Project Members

Anastasia Litina: She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Macedonia, Department of Economics. She is also a research associate at the University of Luxembourg. Her research agenda started as a theorist working on economic growth. Later during her PhD she was interested in the topic of corruption. During her visit at Brown University as a visiting fellow she was fascinated by the empirical literature on the long-run determinants of economic growth. Moreover, she started doing empirical work both at the macro and the micro level. While a post-doc at the University of Luxembourg she started working more intensely on the long-run determinants of culture and its implications for modern economies and societies. She worked on topics like corruption, trust, political trust, family ties, religion, innovation and attitudes to innovation, war and conflict. She also started working on aging, a topic that is widely debated these days. Based on the publication record of the last 10 years she ranks among the top 4% in the world of female economists and the top 8% of male and female economics (based on the ranking of the IDEAS registry).

Skerdilajda Zanaj: She is a Full Professor of Economics at the University of Luxembourg. Prior to joining the University of Luxembourg, she has been a Marie Curie Fellow at CORE, University Catholique de Louvain. She hold a PhD in Economics (2008) from CORE, University Catholique de Louvain in co-tutelle with the Università degli Studi di Siena. Her research agenda is at the intersection of public and international economics, with theoretical and empirical methods. Her papers cover the areas of fiscal competition, migration, cultural norms, the environment, and gender. In January 2020, she ranks in the top 6% of female researchers based on the publications of the last ten years. 

Georgios Mavropoulos: He is a Research Fellow at the University of Macedonia, Department of Economic Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Macedonia. His interests involve Demographic Economics, Empirical Economics, and Political Economy.

Despina Gavresi: She is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Department of Economics and Management, and a Research Fellow at the University of Macedonia. She hold a Ph.D. in Economics and an M.Sc. in Economic Analysis and Policy from the University of Ioannina, Department of Economics. Her interests involve Political Economy, Populism, Identity Economics, Aging, Applied Macroeconomics and Survey Data, and Applied Behavioral Economics.

Sofia Tsitou: She is an Adjunct Lecturer and a  Postdoctoral researcher at the University of  Macedonia, Department of Economics. She is also a research associate at the Hellenic Open University. She hold a PhD in Economics from the University of Ioannina, Department of Economics. Her research interests and activities involve Economic Growth, Human Capital, Regional Economics,  Economic History, Empirical Economics,  and Macroeconomics.