Ugo Panizza

Biography

Ugo Panizza is Professor of International Economics at the Institute and Director of the Institute’s Centre for Finance and Development. Ugo Panizza has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute since 2008, a position he held in addition to being the Chief of the Debt and Finance Analysis Unit at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Previously, he worked at the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, alongside holding teaching and research posts at the American University of Beirut and the University of Turin. Professor Panizza’s research interests include international finance, sovereign debt, banking, and political economy. He has extensive work and research experience in Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa. He is a member of the executive committee of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and an editor of the Association's journal Economia.

Research Interest

Professor Panizza’s recent work includes a series of important articles on the costs of sovereign defaults, on the links between public debt and economic growth, and research with Professor Arcand and Enrico Berkes, of the IMF, on the threshold above which financial development no longer has a positive effect on economic growth. Together with Barry Eichengreen of the University of California, Berkeley and Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard’s Kennedy School, he did work on the causes and consequences of “original sin” in international finance. He has also worked with Eichengreen on capital account liberalisation and bond market development. Professor Panizza's research is wide-ranging and has covered areas such as income inequality, public sector labor market, and the relationship between religion and the education gender gap.