With a diversity of backgrounds and areas of expertise, the NOVAFRICA external members are the network of researchers outside of the Nova School of Business and Economics who collaborate in the implementation of NOVAFRICA’s activities.
With a diversity of backgrounds and areas of expertise, the NOVAFRICA external members are the network of researchers outside of the Nova School of Business and Economics who collaborate in the implementation of NOVAFRICA’s activities.
Tijan L Bah is a Research Fellow at the Navarra Center for International Development. He holds a European Doctorate Degree in Economics Erasmus Mundus (EDEEM) at the Nova School of Business and Economics and University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. He was a Postdoctoral fellow at the Nova School of Business and Economics. His main research is on development economics, migration economics, labor economics and family economics. He has worked in the field, implementing lab-in-the field and randomized controlled experiments in The Gambia.
Professor Tilman Brück is the Founder and Director of ISDC – International Security and Development Center in Berlin and Team Leader of Development Economics at IGZ – Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops, Germany. He is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Households in Conflict Network” (HiCN). Professor Brück’s research interests focus on the economics of household behaviour and well-being in conflict-affected and fragile economies, including the measurement of violence and conflict in household surveys and the impact evaluation of peace-building programs in conflict-affected areas and of humanitarian assistance. He was previously Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Professor of Development Economics at Humboldt-University of Berlin. He obtained his doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford.
Rute M. Caeiro is a development economist with a Ph.D. in Economics from the Nova School of Business and Economics. Previously, she worked as a Research Associate at UNU-WIDER. Her research focuses on identifying economic mechanisms that can inform policy design. Central to her work are field experiments she has designed and implemented, exploring various economic issues, including the impact of agricultural extension interventions, health provision, social protection systems, social capital dynamics, gender norms, and the legacies of colonialism.
Pedro Carneiro is a Professor of Economics at University College London and an economist in the IFS’ Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice (Cemmap). His research interests include development economics, labour economics, the economics of education and microeconometrics. In the past he has examined issues such as the returns to education, human capital policy, and labor regulation in developing countries. He has studied poverty and education programs in several countries in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe.
Alexander Coutts is an Assistant Professor of Economics in Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada. Previously he was Assistant Professor of Economics at Nova School of Business and Economics. He holds a PhD in Economics from New York University. His research has involved field work in Uganda, Ghana, and most recently Rwanda where he designed and conducted a series of public goods experiments in rural villages. His research interests center on the interaction between behavioral and development economics, with a focus on using experiments in both the lab and field. He currently teaches Behavioral Economics in the graduate program at Nova SBE.
Cláudia Custódio is a Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics. She was previously Assistant Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics , and at Arizona State University. Before she joined academia she worked in financial auditing as junior audit. She received her Ph.D. from the London School of Economics In 2010. Her research aims at understanding how firms take decisions and how these decisions can create economic value, with a particular focus on the role of human capital. Her papers are published in academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics¸ and also receive attention from the general media.
Marcel Fafchamps is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Fafchamps is a professor (by courtesy) for the Department of Economics at Stanford University. Prior to joining FSI, from 1999-2013, Fafchamps served as professor of development economics for the Department of Economics and Mansfield College at Oxford University. He also served as deputy director and then co-director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. His current research focuses on entrepreneurship, factor markets, and the efficiency of social networks in Africa and South Asia. Fafchamps also has ongoing research on political economy issues in Africa and Asia.
Mattia Fracchia is an Assistant Professor in Development Economics at IE University in Madrid. His main research interests are in development economics and applied microeconomics, with a focus on using field experiments. His research has involved fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. Mattia is currently engaged in research projects on public service delivery, evidence use within organizations, and rural value chains. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Finance from Nova School of Business and Economics.
Ana Margarida Fernandes is a Senior Economist in the Trade and International Integration Unit of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. She holds a B.A. from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and she joined the World Bank in 2002. Her research interests include the consequences of openness to trade and FDI for firm-level outcomes such as productivity, innovation and quality upgrading in manufacturing and services sectors and more broadly the determinants of firm performance, including the role of the business environment. She has also worked on professional services in Africa. Recently her work has been focusing on the one hand on the impact evaluation of trade-related policy interventions (such as export promotion and customs reforms) and on the other hand on exporter growth and dynamics, their links to policies and to development. Since 2011 she has been managing the Exporter Dynamics Database project. Her research has been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the World Bank Economic Review, among other scholarly publications.
