Scientific Committee | EU-Mediterranean and African Network for Economic Studies (EMANES)

Rym Ayadi

EMANES Director

Professor Rym Ayadi is Founder and Director of the EU-Mediterranean and African Network for Economic Studies (EMANES, formerly EMNES), Founder and President of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA), Professor at the Bayes Business School, City University of London, and Member of the Centre for Banking Research (CBR). She is also
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Associated Scholar at the Centre for Relationship Banking and Economics (CERBE) at LUMSA University in Rome.

Senior Research Advisor at the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) in Piran, Slovenia.

Cinzia Alcidi

EMANES Academy Coordinator

Dr. Cinzia Alcidi is Director of Research at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, and Research Fellow at the LUISS School of European Political Economy.

Prior to joining CEPS, she worked at the International Labour Office in Geneva and she taught International Economics at University of Perugia (Italy). Her research activity includes international economics, macroeconomics, central banking and EU governance.

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Since 2015 she is the coordinator of CEPS Academy Activities. She has experience in coordinating research projects and networks. She has published extensively on the economics and governance of the Euro area crisis and participates regularly in international conferences.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (Switzerland).

Rym Ayadi

EMANES Director

Professor Rym Ayadi is Founder and Director of the EU-Mediterranean and African Network for Economic Studies (EMANES, formerly EMNES), Founder and President of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA), Professor at the Bayes Business School, City University of London, and Member of the Centre for Banking Research (CBR). She is also
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Associated Scholar at the Centre for Relationship Banking and Economics (CERBE) at LUMSA University in Rome.

Senior Research Advisor at the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) in Piran, Slovenia.

Cinzia Alcidi

EMANES Academy Coordinator

Dr. Cinzia Alcidi is Director of Research at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, and Research Fellow at the LUISS School of European Political Economy.

Prior to joining CEPS, she worked at the International Labour Office in Geneva and she taught International Economics at University of Perugia (Italy). Her research activity includes international economics, macroeconomics, central banking and EU governance.

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Since 2015 she is the coordinator of CEPS Academy Activities. She has experience in coordinating research projects and networks. She has published extensively on the economics and governance of the Euro area crisis and participates regularly in international conferences.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (Switzerland).

Philippe Adair

Philippe Adair, PhD in Economics and PhD in Sociology, Emeritus, is Professor of Economics at University Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), France.
A fellow of the ERUDITE research team (UPEC), he supervised thirteen PhDs.
He specialises in Labour Economics and Financial Economics. His two research topics are the informal economy and small business funding (microfinance) in developing/transition and developed countries.
He is an Editorial Board member of the peer-reviewed journal Mondes en Développement. (ranked by the CNRS) and a vice-president of Association Tiers-Monde.
He records over one hundred publications including articles in ranked journals, books, chapters in books, published conference papers and international research reports.
References: Philippe Adair at IDEAS ideas.repec.org/e/pad118.html‎
Philippe Adair at ResearchGate www.researchgate.net/

Sami Ben Naceur

Dr. Ben Naceur earned a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Paris Sorbonne. He earned his undergraduate degree in Finance from INSEEC Business School in France, and a MSc. in Management Science in his native Tunisia from the University of Tunis. He has excellent oral and written communication skills with fluency in Arabic, English, and French.

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Dr. Ben Naceur’s research focuses on macroeconomics, development economics, and financial economics. He has published more than 30 research papers in leading economic and finance journals such as World Development, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Financial Stability, International Review of Finance, with more than 4500 citations according to Google Scholar, and he is ranked as one of the most read IMF economists.

Dr. Ben Naceur worked for seventeen years before joining the IMF in academia, research and consulting on the MENA region. His research work has been published in economic and finance journals, industry reports, and newspaper articles. He has presented his work in numerous global and regional conferences and policy fora.

Dr. Ben Naceur worked for two years as a senior economist in the Middle East and Central Asia Department (MCD) of the IMF. In this role, he provided intellectual and strategic leadership to the Regional Studies Division of MCD and contributed to the MENA and Central Asia Regional Economic Outlook through analytical work on relevant regional issues.

