About the Authors

Alexandr Akimov is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Accounting, Finance, and Economics at Griffith University, Australia. He held positions in risk management at the National Bank of Uzbekistan. His current research interests include post-communist economic transition and financial development as well local government and sustainable finance. He has published articles on post-communist Central Asia in journals such as Problems of Economic Transition, Comparative Economic Studies, Emerging Market Finance and Trade. He obtained his PhD from University of New England in 2007 and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Matei Alexianu is a junior development economist currently working for Adam Smith International, a UK-based development consultancy. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree in Economics from the London School of Economics. His interests include the political economy of Eastern Europe (especially his native Romania) and development economics in general.

Pavol Babos is a junior analyst at the Institute for Forecasting, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Dr. Babos studied at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Comenius University, Bratislava, where he currently teaches at the Department of Political Science. Dr. Babos teaches mostly courses on economic policies and quantitative methods. In the past, Dr. Babos has published several journal articles on labor market transitions, political reforms, and generally political economies of Central Eastern Europe. Apart from political economy, Dr. Babos also conducts research on corruption, and voters’ behavior.

Jakhongir Kakhkharov is a PhD student at Griffith University in Australia. Mr. Kakhkharov holds a graduate degree from Columbia University in New York and has done postgraduate research in economics at Oxford University. He also holds a diploma with honors from the Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent, specializing in International Economic Relations. His past work experience includes a number of consultancy assignments with World Bank, UNDP, GIZ, JICA, ADB and staff positions with US Department of Commerce, ADB, and ABN AMRO Bank. Mr. Kakhkharov has written a number of articles on economic policies in Central Asia.

Martina Lubyova is Director of the Institute for Forecasting of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Lecturer at the Economics University in Bratislava. She holds PhD in Economics from the University of the State of New York and CERGE-EI in Prague, PhD in Statistics from the Economics University in Bratislava, Doctor of Law and MSc in Biophysics from Comenius University in Bratislava. Prior to taking up her current position, she spent more than 10 years at the service of the International Labour Organisation, where she worked as the Director of ILO Sub-regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia in Moscow, Employment Specialist at the ILO Office in Moscow, and Employment Development Specialist at the ILO Multidisciplinary Team for South Asia in New Delhi. Her other academic stays and international postings include Institute for Higher Studies in Vienna, Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam, OECD Department for Education, Employment, Labour and Social Affairs in Paris, Czech Academy Sciences and Charles University in Prague. Her research interests are focused mainly on labor and education economics, international migration, forecasting, social affairs, and development. She has been member of OECD Expert group on Migration (SOPEMI) since 1995 and member of editorial boards of several journals focused on social affairs and development.

Paul Marer is Professor of International Business, Economics and Finance at the Business School of Central European University; previously Professor of Business at the Kelley School of Indiana University, Bloomington. Holding a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, he is the author, co-author, and editor of 20 books and 150 articles and chapters, mainly on the changing economic and business situation in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Russia and China.

Rajmund Mirdala is associate professor and head of the Department of Economics at Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Košice, Slovak republic. He is author of four books (Fiscal Policy in the European Converging Economies, Exchange Rates in the Central European Countries, Economic Aspects of Capital Flows Liberalization in the European Transition Economies, Monetary Rules, and Their Importance in the Context of Monetary Union and Economic Crisis). He has published 30+ articles in foreign scientific journals, 10+ articles in domestic scientific and professional journals, 40+ articles in domestic and foreign conferences. He is principal investigator in two projects from national grant schemes, deputy principal investigator in three projects from national grant schemes and researcher in eight domestic and foreign projects. He is a member of 12 editorial boards of foreign scientific journals and reviewer for 13 domestic and foreign scientific journals. His research covers following areas: Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Theory, Monetary Policy, Monetary Integration, International Financial Integration, Exchange Rates, Fiscal Policy, International Capital Flows, Transition Economies, Global Imbalances.