Jules Gazeaud is a Professor at CERDI. In the past he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Nova School of Business and Economics and at JPAL. His research uses modern applied econometric methods to produce policy-relevant studies on poverty, social protection, migration, and areas at the intersection of these topics. Part of his research is based on fieldwork and randomized experiments conducted in sub-Saharan Africa. He holds a PhD in Economics from CERDI, France, and was a visiting student at the University of Oxford, UK. He also collaborates with the World Bank as a consultant since 2016.
Matilde Grácio is an Economist specialized in Development Economics and Policy Evaluation. Matilde has a PhD in Economics from Nova School of Business and Economics and is currently working as a consultant for the World Bank in the areas of social protection, entrepreneurship, and gender. As a researcher, she has extensive experience conducting surveys and field work in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. Her research has mainly focused on the role that information plays in different contexts, and the importance of inequalities in shaping aggregate and individual behavior. She has additionally worked on projects dealing with the private sector, agricultural development, and financial inclusion.
Flore Gubert is a senior researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD) and works within the Developpement Institutions Mondialisation (DIAL) team of Laboratoire D’economie de Dauphine (LEDa), a joint research unit bringing together researchers from the Paris-Dauphine University, IRD and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). She has been working on migration issues in Western Africa for about 20 years, with a focus on the drivers of migration and the developmental impact of migration and remittances. She has also been involved in the impact evaluation of various projects in different contexts (land reform in Madagascar, drinking water supply project in DRC). Apart from her research activities, Flore Gubert carries out scientific management activities. She served as director of IRD’s Societies and Globalization Department between 2015 and 2021 and is currently the Deputy Director of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH).
Dean Karlan is a Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Karlan is President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and promoting effective solutions to global poverty problems. Karlan is on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab. As a social entrepreneur, he is co-Founder of stickK.com, a website that uses lessons from behavioral economics to help people reach personal goals, such as weight loss and smoking cessation, through commitment contracts. In 2011, Karlan co-authored More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty. Karlan received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of financial decision-making, specifically employing experimental methodologies to examine what works, what does not, and why in interventions in microfinance, health, behavioral economics and charitable giving. Karlan received a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia. Blogs regularly on Freakonomics.
Stefan Leeffers is a Lecturer in Crises and Disaster Risk Finance at University College London’s Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. As a development economist, he specialises in disaster risk management and governance in low- and middle-income countries. Through his research, he designs and conducts impact evaluations to identify innovative strategies that help reduce the impact of disasters and build resilience. His work has been published in academic journals such as World Development and Economic Development and Cultural Change. Stefan has conducted fieldwork in Mozambique, Angola, and the Dominican Republic. His teaching includes fundamental economic concepts that enable students to evaluate humanitarian action, make informed recommendations, and create effective economic policies in humanitarian contexts. He has experience as a consultant in disaster risk finance and impact evaluation at the World Bank and holds a PhD in Economics from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Esselina Macome is an Associate Professor at the Eduardo Mondlane University at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics. She holds a Ph.D. in Information Technologies by the University of Pretoria in South Africa, in 2003, and a master’s degree (MSc) in Analysis, Design and Management of Information System by London School of Economics and Political Science of the University of London. Esselina Macome is Licentiate in Teaching of Mathematics by Paedagogische Hochschule Dresden- Germany, in 1987. Esselina has participated in a course on Strategic Leadership in inclusive finance at the Harvard Business School. She successfully completed the program on certified digital finance Practitioner offered by the Digital Frontiers Institute in partnership with Fletcher School. Esselina Macome joined the Central Bank of Mozambique in 2005 as Executive Director and Member of the Board, a position that she holds until 2015. Presently, besides the academic activity, she is also working at the FSDMOç (Financial Sector Deepening Moçambique) as a Chief Executive Officer. Recently her research work has been focusing on agent banking and non-banking ecosystems. Her areas of interest include the usage of Information Communication Technology for development, and financial inclusion with more attention on Digital financial services (DFS), fintech, green finance and Gender related issues.
David Mckenzie is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit of the World Bank. He received his B.Com.(Hons)/B.A. from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. Prior to joining the World Bank, he spent four years as an assistant professor of Economics at Stanford University. His main research is on migration, enterprise development, and methodology for use with developing country data. He has published more than 100 articles in journals such as the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Economic Journal, American Economic Journal: Applied Micro, Journal of Econometrics, and all leading development journals. He is currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Development Economics, the World Bank Economic Review, and Migration Studies. He is also a co-founder and regular contributor to the Development Impact blog.
