in 1999, titled "Asset Pricing and Portfolio Allocation in Stochastic Economies with Heterogeneous Agents: Speculative and Fundamental Valuation Models". He then began a second PhD, this time in Mathematics, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He had a post-doctoral fellowship at Bielefeld University, Germany which ran until 2009, at which time he accepted his current position at the College of Staten Island (CUNY).
Some of his recent publications include "Endogenous Inequality of Nations through Asset Market Integration" in Macroeconomic Dynamics and "Capital Accumulation with Tangible Assets" (both co-authored with Volker Böhm) in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. His current research interests are in the areas of international economics, monetary theory, and economic growth.
Galina Vereshchagina (Ukraine, 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.
Academics in Central Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States
Inna Čábelková (Ukraine, PhD 2002)
Inna 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, she earned her Baccalaureate and Masters degrees in Computer Science from the National University in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Karel Janda (Czech Republic, PhD 1996)
Karel Janda is Professor at the Department of Banking and Insurance, Faculty of Finance and Accounting, University of Economics, Prague and simultaneously Transgas-RWE Professor in Economics at the Department of Microeconomics and Mathematical Methods, Institute of Economic Studies (IES-FSV) at Charles University, Prague, where he is also Department Chair. He defended his thesis, titled "The Demand for Food Imports and for Agricultural Credit" in 1996, the third PhD defense in CERGE-EI's history. After finishing at CERGE-EI, he pursued and was awarded a second PhD in economics from the University of Iowa in 2003.
He lists his research interests as Microeconomics of Banking, Credit Risk Management, Mechanism Design and Contract Theory, Asymmetric Information, Industrial Organization, Game Theory, Demand Theory, Natural Resources and Agricultural Economics, and Transition Economics. Some recent publications include "Inefficient Credit Rationing and Public Support of Commercial Credit Provision" in the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, "Success in Economic Transformation of the Czech Beer Industry and Its Social Costs and Benefits" (with Jakub Mikolášek) in Transformations in Business and Economics and "Investing into Micro finance" (with Barbora Svárovská) in the Journal of Business Economics and Management.
Dmitri Kolyuzhnov (Russia, PhD 2008)
Dmitri 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.
Katarína Svítková (Slovakia, PhD 2007)
Katarína Svítková is Vice-President for International Academic Affairs at the Anglo-American University in Prague. Before starting on her PhD studies at CERGE-EI in 2001, she was awarded a Masters degree in Mathematics and Management at the Comenius University Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics in Bratislava. She defended her dissertation in 2007, titled "Essays on Philanthropy" consisting of three chapters on the certification of NPOs and corporate charity in the Czech and Slovak Republics.
Her main academic interests are Economics of Non-profit Organizations, Corporate Social Responsibility: Charitable Giving, Employees and Loyalty; Theory of Incentives and Contract Theory. She is currently a CERGE-EI Postdoctoral Fellow.
International Organizations
František Brázdik (Slovakia, PhD 2009)
František Brázdik is an Economist and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany. Before moving to Germany in 2012, he worked as an Economist at the Czech National Bank for six years analyzing the Czech economy and forecasting developments. Before joining the PhD program at CERGE-EI in 2001, he completed a Master's degree in Mathematics for Economics and Finance at Comenius University in Bratislava. František's research interests include Macroeconomics, Monetary unionization, European Monetary Union, Macroeconomic stability Data envelopment analysis, Operational research, Numerical mathematics. His most recent publication, "Survey of Research on Financial Sector Modeling within DSGE Models: What Central Banks Can Learn from It" appeared in the Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a úvěr) (co-authored by Michal Hlaváček & Aleš Maršál).
Jacek Cukrowski (Poland, PhD 1995)
Jacek Cukrowski is Unit Chief at the Capacity-building Institute and Regional Analysis Unit of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna, Austria. Previously he was an Economic Development and Trade Advisor at the Bratislava Regional Centre of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), covering the Central and Eastern Europe and CIS/Central Asian regions. He has also worked 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.