Matthias Nnadi is a lecturer at Cranfield School of Management. Dr. Nnadi’s research interests are in financial reporting, emerging markets, and mergers and acquisitions. He is actively involved in accounting training and consultancy, particularly in International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for private firms and International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) for government establishments. He is a member of several accounting professional bodies including the Institute of Chartered Institute of Public and Finance Association (CIPFA), British Accounting and Finance Association (BAA), Association of Tax Technicians (ATT), Institute of Financial Accountants (IFA), Federation of Tax Advisers (FTA), and Higher Education Academy (HEA).

Kamil Omoteso is currently the Head, Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting at Coventry University. Dr. Omoteso is an External Examiner at two other UK universities. Dr. Omoteso’s research interests cover Accounting and Auditing; Accountability Governance and Ethics; IT and Project Management, and he currently supervises doctoral students within these research areas. Dr. Omoteso is widely published. And he currently serves as an Editorial Board member and a Reviewer for a number of journals. He is the Chair of Centre for African Resources Research and Development (CARRD). One of CARRD’s projects, Educational Support Initiative for Africa has been able to donate over 65,000 books and academic journals worth over £1.8m to 21 institutions of higher education across Africa.

Dragiša Otašević works as a Bank Examiner within Banking Supervision at the Deutsche Bundesbank. He previously was employed at the National Bank of Serbia as a Junior Researcher in the Directorate for Economic Research and Statistics where he conducted research on the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Serbia. He holds a MSc in Quantitative Finance from the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade. His research interests include banking supervision, macro-finance, policy analysis, and monetary economics.

Zoltán Pogátsa is a Hungarian political economist who teaches at the University of West Hungary, focusing on the economics of European integration. He has published six books and numerous professional and media articles, and is a regular commentator in Hungarian and international media on issues related to European integration and economic development. His book entitled “Heterodox International Political Economics” offers a number of different perspectives on understanding the global economy of the 21st century. In the year 2013, he spent a year on a Greek government research grant in Athens. He summarized his inquiries into the Greek crisis in a book entitled “The Political Economy of the Greek Crisis.”

György Simon, Jr. is an independent researcher, Corvinus University of Budapest. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, on September 17, 1964. Between 1984 and 1989, he studied at the Faculty of International Relations of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), where he received an honors degree of an expert in international relations, summa cum laude. He completed his postgraduate studies at the Chair of World Economics of the same institute in 1993 and became a PhD in economics a year later. His professional experience includes work at the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (HIIA) and the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (HCSO). Since 2008, he has been a member of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN, Rochester, New York).

İbrahim Ünalmış is an Economist at the Central Bank of Turkey. He has received his BSc degree in Economics from Middle East Technical University, MSc degree in Money, Banking and Finance from Birmingham University, UK, and PhD degree in Economics from University of York, UK. His general research interests are fiscal policy, monetary policy, interactions between fiscal policy and monetary policy, the impact of monetary policy on asset prices and commodity markets especially oil and gold. Specifically, he is interested in developing tools to assess fiscal policy performance of emerging and developing countries, building Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Models to analyze the effects of government spending on external balances of an economy. In addition, he is interested in the effects of monetary policy on the storage behavior of commodity market investors. His articles have been published in IMF Economic Review, Economic Modelling and Finance Research Letters.

Xuan Vinh Vo is currently a lecturer at the School of Banking, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) and Master in Banking and Finance program manager at CFVG Ho Chi Minh City. Dr. Vo used to be a teaching staff at University of Western Sydney and University of New South Wales, Australia. He also has strong industry experience and used to hold different senior management positions including Director of R&D at VNPT Group, Director of Asset Management Company for a commercial bank, and board member of a blue-chip corporation in Vietnam. He obtained the B.Bus from the National Economics University, Hanoi, and B.E. from the University of Technology, Sydney, Master of Applied Finance from the University of Western Sydney as the top graduate and PhD from the University of New South Wales. Dr. Vo has published his research in many international journals including Research in International Business and Finance, Applied Economics, Applied Financial Economics, Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Global Finance Journal, and International Review of Financial Analysis, Contemporary Studies in Economic and Financial Analysis.

Yi Yu holds a postgraduate degree in Finance and Management from the Cranfield University School of Management. Prior to her postgraduate studies, she worked as an Account Planner with Hitachi Elevator (China) Co Ltd for three years. She had also worked as an Assistant Market Researcher in the China Life Insurance Company.