Teresa Molina Millán is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alicante. She obtained her PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics. She joined the Department of Economics at Alicante in 2020, after a 5 year research fellowship at Nova School of Business and Economics. Her main areas of research are applied microeconomics and development economics. Her current work focuses on rural poverty, health, education, and conditional cash transfers. She is also interested on violations of random sample selection, either because of attrition or because of self-selection into programs. She has worked in the field in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Guinea-Bissau and Angola. She is currently affiliated as junior researcher with IZA (Bonn, Germany).
Arinze Nwokolo is an Assistant Professor, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University.
He obtained his PhD in economics from the University of Navarra, Spain. He was a CSAE Fellow in Oxford University and a Research Associate at the Navarra International Development Centre, Spain.
His research areas include development economics, corporate finance, political economy, behavioral and organizational economics.
Paulo Santos is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Monash University. He has completed his PhD in 2007 at Cornell University. He joined the Department of Economics at Monash in 2011, after being a Lecturer at The University of Sydney. His research interests are at the intersection of economics and sociology and also of economics and natural resource management, and particularly in using insights from these different areas into understanding why poverty is persistent. He has worked in the field in Ethiopia, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia.
Elsa de Morais Sarmento is an applied economist and professional evaluator with experience in applied research, international development, monitoring and impact evaluation. She is Principal Evaluation Officer at the Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) of the African Development Bank and lecturer at the University of Aveiro (Portugal). Previously, she worked for international organisations (World Bank, United Nations, European Commission, Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, and with the OECD and the IMF). She has broad international experience, having worked in over 50 countries, 40 of which with direct field experience. She has lectured for over a decade in several academic institutions, including the Nova School of Business and Economics, and worked as a researcher at the CEP (LSE), European Parliament, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, amongst others. She holds a BSc from Nova School of Business and Economics and an MA from the University of Leicester and Universidade do Minho.
Julia Seither is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Universidad del Rosario and part of the directors’ team at JILAEE – Joint Initiative for Latin American Experimental Economics. She earned her PhD from the Nova School of Business and Economics and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago and UCEMA. Her main research is on development and behavioral economics, and in particular on behavioral biases of micro-entrepreneurs, migration, early-childhood education, and the development of social norms. She has been involved in projects in Argentina, Colombia, Mozambique, Portugal, and Uganda.
Sandra Sequeira is an Assistant Professor in Development Economics at the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics. Her main research interests are in development economics and applied microeconomics. She is currently engaged in research projects related to state capacity, transport infrastructure and growth; consumer prosocial behavior; and the determinants of financial access, networking capital and technology adoption for private sector development. She holds a BA from Nova School of Business and Economics, an MA from the Fletcher School and a PhD from Harvard University.
Danila Serra is an Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University. She holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford University. In her work, she applies lab and field experimental methods to the study of corruption, governance and the provision of public services, with special focus on non-monetary incentives and bottom-up accountability systems. She has published numerous highly cited articles in peer-reviewed journals and co-edited a book on the topic of corruption. Some of her more recent work focuses on issues related to gender differences in education and labor market participation, gender norms and women’s empowerment. She has been involved in projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Angola. In November 2017, Danila was chosen as the inaugural recipient of the Vernon Smith Ascending Scholar Prize. The prize, named after the 2002 Economics Nobel Prize winner Vernon Smith, is a “budding genius” award granted by the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics (IFREE) to an exceptional scholar in the field of experimental economics.
Inês Vilela is a Lecturer of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a development economist working on political economy and social networks topics. Currently, she is working on the civil conflict in the north of Mozambique. This is a context with low quality of institutions, rich in natural resources and with a recent wave of religious extremism. In her work, she uses various methodologies: lab games and field experiments complemented with survey and georeferenced administrative data. Inês holds a PhD in Economics from Nova SBE. She teaches courses of behavioural and development economics at the undergraduate level.
Dean Yang is a Professor at the University of Michigan, where he holds appointments in the Department of Economics and the Ford School of Public Policy. His current research is primarily on financial services for the poor, and international migration. Other past and current topics of interest include health, disasters, international trade, and political economy. Methodologically, much of his work involves randomized controlled trials in field settings, but other work involves unearthing novel data sources and combining them with existing secondary datasets for analysis of development issues. He is currently running survey work and field experiments among Filipino migrant workers and their families, and among rural microloan clients in Malawi. His past and current field project locations include El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malawi, Mozambique, the Philippines, as well as migrant populations of Filipinos in Italy, Indians in Qatar, and Salvadorans and Kenyans in the U.S. He teaches courses in development economics and microeconomics at the undergraduate, master, and Ph.D. levels. A native of the Philippines, he received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Harvard University.