Michaela Erbenová (Czech Republic, PhD 1997)
Michaela Erbenová is Division Chief of the Financial Supervision and Regulation Division (FR) at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. Previously she was Deputy Division Chief of the Financial Sector Oversight Division at the IMF. She joined CERGE-EI's first cohort in 1991 and defended her thesis, titled "Essays on Disequilibria in Early Transition" in 1997. Prior to joining CERGE-EI, she received her Master’s degree Mathematical Methods in Economics at Moscow State University.
Before defending her thesis, she spent a year in Paris working as a consultant to the OECD. In 1996, she returned to Prague to serve as an adviser to the then Prime Minister, Václav Klaus, and subsequently as head of advisors to the Minister of Finance and member of the Government Steering Committee for bank privatization. She subsequently held various managerial posts at Komerční banka in Prague, including as a Director of its Investor Relations section. Between 2000 and 2006, she served as Member of the Board and Chief Executive Director at the Czech National Bank (ČNB). During her mandate she was the Czech Representative on International Relations Committee and Banking Supervision Committee of the European Central Bank and a Member of the Core Principles Liaison Group, a sub-committee of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Before joining the IMF in 2007, she was a manager in the Prague office of A.T. Kearney. She lectured at the Institute for Economic Studies (IES-FSV) at Charles University between 1997 and 2007.
Asel Isakova (Kyrgyzstan, PhD 2009)
Asel Isakova currently works as an Economic Analyst at European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, a position she has held since 2009. Before being admitted to CERGE-EI in 2004, Asel earned her BA in International Economics from Kyrgyz-Slavic Russian University, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and also received MA in Development Projects Management from Pierre Mendès France University, Grenoble, France. She defended her PhD thesis in 2009, being the 100th person who earned PhD degree from CERGE-EI. Her dissertation is titled "Efficiency of Monetary Policy in the Economies of Central Asia".
Jiří Podpiera (Czech Republic, PhD 2005)
Jiří Podpiera is an Economist covering Monetary and Capital Markets in the Financial Sector Analysis Division of the International Monetary Fund. Jiří received his PhD in Economics from CERGE-EI in 2005, with his dissertation thesis entitled "Essays on Aspects of Monetary Policy in Small Open Transition Economies". Shortly before defending his thesis, in November 2004, he was appointed as Director of the External Economic Relations Division of the Czech National Bank's Monetary and Statistics Department. He held this position until leaving to join the IMF in 2009. His research interests are economic convergence, banking and finance.
Two of his most recent IMF publications include "Using Credit Subsidies to Counteract a Credit Bust: Evidence from Serbia" and "The Fundamental Determinants of Credit Default Risk for European Large Complex Financial Institutions" (co-authored with Inci Ötker-Robe).
Ondřej Schneider (Czech Republic, PhD 1998)
Ondřej Schneider is Senior Economist at the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a global association of financial institutions based in Washington, D.C. and simultaneously Associate Professor at the Institute of Economic Sciences (IES-FSV) at Charles University in Prague. He joined CERGE-EI's second cohort in 1992 while finishing an MPhil degree in economics at Cambridge University and defended his dissertation, titled "Essays on Pensions", in 1998. After completing his dissertation he worked as an adviser to three Czech Ministries (Industry and Trade, Finance, and Social Affairs) before accepting the position of Chief Economist at Patria, an investment bank. He remained there until 2002, when he accepted a teaching position at the Institute of Economic Sciences (IES-FSV) at Charles University, a position he maintains from abroad while living in Washington, D.C. He was also a board member of the largest Czech energy producer, ČEZ, and a board member of a boutique investment bank, Warren Partners.
He serves as Editor, Editor-In-Chief and Editorial Board Chairman of the Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a úvěr), a leading Czech economic journal specializing in financial markets and public finance. He also is a Research Fellow at the CESifo in Munich, Germany. His publications in journals and newspapers are often focused on pension reform, fiscal policy, labor markets, and economic integration. Some recent publications include "Labour market institutions and their effect on labour market performance in the new EU member countries" in Eastern European Economics and "Labour Market Institutions and their Effect on Labour Market Performance in the New EU Member Countries" at CESifo.
Emil Stavrev (Bulgaria, 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.
