SPEAKERS

György H Matolcsy

Magyar Nemzeti Bank

Governor

Dr György Matolcsy is serving his second term as the governor of Magyar Nemzeti Bank, the central bank of Hungary. He was nominated to the position in 2013 and his tenure was renewed in 2019 for another 6 years. Since 2013 he is also a member of the Fiscal Council. Prior to his current position he was minister of national economy from 2010 to 2013. In 2007 he founded the Hungarian Economic Development Institute, which he headed for 3 years. Between 2000-2002 he was Hungary’s minister of economic affairs. Mr. Matolcsy is the author of the Széchenyi Plan, a comprehensive strategy aiming to promote economic growth in Hungary. He was director of the Institute for Growth (2002-2010) and its predecessor organisation, the Privatisation Research Institute from 1995 to 2000. Since the end of 1998 he has been a member of the economic advisory body of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Starting in 1991 he spent 3 years as a member of the Board of Governors at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) representing the Hungarian Government. In 1990 he joined the Office of the Prime Minister and served as the personal economic advisor to Prime Minister József Antall. Acknowledging his efforts in promoting economic development in Hungary, he was awarded the Barankovics Commemorative Coin in 2013. He graduated at Karl Marx University of Economics in 1977 and obtained his Doctorate degree in 1984.

Mr. Matolcsy is actively involved in educational activities. He is a frequent lecturer at top foreign and Hungarian universities. Since 2024, Mr. Matolcsy has been an honorary professor at John von Neumann University and an honorary citizen of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. In previous years, he has also received multiple distinctions, including honorary doctorates from the University of Debrecen and the University of Kaposvár, honorary membership of the Fudan Development Institute (FDDI) at Fudan University, and honorary membership on FDDI International Advisory Board of the Shanghai Forum.

Mr. Matolcsy is the author of numerous publications, articles, and books. His most recent publications include Hungarian Vision and Strategy, 2030/40 (2024) (Magyar jövőkép és stratégia, 2010-2030; 2023); Olvasó-Napló I.-II. (2023); Sustainable GDP - Global Discussion Paper (2024) published by the MNB; New Sustainable Economics – Global discussion paper (2022) published by the MNB, and the book titled On the Edge of Times (Az idő mintázatai; 2022) which collects his short thoughts written between 2019 and 2022 as feedbacks for articles of remarkable Western thinkers and journalists. His other books include Economic Balance and Growth (Egyensúly és Növekedés), for which the second edition was published in 2021 (first edition in 2015), The American Empire VS. The European Dream - The Failure of the Euro (Amerikai Birodalom vs. Európai Álom – Az euró kudarca; 2019), Bringing Up the Rear (Éllovasból sereghajtó; 2008), American Empire (Amerikai birodalom; 2004), and Our Living Memories (Élő emlékeink; 2003).

Christine Lagarde

European Central Bank

President

Christine Lagarde has been President of the ECB since November 2019.

Between 2011 and 2019 she served as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that she served as French Minister of Economy and Finance from 2007 to 2011, having been Trade Secretary from 2005 to 2007. A lawyer by background, she practised for 20 years with international law firm Baker McKenzie, of which she became Global Chair in 1999. She was the first woman to hold each of these positions.

In 2022 President Lagarde was ranked the second most influential woman in the world by Forbes. She has also been recognised by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was named Officer in the French Order of the Legion of Honor in April 2012 and Commander in the National Order of Merit in May 2021.

Joachim Nagel

Deutsche Bundesbank

President

Joachim Nagel has been President of the Deutsche Bundesbank since January 2022. Prior to this, he had already served in management positions at the Bundesbank between 1999 and 2016, including as an Executive Board member from 2010 with responsibility for the Directorates General Markets, Controlling and IT. From 2016 to 2020, he worked for the KfW Group, including as an Executive Board member. In 2020, he moved to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) where he became Deputy Head of the Banking Department. Dr Nagel studied economics at the University of Karlsruhe and received a doctoral degree in 1997. He also serves as a member of the Governing Council of the ECB, a Governor at the IMF and a member of the BIS Board of Directors.

Timothy D. Adams

Institute of International Finance (IIF)

President and CEO

Tim Adams currently serves as President and CEO of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) since January 2013. Prior to joining the IIF, Mr. Adams was Managing Director of The Lindsey Group, an economic advisory firm based in Washington, DC. Previously, he served as Under Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Treasury. In 1993, Mr. Adams co-founded the G-7 Group, a Washington-based advisory firm and later headed their Washington operation as Managing Director. Mr. Adams holds a B.S. in Finance, a Masters in Public Administration, and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Kentucky.

