Scientific Committee | Euro-Mediterranean Network for Economic Studies (EMNES)

Rym Ayadi

EMNES Director

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

Cinzia Alcidi

EMNES Academy Coordinator

Dr. Cinzia Alcidi is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Economic Policy Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and LUISS- School of European Political Economy- research fellow.

Prior to joining CEPS, she worked at 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.

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).

Publications

Barbara Casu

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

financial regulation, structured finance, and corporate governance. Barbara has published widely, with over 40 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. Outside academia, Professor Casu has been a consultant/visiting researcher at several organizations.

Publications

Ralph Chami

Ralph Chami is currently Assistant Director in the Institute for Capacity Development (ICD), International Monetary Fund, where he oversaw the development and implementation of the internal economics training program for all IMF economists as well as the revamping of the Read MoreClose

Institute’s external training program for officials from member countries. Most recently, he was Assistant Director and Division Chief in the Middle East and Central Asia Department where he oversaw surveillance and program work on fragile states: Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Yemen, and was Mission Chief for Libya and Somalia. He is the recipient of the 2014 IMF Operational Excellence Award for his work on Libya. Previously, he was the Chief of the Regional Studies Division, where he oversaw regional surveillance of 32 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia regions, and the production of the Regional Economic Outlook. Prior to that, he was the Chief of the Middle Eastern Division of the IMF Institute where he oversaw capacity development in that region. He joined the IMF in 1999. From 1991 till 1999, he was on the faculty of Finance in the Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame in Indiana. He also served as a consultant to the World Bank, and to the private sector in the US. Ralph Chami has a BS from the American University of Beirut, an MBA in Finance and Statistics from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University. His areas of specialization are: banking regulation and supervision, financial markets, and remittances. His hobbies include music and yoga. Ralph was a semi- professional guitarist for over 40 years https://www.youtube.com/user/MusicRC99.

Publications

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

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.

Publications

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

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.

Publications

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

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.

Publications

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

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.

Publications

Najat El Makkaoui

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

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.

Publications

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.

Read MoreDr. 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.

Publications

Raul Ramos

Raul Ramos, is Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Barcelona, researcher at the Grup d’Analisi Quantitativa Regional (AQR-IREA) and IZA Research Fellow. Since 2012, he has been a member of the Editorial team of the European Journal of Development

Research. His research interests include labour market analysis from a regional and international perspective, with a specific focus on the impacts of globalisation, European integration and migration on wage inequality and unemployment.

Publications