Government / Public Sector
Lubomira Anastasova-Chirmiciu (Bulgaria, PhD 2010)
Lubomira 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.
Martin Fukač (Czech Republic, PhD 2007)
Martin Fukač is an Economist at the Economic Research Department of Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, USA. Before coming to CERGE-EI, he earned an MSc degree in finance and banking from Masaryk University in Brno. While still working on his PhD being a PHD candidate he was admitted as an intern at IMF in 2004. Afterwards, in 2005-2006, he worked as an Economist and later as a Senior Economist at the Research Department of the Czech National Bank. His thesis, defended in 2007, is titled "Imperfect Knowledge, Expectations, and Monetary Policy". Shortly thereafter he joined the Reserve Bank of New Zealand as a Senior Research Analyst. In 2009, he moved to the United States to assume his current position at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
He recently published "Limited information estimation and evaluation of DSGE models" (with Adrian Pagan) in the Journal of Applied Econometrics (2010).
Zuzana Fungáčová (Slovakia, PhD 2009)
Zuzana Fungáčová is an Economist at Bank of Finland's Institute of Economics in Transition (BOFIT) in Helsinki. She received her PhD from CERGE-EI in 2009 after defending her dissertation, titled "Privatization and Stock Market Creation: Evidence from Transition Economies". She began her PhD studies at CERGE-EI having previously earned an MSc degree in Business Administration from the University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia. Zuzana has been employed as an Economist BOFIT since September 2007, specialising in issues related to the development of Russia's banking and financial system. She spent time at BOFIT as a Visiting Researcher in spring 2006.
Her research interests are primarily concentrated around the banking sector in Russia. Some of her recent publications include "Asymmetric information and loan spreads in Russia: Evidence from syndicated loans" with Christophe Godlewski and Laurent Weill in Eastern European Economics and "Determinants of bank interest margins in Russia: Does bank ownership matter?" with fellow CERGE-EI alumnus Tigran Poghosyan, forthcoming in Economic Systems.
Martina Lubyová (Slovakia, PhD 2002)
Martina Lubyová is currently Member of the Scientific Council and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Forecasting at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. She is also on the teaching staff at the Economics University in Bratislava's Faculty of Economic Informatics. 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. She is currently a CERGE-EI Post-Doctorate Fellow.
Andrei Medvedev (Belarus, PhD 2006)
Andrei Medvedev is currently Senior Associate in the Economics of Financial Regulation Department of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), London. He began working at the FSA in May of 2008. Andrei defended his thesis, titled "Mergers, Antitrust, and Competition" in 2006. While writing his dissertation, he worked as a Financial Adviser for Saint-Gobain Oberland AG. Between 2005-2008, he held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. He focused on competition policy and regulation. Two recent publications are "The Role of Contribution among Defendants in Private Antitrust Litigation", International Review of Law and Economics 30(3), 2010 (with Morten Hviid) and "Electrifying integration: electricity production and the South East Europe regional energy market" in Utilities Policy 17(1), pp.24-33, 2009 (with Elizabeth Hooper).
Prior to his time at CERGE-EI, Andrei received his Diploma in Economics from Belaruski Dziarzhauny Universitet in Minsk, Belarus in 1997. He spent a year studying Economics at the University of Oxford, as a Soros Foundation and UK Commonwealth Fellow before receiving an Edmund S. Muskie fellowship (Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, US State Department) in 1998, moving to the US, and earning his MA degree in Economics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2000.
Teodora Paligorova (Bulgaria, PhD 2007)
Teodora Paligorova currently works as a Senior Analyst at the Financial Markets Department of the Bank of Canada in Ottawa. She obtained her Baccalaureate in 1999 in Finance from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria. She entered CERGE-EI in 2001, and spent a research term at the University of Pennsylvania while working on her dissertation. She defended her thesis, titled "Essays on Managerial Pay Structure" in 2007, and began working at the Bank of Canada shortly thereafter. Her most recent publication is a co-authored paper with Štěpán Jurajda titled "Czech Female Managers and their Wages" in Labour Economics.