During his two-year tenure as Deputy Director of the IMF-Middle East Center for Economics and Finance, in Kuwait, Dr. Ben Naceur helped identify key policy and economic issues facing the region, and managed the training program of the IMF, World Bank, OECD and WTO in the MENA region. In this capacity, he also organized conferences and regional policy meetings in collaboration with two prominent regional organizations: the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) and the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development (AFSED).

As Chief of the Internal Economic Training Unit at the IMF, Dr. Ben Naceur was in charge of designing the intellectual economic agenda of the Fund and managing the IMF’s Internal Economic Training Program, assisted by a team of six very experienced IMF economists and hundreds of renowned scholars.

Currently, Dr. Ben Naceur is the Acting Division Chief of the African Division in the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development (ICD), leading a team of ten economists and short-term consultants in delivering technical assistance and training in macroeconomics and finance to public officials of sub-Saharan African countries, intermediated mostly through the Africa Training Institute in Mauritius.

Barbara Casu

Professor Barbara Casu is the Director of the Centre for Banking Research at Bayes Business School, where she is Professor of Banking and Finance. She is also the Director of the Bayes Executive PhD Programme. Her main research interests are in empirical banking, financial regulation, financial innovation, and corporate governance.

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Barbara has published widely, with over 50 publications in peer reviewed Journals. She has also written the popular textbook “Introduction to Banking” (Pearson FT), which is widely adopted for banking courses across the world. She has recently co-edited the Palgrave Handbook of European Banking.

Ralph Chami

Ralph Chami PhD, is an Assistant Director at the IMF. He is currently on sabbatical from the IMF working on tackling the two risks to humanity – climate change and biodiversity loss. He has developed a model for valuing natural capital, including blue and green nature as well as flora and fauna, and a framework for developing the natural capital markets for ecosystem services. Read MoreClose

He has co-founded two entities working on bringing this new paradigm to life – Blue Green World and Rebalance Earth that are engaged in realizing the value of the natural world to our well-being and integrating it into our economic system. He has co-authored a number of peer reviewed publications that value the carbon sequestration service of keystone species such as the Great Whales and Elephants. His work on valuing natural capital has been featured at TED2022, and in National Geographic, Financial Times, Washington Post, WEF, among others. He provides thought leadership and engages with stakeholders across sectors – governmental, financial, private sector, NGOs – communicating this new vision. His approach has been widely heralded, and he is in great demand as a speaker and visionary at this critical time of transition.

During his 23-year career at the IMF, he has been known as an expert on fragile states and low and middle income countries (LMICs); and also as innovative thinker for his research and training. He has served in some of the most fragile and troubled regions, showing his dedication to helping those most in need, and receiving the IMF 2014 Operational Excellence Award for his field work on fragile and LMICs. He oversaw surveillance and program work in Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Yemen, and was Mission Chief for Libya and Somalia. His book on “Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile State,” has was published by Oxford University Press in 2021.

He also served the Assistant Director in the Institute for Capacity Development (ICD), in the Financial Policies Division. During his time in ICD he oversaw the development and implementation of the internal economics training program for all IMF economists as well as the revamping of the Institute’s external training program for officials from member countries.

Prior to joining the IMF, he was on the faculty of finance at the Mendoza School of Business, University of Notre Dame, IN, USA. Ralph has PhD in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University, MBA from University of Kansas, and BS from the American University of Beirut. His areas of expertise also include: banking, remittances climate change and natural capital. He is a semi-professional musician https://youtu.be/C-1f0UiT8Gg

Jacques Charmes

Jacques Charmes is director of research emeritus at the Institute of Research for Development (IRD), a French public research institute under the joint supervision of the French Ministries of Higher Education and Research and Foreign Affairs. His research focuses on the measurement

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and understanding of the functioning of the informal economy, as well as the conception and implementation of time use surveys and gender indices at regional and national levels, especially in the MENA region and in sub-Saharan Africa.

Najat El Mekkaoui

Najat El Mekkaoui is a senior economist and professor in economics at the University Paris Dauphine. Her research focuses on the economics of aging, demographic changes in developing countries and social security programs. She is distinguished visiting research fellow at Oxford

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University (Smith school of Enterprise and the Environment) and research fellow at the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and NETSPAR. She published and took part in the publication of several works, chapters or papers in her research fields. In addition to teaching and research, she has been involved with the World Bank, the ESCWA, the Moroccan (CNDH, CDG) and the French institutions (Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment Center) in studies about households savings, pension reforms and the expansion of social protection programs. She is engaged with the National Council of Human Rights (Morocco) to study the elderly situation in Morocco, to work closely with the institutions dedicated to old-age people (public, private and Ministry) to promote and to protect the rights of older persons.

