About me

Welcome! I am an empirical economist interested in applied micro- and macroeconomics, labour markets, social policy analysis, poverty measurement and the economic history of 19th-century Europe. 

I obtained my PhD in Economics from the Central European University in 2017. My thesis entitled "History as an Agent of Growth: Natural Experiments from Central Europe" and used exciting hand-collected statistical data from 19th-century Hungary to study the causal effects of socio-cultural factors and infrastructure (such as ethnic and religious diversity, Protestantism, railroads) on economic growth and development.  

I am currently working as a short-term consultant at the Development Research Group of the World Bank. Prior to that, I was a research fellow at the Directorate for Fair and Sustainable Economy of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), focusing on socio-economic resilience, poverty measurement, household finances and the distributional effects of rising inflation and energy prices. The ABSPO research project I coordinated produced the first set of cross-country comparable absolute poverty lines across the European Union.  

My earlier work experience comes from

• the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs of the OECD, 

• the Banking Groups Supervision Division of the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority,

• the Research Departments of the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston & New York.