RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Development microeconomics, in particular: nutrition, labour markets and returns to education in developing countries, poverty and inequality
• Economic demography with concentration on ageing and intergenerational transfers
• Africa and Asia

EDUCATION

11/2001 - 01/2005         Ph.D. in Economics, Catholic University of

                                   Leuven, Belgium

09/2000 - 05/2001         Doctoral Student in Economics, University of   

                                   Southern   California, Los Angeles, USA

09/1996 - 06/1997          M.A. in European Economic Studies, College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium

09/1991 - 06/1996          Diploma in International Economic Relations, Economics University of Varna, Bulgaria

PRESENT POSITIONS

09/2005 - present           Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, United  

                                    Kingdom   Lecturer in Economics

09/2006 - present           IZA – Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn, 

                                    Germany  Research fellow

PAST POSITIONS

04/2005 - 12/2005          Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Vieillesse, Paris,

                                    France   Marie Curie research fellow

10/2004 - 03/2005          Max Planck Institute for Demographic

                                    Research,   Rostock,  Germany

                                    Marie Curie research fellow

11/2001 - 09/2004          LICOS, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

                                    Research assistant

09/2000 - 05/2001          University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

                                    Teaching assistant

11/1998 - 06/1999          ICRA Limited, Associate of Moody’s Investors Service

                                    in India

                                    Consultant with an independent project

RESEARCH GRANTS

                                    Leverhulme Trust

12/2008 - 12/2009       Grant F/00 275/L (£37,669) – Principal Investigator

                                     Research title: Nutritional Science Insights into the 

                                     Economics of Food Consumption in Bulgaria

                                     Co-researchers: Ira N. Gang (Economics, 

                                     Rutgers Uiversity,  USA)

                                     Daniel Hoffman (Nutritional Sciences, Rutgers

                                     University,   USA)

                                     Monnet Gbakou (Research Assistant hired for the

                                     project)

                                     British Academy

2009-2012                      UK-Africa network grant £ 29, 135

                                     Institutional partners: Ahmadou Aly Mbaye

                                     (Université  Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal),

                                     Barthélémy Biao  (Université de Parakou, Benin),

                                     PAM Zahonogo  Université de Ouagadougou, Burkina

                                     Faso)

Research partners: Yaya KY and Latif Dramani (Université Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal)

AWARDS AND HONOURS

                                    European Union

04/2004 - 09/2005          Marie Curie Grant for Project on Intergenerational 

                                    Relations

10/2004 - 03/2005          Marie Curie Grant for Project on Population Ageing

09/1996 - 07/1997         TEMPUS scholarship for attending the College of Europe

                                    Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA

Summer, 2004               Travel grant

LANGUAGES

Bulgarian (native), English (spoken: fluent; written: fluent), French (spoken: fluent; written: very good), Russian (spoken: fair; written: fair), Bengali (spoken: basic)

PAPERS AND PUBLICATIONS

Peer-Reviewed Journals and Books

Do Downward Private Transfers Enhance Maternal Labour Supply? Evidence from around Europe (with François-Charles Wolff). Forthcoming in Journal of Population Economics.

Allocation of Labor in Urban West Africa: Insights from the Pattern of Labor Supply and Skill Premiums (with Christophe Nordman and François Roubaud), Review of Development Economics, forthcoming.

Are Private Transfers Poverty and Inequality Reducing? Household Level Evidence from Bulgaria (with François-Charles Wolff). Journal of Comparative Economics, vol. 36, n° 4, pp. 584-598 (2008).

Upstream Transfers and the Donor's Labour Supply. Evidence from Migrants Living in France (with François-Charles Wolff). The Manchester School, vol. 77, n° 2, pp. 204-224 (2009).

Grandchild Care Transfers by Ageing Immigrants in France: Intra-household Allocations and Labour Market Implications (with François-Charles Wolff). European Journal of Population, vol. 24, n° 3, pp. 315-340 (2008).

Economic Reforms as a Tool to Attract Foreign Direct Investment: Is it a Chimera? (with Sumon K. Bhaumik). Applied Economics Letters, 16(9): 951-957 (2009).

The Impact of Labour Reallocation and Competitive Pressure on TFP Growth: Firm Level Evidence from Bulgaria. International Review of Applied Economics, 22(3), 321-338, (2008).

Self-selection and Wages during Volatile Transition. (with Ira N. Gang). Journal of Comparative Economics, 35(3), 612-619 (2007).