Maksim Yemelyanau (Belarus, PhD 2012)
Maksim Yemelyanau is Deputy Head of the Planning, Accounting and Payments Division of the Public Debt Department at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Belarus. Prior to enrolling in CERGE-EI, Maksim held an MA in International Economics from Belaruski Dzjaržauny Ekanamièny Universitet, an MA in International Management from Université Panthéon Sorbonne (Paris I), and a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) degree in International Management from Université Jean Moulin in Lyon, France. While working on his PhD dissertation, he worked as Deputy Academic Director and later as a Senior Researcher at the Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Center in Kyiv, Ukraine. He defended his PhD thesis, titled "Essays on Income and Consumption of the Belarusian Population" in January of 2012.
Business / Corporate
Ashot Baghdasaryan (Armenia, PhD 2003)
Ashot Baghdasaryan is a Project Manager at COWI A/S, a Danish consulting company. Prior to joining COWI, he worked as an Executive at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Prague. He entered CERGE-EI in 1994, and worked at PricewaterhouseCooper in Prague for several years before submitting and defending his thesis in 2003, titled "Ownership Concentration and Performance in Czech Companies". His areas of consultancy work are financial/economic analysis and project evaluation, assessment of financial and operational restructuring of enterprises, issues of corporate governance, analysis of local government financing and budget balancing, financial modeling, and public/private investment valuation. He has has worked extensively in Central Europe where he has primarily focused on municipal infrastructure sector development and numerous projects for the EU, EBRD, EIB, World Bank, national and local governments.
Tomáš Kadlec (Czech Republic, PhD 2002)
Tomáš Kadlec is currently CEO of BNP Paribas Cardif (Czech Republic). Before taking on that position, he worked as Business Development Director at DIRECT Pojišťovna in Prague. His PhD dissertation, defended in 2002, was titled "A Dynamic Model of Consumers' Random Choice with Applications to the TV Market". After finishing his PhD degree, he worked as a Project Manager at McKinsey & Company's Prague office. Prior to starting his PhD studies, Tomáš earned a Master's degree in Mathematics from Charles University in Prague.
Katarína Kálovcová (Slovakia, PhD 2012)
Katarína Kálovcová is a consultant at KPMG, Czech Republic. She works mainly on projects involving process mapping and optimization, and governance model development and implementation. Further, she has worked on projects involving cash management, benchmarking, evaluation of projects, and credit check. Before starting on her PhD studies at CERGE-EI in 2004, Katarína was awarded a Masters degree in Mathematics and Management at the Comenius University Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics in Bratislava. In 2012, she defended her dissertation entitled "Essays on Prediction and Betting Markets" consisting of three experimental chapters on the information aggregation process on these types of markets. Katarína teaches a game theory course at the University of Economics (VŠE) in Prague.
Martin Kálovec (Slovakia, PhD 2002)
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 MSc degree in International Trade from the Prague University of Economics.
Kristina Lenková (Bulgaria, PhD 2000)
Kristina Lenková is Head of Product Factory, Československá obchodní banka (ČSOB), Prague. She joined CERGE-EI’s second cohort in 1992 and defended her thesis, titled "The Unemployment Problem in Bulgaria During the Transition Toward a Market Economy" in 2000. She spent time at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna and at the Sorbonne in Paris while conducting dissertation research. Prior to joining CERGE-EI, she studied at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia. After completing her dissertation, she worked at Citicorp Investment Company as Chief Economist before moving to Komerční banka as Senior Segment Manager. She joined ČSOB in 2008.
Olga Loiseau-Aslanidi (Georgia, PhD 2011)
Olga Loiseau-Aslanidi currently is an Economist at Moody's Analytics, Prague. Before joining CERGE-EI in 2004, she earned her BA in Mathematics with honors from Tbilisi State University, Georgia. Olga successfully defended her dissertation thesis, titled “Currency Substitution and Foreign Exchange Interventions in Transition Countries”, in 2010. Previously Olga was working as a Research Economist at OGResearch, Prague, and Lecturer at ISET, Georgia. During her graduate studies she also was a Visiting Doctoral Scholar at University of Michigan.
