Researchers

Erik Berglöf | Michelle Brock | Ralph De Haas | Heike Harmgart | Elena Nikolova | Alexander Plekhanov | Peter Sanfey | Helena Schweiger | Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Erik Berglöf

Erik Berglöf has been the Chief Economist and Special Adviser to the President of the Bank since 2006. He has previously held the position of Professor and Director of SITE at the Stockholm School of Economics. He has also taught at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and held visiting positions at Harvard, Stanford and MIT.

He has published widely on financial development, corporate governance and transition economics.  His interests have been particularly oriented towards policy issues in emerging economies, but he has also contributed extensively to the debate on regional and global institutional architecture. He has regularly provided advice to national governments and international institutions including the IMF and the World Bank.

Erik Berglöf was the founder and President of the Centre for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR) in Moscow and a Programme Director at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London.  He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Profile

Selected articles

Berglöf, E., G. Roland and E.–L. von Thadden (2009), The Design of Corporate Debt Structure and Bankruptcy, Review of Financial Studies, vol. 23, issue 7, pp. 2648-2679
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Berglöf, E., and A. Lehmann, (2009), Sustaining Russia’s Growth: The Role of Financial Reform, , Journal of Comparative Economics, Volume 37, Issue 2, pp. 198-206
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Berglöf, E., M. Burkart, G. Friebel, and E. Paltseva (2008), Widening and Deepening – Reforming the European Union , American Economic Review, 93 (5), pp. 1824-1829
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Berglöf, E., and S. Claessens (2006), Enforcing Corporate Governance, World Bank Research Observer
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Recent presentations

Escaping the Austerity Trap: Lessons from one part of the European periphery to another? (1MB - PDF)

More articles, work in progress, working papers, books and book chapters by Eric Berglöf 

Michelle Brock

Michelle Brock joined  the Office of the Chief Economist in 2011. She completed her PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland in 2011 (dissertation: “Measuring Social Preferences Among Clinicians in Tanzania: Evidence from the Lab and the Field”).  Michelle's current research focuses on how social preferences influence economic decision making. She is now developing an impact assessment study that will look at the effectiveness of capacity training for improving quality among judges in Tajikistan, and whether triggering motivation from peer-focused and quality-based reputations can incentivize professionalism among judges. Her work contributes to understanding the influence of non-monetary incentives and social preferences on behaviour in the real world and aims to establish links between the laboratory environment and the field. Michelle's research interests include development economics, behavioural & experimental economics, agricultural and natural resource economics and applied microeconomics.

Publications

Brock, J. M., A. Lange and E.Y. Ozbay (2010), Dictating the Risks –Experimental Evidence on Norms of Giving in Risky Environments, American Economic Review (forthcoming).

Leonard, K. L., P. Serneels, J. M. Brock and M. C. Masatu (2010), Health Worker Performance, in Agnes Soucat and Richard M. Scheffler (Eds.), Human Resources for Health in Africa: A New Look at the Crisis, University of California, Berkeley and The World Bank, forthcoming.

Leonard, K. L., P. Serneels and J. M. Brock (2010), Intrinsic Motivation, in Agnes Soucat and Richard M. Scheffler (Eds.), Human Resources for Health in Africa: A New Look at the Crisis, University of California, Berkeley and The World Bank, forthcoming.

Work in Progress

Brock, J. M., A. Lange and K.L. Leonard (2011), Gift and Prod: Experimental Evidence on Reciprocity and the Study Effect from the Field.

Brock, J. M., A. Lange and K.L. Leonard (2011), Generosity Norms and Intrinsic Motivation in Health Care Provision: Evidence from the Laboratory and Field.

Brock, J. M., A. Lange and K.L. Leonard (2011), Exploring Pride and Prejudice: Social Preferences Among Clinician in Tanzania.

Ralph De Haas

Ralph De Haas (Maastricht, 1976) is a Deputy Director of Research at the EBRD. He holds a PhD in Economics from Utrecht University (thesis: ‘Multinational Banks and Credit Growth in Transition Economies’). Ralph’s main research interests include international banking, development economics, and microfinance. He is currently working on two large-scale randomised field experiments to measure the impact of microfinance on poverty alleviation in Bosnia and Mongolia.