The Informal Sector during Crisis and Transition. (with Ira N. Gang and John Landon-Lane). In Guha-Khasnobis, Basudeb and Ravi Kanbur (Eds.) Informal Labor Markets in Development, Palgrave Macmillan (2006).

Monopolistic Wages or Efficient Contracts: What Determined the Wage-Employment Bargain in Post-Privatization Bulgaria. Economics of Transition, 14(2), 321-47, (2006).

How do Migrants Care for Their Elderly Parents: Time, Money and Location. (with François-Charles  Wolff). Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Special Issue from the First Conference on Long-term Care, 142, 123-130, (2006). 

How Important is Ownership in a Market with a Level Playing Field. The Indian Banking Industry Revisited (with Sumon K. Bhaumik). Journal of Comparative Economics, 32 (1), 165-180, (2004).

Other completed manuscripts

Ganyu Labour in Malawi: Efficiency Problems and Determinants of Supply (with Katharina Michaelowa and Anke Weber). Revise and resubmit.

Where to Work? The Role of the Household in Labor Allocation across Genders (with Ira N. Gang and John Landon-Lane). In submission.

Social Mobility Sans Frontières? Evidence from a Sample of Immigrants in France (with Claudine Attias-Donfut). Revise and resubmit.

Work in progress

Pulls, Pushes and Entitlement Failures in Labour Markets. Does the State of Development Matter? (with Sumon Bhaumik and Jeffrey Nugent). IZA Discussion Paper 2258, Bonn, Germany

Remittances, Child Labor and Migration. Theory and Evidence from the Kagera region in Tanzania (with Ira N. Gang and Gil Epstein).

Institutional Determinants of Firm Level Productivity around the Developing World. (with Sumon K. Bhaumik).

SHORT TERM VISITS

Summer, 2008               Rutgers University, Department of Economics, New Brunswick, New  Jersey, USA

                                    Visiting lecturer, taught a summer course in Labour Economics

Summer, 2006               IZA – Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn,

                                    Germany

                                    Visiting researcher

Summers, 2004/2006      Rutgers University, Department of Economics, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

                                    Visiting researcher

Summer, 2002               The World Bank, Washington, D.C., USA

                                    Summer intern, Africa Department

CONFERENCES AND SEMINARS

09/2009          IARIW Special Conference on Informality, Kathmandu, Nepal

05/2008             IZA/World Bank Conference on Employment and

                         Development,      Rabat, Morocco

03/2008             CSAE Annual Conference, Oxford, United Kingdom     

06/2007             IZA/World Bank Conference on Employment and Development,

                        Bonn, Germany

07/2006             European Society of Population Economics Annual Meeting,

                        Verona, Italy

05/2006             IFA Annual Meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark    

03/2006             Population Association of America Annual Meeting, Los

                         Angeles, USA

11/2005             St Antony’s College, Oxford University, United Kingdom

10/2005             Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, 

                         Germany

09/2005             8^th Meeting of the European Network on Grand Parenting in Europe, Tallin, Estonia

09/2005             European Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Torun,

                        Poland

05/2005             European Society of Population Economics Annual Meeting, 

                         Paris, France

04/2005             7^th Meeting of the European Network on Grand Parenting in Europe, Oxford, United Kingdom

03/ 2005            Royal Economic Society Annual Meeting, Nottingham, United

                        Kingdom

03/2005             Political Economy Department, La Sapienza University, Rome,

                         Italy

09/2004             EGDI-WIDER Conference on Unlocking Human Potential, Helsinki, 

                         Finland       

04/2004             7^th IZA Summer School in Labour Economics, Buch am Amersee, 

                         Germany

11/2003              Annual Meeting of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy, Maastricht, Netherlands

06/2003             Managing Economic Transition Network Seminar, SSEES, University College London, United Kingdom

04/2003             8^th Spring Meeting of Young Economists, Leuven, Belgium

09/2001             Annual Meeting of the European Trade Association, Brussels, Belgium

11/2000             Southeast Theory and International Economics Meeting, Houston, USA

REFERENCES

Professor Ira N. Gang, Rutgers University, Department of Economics, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA (gang@econ.rutgers.edu)

Professor Jeffrey B. Nugent, University of Southern California, Department of Economics, Los Angeles, California, USA (nugent@almaak.usc.edu)