Anna Racheva-Sarabian (Bulgaria, PhD 2007)
Anna Racheva-Sarabian is a Vice President at Fieldman, Rolapp & Associates, a financial advisory firm located in Orange County, California, which she joined in 2003, nearly four years before formally defending her dissertation entitled "Essays on the Default of California Non-Rated Land Secured Bonds". Before joining the firm, she served as an investment banking analyst at CommerzBank in Prague and a teaching assistant in Corporate Finance at the University of California-Riverside, from where she earned her Master of Business Administration (concentration in Finance). She holds the CIPFA designation as a Certified Independent Public Finance Advisor from the National Association of Independent Public Finance Advisors (NAIPFA).
Richard Podpiera (Czech Republic, PhD 2001)
Richard Podpiera is Director of Strategy and Development at Československá obchodní banka (ČSOB) in Prague. Before coming to CERGE-EI, he earned his Masters degree in Finance from Masaryk University in Brno. In 1997 he began working at Prague-based Atlantik Financial Markets as an Analyst, and had become the Chief Economist by the time he left in 2001. In 1997, while still at Atlantik, he entered the PhD program at CERGE-EI. He defended his PhD thesis, titled "Essays on the Functioning of Financial Markets" in summer 2001, and immediately accepted a position of Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC, where he worked until 2007. He returned to the Czech Republic in 2007, working at McKinsey & Company as a Manager and then shifted to the banking sector in early 2011, when he joined ČSOB in his current position.
Dmitry Shemetilo (Russia, PhD 1996)
Dmitry Shemetilo is Director at Factor Capital UK in London, which works in a field of commodities logistics and trading and development of oil and gas projects in Eastern Europe. Previously he was a financial consultant at Blackfish Capital Management in London. 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.
Anastasiya Shamshur (Belarus, PhD 2012)
Anastasiya Shamshur is a Credit Risk Models Validator at Československá obchodní banka (ČSOB) in Prague. When she joined the CERGE-EI program in 2006, she had already earned a Masters degree and conducted further post-graduate studies in economics at the Belarusian State Agrarian Technical University in Minsk. During her PhD studies, she spent two terms as a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. She defended her thesis, titled "Essays on Capital Structure Stability" in the spring of 2012. She continues to teach on an adjunct basis at the Anglo-American University and maintains a research affiliation with CERGE-EI.
Jiří Střelický (Czech Republic, PhD 2011)
Jiří Střelický is a Managing Director at Generali Pojišťovna in Prague. Before starting at CERGE-EI, he held a Master's degree in Discrete Mathematics from Masaryk University in Brno. He began his post-graduate work at CERGE-EI in 1999 and received his MA in 2002. He then spent time at the University of California at Berkeley and later at the University of Bonn conducting dissertation research. In 2005 he accepted a position at McKinsey and Company in Prague, and two years later he joined Generali as Business Organization Development Manager. Two years later he was appointed Member of the Managing Board at Generali in Poland, and in 2011 he was promoted to his current position. After several years of working full-time, he decided to return and complete his PhD degree. His dissertation was titled "Essays on Pricing, Product Quality, and Intellectual Property Rights Protection in the Software Market", which he defended in early 2011.
Kamil Yazigee (Czech Republic, PhD 2000)
Kamil Yazigee is currently Senior Data Consultant and Modeler at the Credit Risk Division at Bisnode in Düsseldorf, Germany. Before moving to Germany, he worked as Senior Data Analyst and Modeler at Duns & Bradstreet in Prague (also part of the Bisnode Business Information Group). Prior to that, between 2004-2007, he worked as an R&D Analyst and C++ Programmer at Bluberi Technologies, a gaming technologies company and in 2003-2004 he worked as a Datawarehouse and Reporting Specialist at Komerční banka, Prague, Czech Republic. Before joining CERGE-EI in 1994, he earned an MSc degree in Physics at the Czech Technical University (ČVUT) in Prague. He defended his dissertation thesis titled "Essays on the Political Economy of Two-Party Electoral Competition: Convergence Characteristics of Nash Equilibria" in 2000.