Giorgia Giovannetti

Giorgia Giovannetti is Vice President for international Relationships of the University of Firenze (from November 2015), full Professor of Economics at the University of Florence (since 2001), visiting Professor at the European University Institute, Part time professor at New York

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University, Study abroad programme and member of the “consiglio di Reggenza” of the Bank of Italy, Florence. She has acted as Scientific Director of the (first and second) European Report on Development in 2009 and 2010, Director of the Development Research Area in the Global Governance Programme (2011-2013), Director of the Research Centre of the Italian Trade Institute-ICE (2005-2007). She has been advising the EU Commissioner for Development (2009-2012), the President of the Italian Trade Institute-ICE (2004-2014), the Italian Treasury (2003-05) and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Trade (2002-05). She is the scientific coordinator of the Fondazione Manlio Masi, member of the globalization team at OECD, fellow of the Foundation for International Development Study and Research- FERDI, (University of Auvergne at Clermont Ferrand) and Fondazione Luca D’Agliano (Turin). She was in a Group of the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington working on the Reform of the Rome Agencies. She holds a PhD and an MPhil in Economics from Cambridge University, and a Laurea cum laude in Statistics from the University of Roma la Sapienza. In the past she has been fellow of Trinity College- Cambridge and lecturer (1990-1995) and visiting Professor in several universities (Pompeu Fabra- Barcelona, Hoover Institution-Stanford, Universitat Torcuato de Tella- Buenos Aires). She has also been Fellow of the European Forum of the EUI on “The Political Economy of an Integrated Europe” (1996-97). Her research interests include macroeconomics, political economy, international trade, European Economy and development economics. Her work has been published in leading academic journals and presented in main international conferences.

Claudia Girardone

Claudia Girardone is Professor of Banking and Finance at Essex Business School of the University of Essex. She is also Director of the Essex Finance Centre (EFiC) and the School’s Director of Research. Professor Girardone has published over 50 articles on various aspects of

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banking and finance in books and peer-reviewed international journals. She is a co-author of the textbook Introduction to Banking (FT Pearson Education, 2015). She is currently on the editorial board of several journals including the Journal of Financial Economic Policy and The European Journal of Finance. Her current research areas are on banking sector performance and stability, bank corporate governance, the industrial structure of banking and access to finance.

Basma Majerbi

Basma is an associate professor at the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business and the operations chair for the Centre for Social and Sustainable Innovation (CSSI). Her research examines the importance of currency risk in global equity markets and how exchange risk

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fluctuations affect the pricing of risk in stock markets around the world. She is also interested in issues of integration versus segmentation of financial markets, international diversification benefits into emerging markets, systemic banking crises and financial liberalization. Her past research has been published in leading business journals such as the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Empirical Finance, and Emerging Markets Review. Basma’s current research looks at the impact of financial system diversity on economic growth and macro-financial stability. Thanks to research funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and BCKDF, she’s working on developing a new global financial database that provides more comprehensive measures of institutional diversity and depth of national financial systems around the world. At Gustavson, Basma teaches international and corporate finance with an underlying foundation of organizational and functional sustainability to graduate and undergraduate students. Since 2011, Basma has also been teaching for the International Monetary Fund’s Institute for Capacity Development and contributes to various executive training courses offered by the Institute to mid-to-senior level government officials from African and Eastern European central banks and ministries of finance. Prior to that, she worked as a consultant for the World Bank, taught finance courses at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, and held various positions in the private sector in Tunisia and Europe. Since 2010, Basma has overseen the calculation of the carbon footprint of Gustavson faculty, staff and students, and has been actively engaged with CSSI in its ongoing efforts to reduce the school’s carbon footprint.

Joaquim Oliveira Martins

Joaquim Oliveira Martins is Counsellor at Center for Prospective Studies and International Information (CEPII, Paris). He was before Deputy-Director of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities focusing on Entrepreneurship & SMEs policies; Regional, Rural and Urban policies; and Tourism.

