Members of the Macroeconomics and Finance Research Group cover a wide range of research interests including fiscal and monetary policy, financial crises and regulation, international macro-finance, financial development, economic history and the role of politics and culture in financial systems.
Dr. Orkun Saka is Senior Lecturer in Economics and the leader of the Macro-Finance Research Group at City St. George's, University of London. He also holds positions as Visiting Senior Fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science, Research Associate at STICERD as well as Research Affiliate at CESifo network. His research and teaching revolve around financial intermediation, international finance and political economy. He has previously visited several research institutions including the UC Berkeley and University of Cambridge. His academic papers have been published in some of the leading journals in economics and finance, such as The Economic Journal and Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.
Prof. Albert Banal-Estanol is Professor of Economics at City St. George's, University of London, Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Affiliated Professor at the Barcelona School of Economics (BSE), Visiting Professor of the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium), and research fellow at IESE Business School and at DIW Berlin.
Prof. Michael Ben-Gad is Professor of Economics at City St. George's, University of London. His research focuses on dynamic macroeconomics with applications to taxation, public debt, the economic effects of immigration, national security as well as the emergence of multiple equilibria in models of economic growth and new methods to analyse shock decompositions in DSGE models. He is currently working on a project to incorporate compositional data into econometric models and frequently writes commentary in the media on geopolitics.
Prof. Saqib Jafarey is Professor of Economics at City St. George's, University of London. His specializations are macroeconomics, development economics and the overlap between them. His main macroeconomic research area is the general equilibrium dynamics of imperfect and incomplete markets, with publications in Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and Journal of Mathematical Economics. His external roles have included membership of the ESRC Peer Review College (2011-2018) and of the Economics and Econometrics sub-panel in REF2021. Currently, he is an Editor of the Bulletin of Economic Research and an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Development and Economic Alternatives in Pakistan. In the latter capacity he is focusing on the structural and fiscal challenges facing Pakistan's sluggish economy.
Dr Anna Kaliciak is Lecturer in Economics at City St. George's, University of London.
Dr Seefat-E-Rabbi Khan is Lecturer in Economics at City St. George's, University of London. He has research interests on economic growth and development in emerging markets. His work explores labour market dynamics, particularly the role of informality, and examines how macroeconomic policies affect growth and employment. By analysing these interactions, he provides insights into fostering sustainable and inclusive progress and aims to inform policies that reduce inequality and support resilient development.
Dr Matthew Knowles is Lecturer in Economics at City St. George's, University of London. He completed his PhD at the University of Rochester in 2017, and held positions at the University of Leicester, University of St Andrews and University of Cologne before joining City in August 2023. His research focuses on topics in macroeconomics, public finance and political economy, with an emphasis on the implications of financial and labour market frictions for business cycles and optimal taxation. His ongoing and past research covers, among others, work on the importance of wage rigidity for business cycles, the implications of financial market frictions for optimal taxation, and the macroeconomic effects of bank deregulation.
Prof. Paul Levine is Honorary Visiting Professor at City St George’s, University of London and Professor of Economics at University of Surrey. His general research area is in the construction and estimation of DSGE closed and open economy macro-models. His research has a particular focus on policy rules, international policy coordination and the credibility problem.
Dr Claudia de Lozanne Jefferies is Senior lecturer in Economics at City St George’s, University of London. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Basel, Switzerland. Her main field of research is the financial history of early modern Spain and the Americas from a variety of perspectives, which include literary analysis and semiotics. She teaches International Finance and the History of Economic Thought and has published monographies and articles in the fields of economic history, history of economic thought and applied economics.
Prof. Joe Pearlman (MA MSc PhD) is Professor of Economics at City St. George's, University of London. He obtained his PhD in Control Systems from Imperial College, and subsequently obtained an MSc in economics from LSE. He has spent short periods as a research associate at both the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Prof. Keith Pilbeam is Professor of Economics at City St. George's, University of London, having gained his PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. He has worked for Nat West Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland. His research has been published in leading economics and finance journals such as the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organization, International Journal of Finance and Economics and Oxford Economic Papers. He is President of the European Economics and Finance Society (eefs-eu.org) and Editor-in-Chief of the 3* AJQG rated International Journal of Finance and Economics (Wiley). He is the author of two well-known textbooks International Finance and Finance and Financial Markets, published by Palgrave. He runs the educational website BusinessEconomics.com.
Dr. Gabriele Vecchio is Lecturer in Economics at City St. George's, University of London. He is interested in financial econometrics and asset pricing, with an expertise in frequency domain methods. He holds a BSc and MSc in Finance from Bocconi University and a PhD in Finance from Queen Mary, University of London.