Selected articles

De Haas, R. and N. Van Horen (2012), International Shock Transmission after the Lehman Brothers Collapse. Evidence from Syndicated Lending, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May
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Brown, M. and R. De Haas (2012) , Foreign Currency Lending in Emerging Europe: Bank-level Evidence, Economic Policy, 27(69), pp. 59-98.
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De Haas, R., D. Ferreira and A. Taci (2010), What determines the composition of banks' loan portfolios? Evidence from transition countries, Journal of Banking and Finance, 34, pp. 388-398
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De Haas, R. and I.P.P. van Lelyveld (2010), Internal capital market and lending by multinational bank subsidiaries, Journal of Financial Intermediation, 19, pp. 1-25
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De Haas, R. and I.P.P. van Lelyveld (2006), Foreign banks and credit stability in Central and Eastern Europe. A panel data analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, 30, pp.1927-1952
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De Haas, R. and I.J. Naaborg (2006), Foreign banks in transition countries: to whom do they lend and how are they financed?, Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, 15(4), pp. 159-199
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More articles, work in progress and working papers by Ralph De Haas

Heike Harmgart

Heike Harmgart is one of the EBRD's Senior Economists. She received her PhD in economics from University College London (thesis: ’Learning to consume’). Heike’s main research interests include industrial organisation, behavioural & experimental economics, and agricultural and development economics. Her current research projects include a study on the impact of subsidies on competition and innovation in Russia as well as two large-scale randomised field experiments to measure the impact of microfinance on poverty alleviation and business development in Bosnia and Mongolia. She is also leading the Bank’s food security initiative.

Selected articles

Guarino, A., H. Harmgart and S. Huck (2011), Aggregate Information Cascades, Games and Economic Behavior, forthcoming.

Harmgart, H., and R. Griffith (2011), Supermarket Entry, International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, forthcoming.

Harmgart, H. and S. Huck (2009), Dogville or an Illustration of Some Properties of General Equilibrium, , The Economists' Voice, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 6(1).
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Harmgart, H., S. Huck and W. Müller (2009), The miracle as a randomization device: A lesson from Richard Wagner's romantic opera Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg, Economics Letters, vol. 102(1), pp. 33-35.
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More articles, work in progress, working papers, books and book chapters by Heike Harmgart
 

 Elena Nikolova

Elena Nikolova is a Research Economist at the Office of the Chief Economist at the EBRD. She is currently working on the third round of the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS), which will be conducted in the Middle East and North Africa region in spring 2012 and on research on institutions, entrepreneurship, corruption, and public goods. She obtained her Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at  Princeton University in January 2011. Her research interests lie at the cross-section of economics and politics and include political economy, economic development, institutional economics, comparative politics, economic history and applied econometrics.

Work in progress:

Labor markets and representative institutions: evidence from colonial British America (under review), also available as EBRD working paper 134, October 2011

Representative institutions and public goods: evidence from the US, 1860-1915 (with Elena Loukoianova)

The determinants of entrepreneurship in the transition region: evidence from LiTS II,  Chapter 4, EBRD Transition Report 2011 (with Franto Ricka and Dora Simroth)

Corruption in Bulgaria (with Nikolay Marinov)

Alexander Plekhanov

Alexander Plekhanov is one of the EBRD's Principal Economists. He has worked as a country economist on a number of countries, including Belarus, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia. Prior to joining the Bank, Alexander worked as an economist at the International Monetary Fund in the Western Hemisphere and Fiscal Affairs Departments.

His main research interests include fiscal decentralisation, fiscal policy, financial deepening, commodity-based development and economic diversification. Alexander holds an M.Phil. in Economics and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge and a Diploma in Mathematical Economics from St. Petersburg State University.

Selected articles

Freinkman, L. and A. Plekhanov (2009), Fiscal Decentralization and the Quality of Public Services in Russian Regions, Public Finance and Management, Vol. 10, No 1 (also available as EBRD WP 111).

Berglöf, E., Y. Korniyenko, A. Plekhanov and J. Zettelmeyer (2009), Understanding the Crisis in Emerging Europe, Public Policy Review, Vol. 6, No 6, pp. 985–1008 (also available as EBRD WP 109).

Freinkman, L. and A. Plekhanov (2009), Fiscal Decentralization in Rentier Regions: Evidence from Russia, World Development, Vol. 37, No 2, pp. 503–12.

Plekhanov, A. (2007), Endogenous Corruption in a Federation, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, Vol. 7, No 1, Art 20.

More articles, working papers and work in progress by Alexander Plekhanov

Peter Sanfey

Peter Sanfey is Deputy Director of Country Strategy and Policy within the Office of the Chief Economist at the EBRD. He is responsible for the analysis of economic developments and reforms in South-Eastern Europe, and he engages in research and publications on a range of topics covering the whole transition region. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1992, and was a lecturer in economics at the University of Kent at Canterbury from 1992-97. He is the co-author (with Christopher Cviić) of a book entitled: In Search of the Balkan Recovery: the Political and Economic Re-emergence of South-Eastern Europe, published in 2010 by Hurst & Co. and Columbia University Press.