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He was also Head of the OECD Regional Development Policy Division and supervised projects on regional and urban economics, governance, regional statistics and well-being. He was Head of the OECD Structural Economic Statistics Division, where he focused on Trade & Globalisation studies, Productivity measurement and Business statistics. He is author of many academic articles and OECD publications. When Senior Economist at the OECD Economics Department, he coordinated and authored reports on Policy Response to the Threat of Global Warming, Competition, Regulation and Performance, Ageing & Growth, Investment in Tertiary Education, and Public Health Expenditure Projections. He was also Head of Desk for Emerging markets, in charge of the first OECD Economic Surveys of Brazil, Chile and several transition countries. He holds a MSc in Econometrics and a PhD in Economics from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, and is Lecturer at the University of Paris-Dauphine PSL and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK (FAcSS).

Raul Ramos

Raul Ramos is Professor at the Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics of the University of Barcelona, researcher at the Grup d’Analisi Quantitativa Regional (AQR-IREA), IZA Research Fellow and GLO Fellow. Currently, he is the Vice-Dean of Research and Doctorate of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Barcelona.

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His research interests include labour market analysis from both regional and international perspectives, with a specific focus on the impacts of globalisation, European integration and migration on wage inequality and unemployment. He is Coeditor of the European Journal of Development Research, Director of the Revista de Economía Laboral and Associate Editor of Regional Studies, Regional Science.

Dorothea Schäfer

Dorothea Schäfer is Research Director Financial Markets at DIW Berlin and Adjunct Professor at Jönköping University – JIBS (Economics). She achieved her Ph.D. and habilitation at the Freie Universität Berlin. Dorothea has been head of various research projects funded e. g. by the German Research Foun-dation (DFG), the EU Commission and the research arm of the DSGV (German Savings Bank Association). She has published in International Review of Economics & Finance; Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money; Emerging Markets Review; Journal of Institutional Economics; Finance Research Letters; International Journal of Money and Finance; European Journal of Finance; Small Business Economics; Journal of Financial Stability and many other journals.

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She was an expert for many committees, e.g. the Bundestag’s Committee on Finance, the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development, Parliamentary Assembly, The Council of Europe and other committees. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Eurasian Economic Review (EAER) and the Vierteljahrs- hefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung. She is also an Associate Editor of International Review of Economics & Finance.

Habib Sedehi

Habib Sedehi teaches Project Management and Systems Thinking & System Dynamics for Strategic Decision Support Systems in Executive MBA courses in different National & International Universities in Italy. He has been contracting Professor of Computer Sciences at Rome University “La Sapienza” where he used to teach Project Management and System Dynamics Simulation Modeling courses.

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Freelance Senior ICT Consultant since 2001 with a background of twelve years as General Manager in a consulting & software house which makes more than thirty-five years of experience in Computer Sciences & Telecommunications.

As consultant, his main interests are focused in the following areas:
• Business process analysis oriented towards Decision Support Systems for medium-top management of both private organizations and state administrations. Development of dynamic simulation models oriented to so called “What-if analysis”,
• Project management in any environment with specialization in ICT projects,
• Large software projects cost estimation and consumption.
He has been involved in different EU financed project and presently is a key member of two projects (financed by the Erasmus+ program) in the area of Edutainment (serious games to support learning in soft skill education).

He has published two books in the field of Software Engineering and general Computer Sciences and authored more than 40 publications in different ICT fields.

He is the founder and past President of SYDIC (Italian Chapter of System Dynamics Society), founder member of Italian Association for System Science Research, Direction Committee Member of the Italian Software Metrics Association and Past President of International Commission at Rome Engineers State Association.

George Zestos

Dr. George K. Zestos is a distinguished Professor of Economics and holds the prestigious Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. With an impressive academic journey and a prolific research career, he has made significant contributions to the field of economics, particularly in the realm of international economics and European integration.

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Dr. Zestos has taught at DePauw University and Ball State University then he started his academic career at Christopher Newport University where he served as the director of the Center of Economic Education.

His research interests focus on economic growth and development, the convergence in the standards of living between the Northern and Southern European countries, the escalating public debt in both developing and developed nations and the effects of remittances on economic growth.

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