Financial Development in Africa Conference

Christopher Adam

University of Oxford | IGC

Christopher Adam is a Professor of Development Economics at the University of Lisbon. His current research spans three main themes: the macroeconomics of Africa; growth and structural change in low-income countries; and the economics and political economy of aid. His work uses methods of quantitative macroeconomics including stochastic and deterministic general equilibrium techniques. Christopher Adam is a visiting professor at (CERDI), Universite d’Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand and an occasional Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  From 2003-05 he served as external Macroeconomic Adviser to the Policy Division at the Department for International Development (DFID) and continues to represent DFID as Vice Chair of the African Economic Research Consortium. Since 2009 he has been the lead academic for the International Growth Centre (IGC) programme in Tanzania and in 2011 was appointed Special Advisor to House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee Inquiry into Aid Effectiveness. He is currently a co-editor of the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy and is a member of the editorial board of Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford Development Studies and the Tanzania Economic Review.

Cátia Batista

Universidade Nova de Lisboa | NOVAFRICA | CReAM | IZA

Cátia Batista is an Assistant Professor at Nova University of Lisbon. She obtained her Ph.D. in Economics from the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. She has an undergraduate degree in Economics from the Portuguese Catholic University. Catia’s main research interests are on international migration and capital flows, economic growth, income inequality, and education. She has lectured macroeconomics and international economics at the departments of Economics of the University of Chicago, University of Oxford, and Trinity College Dublin. In the past she has also worked at the International Monetary Fund and at the Portuguese Catholic University. She is currently affiliated as a researcher with CReAM (London, UK), IIIS (Dublin, Ireland), IZA (Bonn, Germany), and she is also a consultant for the IGC (International Growth Center, based at the LSE and at Oxford). Her work has been published in outlets such as the Journal of Development Economics and the World Bank Economic Review.

James Berry

Cornell University | IPA | J-PAL

James Berry is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Cornell University. His research addresses questions in development and labor economics, primarily through the use of field experiments. He is currently conducting several randomized evaluations to shed light on education production within the household and on decisions to take up and use health products.

Paul Collier

University of Oxford | NOVAFRICA | CSAE-Oxford

Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford University. He took a five year Public Service leave, 1998-2003, during which he was Director of the Research Development Department of the World Bank. He is also a Professeur invité at CERDI, Université d’Auverge, and at Paris 1. In 2008 Paul was awarded a CBE ‘for services to scholarship and development’. He is the author of The Bottom Billion, which in 2008 won the Lionel Gelber, Arthur Ross and Corine prizes and in May 2009 was the joint winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book prize. His second book, Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places was published in March 2009; and his latest book, The Plundered Planet: How to reconcile prosperity with nature was published in May of this year, 2010. Paul is currently Advisor to the Strategy and Policy Department of the IMF, advisor to the Africa Region of the World Bank; and he has advised the British Government on its recent White Paper on economic development policy. He has been writing a monthly column for the Independent, and also writes for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war; the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural-resources rich societies.

Asli Demirgüç-Kunt

World Bank

Asli Demirgüç-Kunt is the Director of Research in the World Bank. After joining the Bank in 1989 as a Young Economist, she has held different positions, including Director of Development Policy, Chief Economist of Financial and Private Sector Development Network, and Senior Research Manager, doing research and advising on financial sector and private sector development issues. She is the lead author of World Bank Policy Research Report 2007, Finance for All? Policies and Pitfalls in Expanding Access. She has also created the World Bank’s Global Financial Development Report and directed the issues on Rethinking the Role of the State in Finance (2013), and Financial Inclusion (2014). The author of over 100 publications, Ms. Demirgüç-Kunt has published widely in academic journals. Her research has focused on the links between financial development and firm performance and economic development. Banking crises, financial regulation, access to financial services including SME finance are among her areas of research. Prior to coming to the Bank, she was an Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from the Ohio State University.

Miguel Ferreira

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Miguel A. Ferreira holds the Banco BPI Chair in Finance at Nova School of Business and Economics. He is also a research associate.of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and a consultant of the Financial Stability Department of the Bank of Portugal. He has a PhD in Finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master in Economics from Nova School of Business and Economics, and a Licenciatura in Business from ISCTE. His research interests include international investments, institutional investors, and corporate governance. His research has been published in academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Review of Financial Studies. He has been a recipient of a European Research Council (ERC). He currently teaches corporate finance and risk management at the undergraduate and graduate level and also has an extensive experience of teaching in executive education programs.

William Jack

Georgetown University | gui2de

Billy Jack is Associate Professor of Economics and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown.  His research interests include empirical and applied microeconomics in the areas of development, public finance, and health economics, with a recent focus on microfinance, financial literacy, mobile technologies, and road safety interventions, in developing countries.  He has held positions on the Joint Committee on Taxation of the US Congress, and at the IMF, the Australian National University, and the University of Sydney.  He holds a BSc in mathematics and physics from the University of Western Australia, and an MPhil and DPhil in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Pedro Vicente

Universidade Nova de Lisboa | NOVAFRICA | BREAD | CSAE-Oxford

Pedro Vicente is an associate professor of economics at Nova School of Business and Economics, and an invited lecturer at the University of Oxford.

Pedro researches on development economics, with an emphasis on political economy issues, and a special interest in Africa. He designed and conducted field work (including randomized field experiments) in Mozambique, Nigeria, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe. He has published articles in top field journals such as the Journal of Development Economics.

Pedro holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, and is affiliated with BREAD (Duke University, USA) and with the CSAE (University of Oxford, UK). He is Lead Academic for Mozambique at the IGC (International Growth Center based at the LSE and Oxford), and a consultant for the World Bank.