Selected articles

Sanfey, P. (2011), South-Eastern Europe: Lessons Learned from the Global Economic Crisis in 2008-10, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Vol. 11(2), pp. 97-115.

Krstić, G. and P. Sanfey (2011), Earnings Inequality and the Informal Economy: Evidence from Serbia, Economics of Transition, 19(1), pp. 179-199.

Sanfey, P. and U. Teksoz (2007), Does Transition Make You Happy?, Economics of Transition, 15(4), pp. 707-731.

Krstić, G. and P. Sanfey (2007), Mobility, Poverty and Well-Being among the Informally Employed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Economic Systems, 31(3), pp. 311-335.

Falcetti, E., T. Lysenko and P. Sanfey (2006), Reforms and Growth in Transition: Re-examining the Evidence, Journal of Comparative Economics, 34(3), pp. 421-445.

More articles, work in progress, working papers, books and book chapters by Peter Sanfey

Helena Schweiger 

Helena Schweiger is a Principal Economist at the Office of the Chief Economist at EBRD. She is currently working on the next round of Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS V) and management practices in transition countries. Helena’s research interests include macroeconomics, labour economics and institutional economics - more specifically, applying micro-to-macro empirical analysis to try to understand the causes of the differences in productivity and growth across countries, businesses and time and their policy implications. Her main focus is on factors that could have an impact on the allocation of inputs and outputs across firms and account for productivity differences across countries, such as state aid, business environment, market institutions in general and management practices. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland.

Working Papers / Work in Progress

The land that Lean manufacturing forgot? Management practices in transition countries, EBRD Working Paper 131, joint with N. Bloom and J. Van Reenen (under review). Also available as NBER Working Paper No. 17231, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 8493, CEP Discussion Paper No. 1065.
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The Impact of State Aid for Restructuring on the Allocation of Resources. EBRD Working Paper 127
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European Transition at Twenty, UNU-WIDER Working Paper 2010-91, joint with Erik Berglöf, Lise Bruynooghe, Heike Harmgart, Peter Sanfey, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer.
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Cross Country Differences in Job Reallocation: The Role of Industry, Firm Size and Regulations, EBRD Working Paper No. 116, July 2010, joint with John Haltiwanger and Stefano Scarpetta.
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Does the Quality of Management Explain Anything in Russia?, joint with Guido Friebel.

Contractual Reliance and Exporter Performance: Evidence from Slovenian Firm-level Data, joint with Gabriela Dobrescu.

Underexporting Puzzles, joint with Gabriela Dobrescu.

Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Jeromin Zettelmeyer is Deputy Chief Economist and Director of Research at the EBRD. From 1994 until mid 2008, he worked at the International Monetary Fund, mainly in the Research Department. His research and policy interests include financial crises, international financial architecture, and economics of transition. He is co-author, together with Federico Sturzenegger, of Debt Defaults and Lessons from a Decade of Crises (MIT Press, 2007), an account of the sovereign debt crises between 1996 and 2006.

He is a German citizen, born in Spain in 1964, graduated from the University of Bonn in 1990, and holds a Ph.D. from MIT (1995)

Selected articles

Berglöf, E., L. Bruynooghe, H. Harmgart, P. Sanfey, H. Schweiger and  J. Zettelmeyer  (forthcoming), European Transition at Twenty: Assessing Progress in Countries and Sectors, in Gérard Roland (ed), Transition Economies: The Long Run View, forthcoming (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Nagy, P., S. Jeffrey, J. Zettelmeyer (2011), Addressing Private Sector Currency Mismatches in Emerging Europe, in Eswar Prasad and Masahiro Kawai (eds.), Financial Market Regulation and Reforms in Emerging Markets, 2011 (Brookings Institution Press), pp. 365-405 
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Berglöf, E., Y. Korniyenko and A. Plekhanov (2009), Understanding the Crisis in Emerging Europe” (with Erik Berglöf, Yevgeniya Korniyenko, and Alexander Plekhanov, Public Policy Review, (Japan Ministry of Finance Policy Research Institute), Vol. 6, No 6, 2009, pp. 985–1008 
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Zettelmeyer, J. and P. Österholm (2005), The Effect of External Conditions on Growth in Latin America, IMF Staff Papers, Vol. 55, No. 4, 595 – 623
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More articles, work in progress, working papers, books and book chapters by Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Last updated 19 April 2012