Coming of age: report on the euro area

About the authors

• Jean Pisani-Ferry

  Jean Pisani-Ferry is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute (Washington DC). He is also a professor of economics with Sciences Po (Paris).

  He sits on the supervisory board of the French Caisse des Dépôts and serves as non-executive chair of I4CE, the French institute for climate economics.

  Pisani-Ferry served from 2013 to 2016 as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie, the ideas lab of the French government. In 2017, he contributed to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid as the Director of programme and ideas of his campaign. He was from 2005 to 2013 the Founding Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank that he had contributed to create. Beforehand, he was Executive President of the French PM’s Council of Economic Analysis (2001-2002), Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance (1997-2000), and Director of CEPII, the French institute for international economics (1992-1997).

  Pisani-Ferry has taught at University Paris-Dauphine, École Polytechnique, École Centrale and the Free University of Brussels. His publications include numerous books and articles on economic policy and European policy issues. He has also been an active contributor to public debates with regular columns in Le Monde and for Project Syndicate.

• Philippe Aghion

  Philippe Aghion, a Non-resident Senior Fellow since September 2006 to 2016, was coordinating Bruegel's research project on higher education.

  He is the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he started teaching Economics in 2000. Previously, he held positions at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nuffield College (Oxford), and University College London.

  Philippe's research spans a broad array of fields including corporate finance, industrial organisation, political economy and macroeconomics. He is managing editor of the journal The Economics of Transition, which he launched in 1992.

• André Sapir

  André Sapir, a Belgian citizen, is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also University Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Research fellow of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

  Between 1990 and 2004, he worked for the European Commission, first as Economic Advisor to the Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, and then as Principal Economic Advisor to President Prodi, also heading his Economic Advisory Group. In 2004, he published 'An Agenda for a Growing Europe', a report to the president of the Commission by a group of independent experts that is known as the Sapir report. After leaving the Commission, he first served as External Member of President Barroso’s Economic Advisory Group and then as Member of the General Board (and Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee) of the European Systemic Risk Board based at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

  André has written extensively on European integration, international trade and globalisation. He holds a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he worked under the supervision of Béla Balassa. He was elected Member of the Academia Europaea and of the Royal Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.

• Alan Ahearne

  Alan Ahearne is a Professor and the Head of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Ireland and has served as adviser to the IMF. He is Chairman of the ESRI and Department of Finance Joint Research Programme on the Macro-economy and Taxation.

  Alan served as economic adviser to Ireland’s former Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan from 2009 to 2011.

  Alan obtained his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh) in 1998 and subsequently joined the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, where he worked as a Senior Economist for seven years.

  His research at Bruegel has focused on macroeconomics, international finance and public policy, including macroeconomic adjustment in the euro area, reform of the euro area and governance of the EU, global current account imbalances, housing booms and busts, and the international experience with banking and financial crises.

• Jürgen von Hagen

  Jürgen von Hagen, a German citizen, was Bruegel'‘s first Non-resident Senior Fellow. His widely acclaimed work on European integration addresses public finance and political economy issues.

  Jürgen is the Director of the Center for European Integration Studies in Bonn, a Research Fellow of the CEPR and a member of the Academic Advisory Council to the German Federal Minister of Economics and Labor.

  He has previously taught at Indiana University (1987-92) and the University of Mannheim (1992-96). His current interests include macroeconomics of European integration and the euro area and European public finance.