Alan J. Auerbach

University of California, Berkeley

Professor of Economics and Law

Alan J. Auerbach is the Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law, Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and former Chair of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and previously taught at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as Economics Department Chair. Professor Auerbach was Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation in 1992 and has been an adviser to several government agencies and institutions. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, having previously served as an Executive Committee Member and Vice President of that association and as Editor of its Journal of Economic Perspectives and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Professor Auerbach is a past President of the Western Economic Association International and the National Tax Association, from which he received the Daniel M. Holland Medal. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Sylvester Eijfinger

Economics, Visiting Professor at Harvard University

Professor of Financial Economics at Tilburg University

Sylvester Eijffinger is Professor of Financial Economics and Jean Monnet Professor of European Financial and Monetary Integration at Tilburg University and President of Tilburg University Society and as well as Visiting Professor of Economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Professor Eijffinger has a keen interest in monetary and fiscal policy and European economic and financial integration, and was Visiting Scholar at the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Bank of Japan, the Banque de France, the Bank of England, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Wim Duisenberg Research Fellow at the European Central Bank, as well as Special Advisor to the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission. He has published widely in prestigious economics journals, such as the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Public Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and the European Journal of Political Economy. Professor Eijffinger is editor of many professional journals and one of the founding fathers of the European Banking Center in Tilburg. Furthermore, he was many years the Programme Director of the CEPR European Summer Institute. He was during three years a member of the Council of Economic Advisers of the Dutch Parliament and he was fifteen years a member of the Monetary Experts Panel of the European Parliament for the formal Monetary Dialogue with the ECB. 

Philipp Hildebrand

BlackRock

Vice Chairman

Philipp Hildebrand, Vice Chairman of BlackRock, is a member of the firm’s Global Executive Committee and oversees the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII).

Mr. Hildebrand joined BlackRock in 2012. Prior to that, he served as Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB). In that capacity, he was also a Director of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Swiss Governor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a member of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), of which the Leaders of the G20 appointed him Vice Chairman in 2011. He was also Chairman of the Administrative Committee of the Board of Directors of the BIS, and part of the Steering Committee and the Plenary of the Financial Stability Board (FSB). Previously, Mr. Hildebrand was Chief Investment Officer of a Swiss private bank and a partner at Moore Capital Management in London.

Mr. Hildebrand is a Trustee of the British Museum, Chair of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, a member of the Group of Thirty and an Honorary Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. He sits on the International Leadership Council for Europe for the University of Toronto. He was awarded the Legion d’Honneur and Ordre National du Mérite by the President of France.

Mr. Hildebrand earned a BA from the University of Toronto, an MA from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Robert Holzmann

Governor

Oesterreichische Nationalbank

Robert Holzmann is an Austrian economist, Governor of the Austrian Central Bank und member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (since 2019), and elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (since 2014). He holds honorary positions at the South-Western University in Economics and Finance, Chengdu, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and University of New South Wales, Sydney. Before his return to academia in 2011, he held various positions at the World Bank including for 12 years Sector Director and acting Senior Vice President. Before joining the World Bank in 1997 he was academic in Austria and Germany, and senior economist at the IMF and OECD. He has published 39 books and over 200 articles on financial, fiscal and social policy issues. He has travelled to over 90 countries in the world.

Jacques de Larosiere

Former Managing Director of the IMF

Former Governor of the Banque de France

Jacques de Larosiere is a Former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (1978-1987). After beginning his career as a member of the Inspectorate General of Finances, he was Director of the Trésor (1973-1978), Governor of the Banque de France (1987-1993), President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1993-1998), President of the Observatoire de l'Epargne Européenne and of the think tank EUROFI, is currently Advisor to BNP Paribas’s Chairman. Mr de Larosiere is a former student of the ENA and a graduate of the IEP (Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris). He is a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France.

Eric M Leeper

Professor of Economics

University of Virginia

Eric Leeper has been the Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor in Economics at the University of Virginia since 2018. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, director of the Virginia Center for Economic Policy at UVA, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a member of the advisory council of the Center for Quantitative Economic Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He previously served as an external advisor to the Swedish central bank, member of the Research Council of the Bundesbank, and Visiting Scholar at many central banks.

His research focuses on macroeconomic policy, with special emphasis on monetary-fiscal policy interactions. One line of work focuses on the “fiscal theory of the price level,” by which fiscal policy influence economic activity and inflation through new channels. Past research examines the impacts of government spending, the consequences of alternative resolutions to long-run fiscal imbalances, and the modeling of the “fiscal limit” and sovereign risk.

Andréa M Maechler

Deputy General Manager

Bank for International Settlements

Andréa M Maechler became Deputy General Manager of the BIS on 1 September 2023.

Ms Maechler was a member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) from 2015 until 2023. At the SNB, she was responsible for the Money Market and Foreign Exchange, Asset Management, Banking Operations and Information Technology portfolios.

Prior to joining the SNB, she was Deputy Division Chief in the Global Markets Analysis Division of the International Monetary Fund. She has worked at other international organisations, including the European Systemic Risk Board and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

She was Chair of the Global Foreign Exchange Committee of central banks from December 2021 to June 2023. Ms Maechler has a PhD and a master's degree in International Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Diploma of Higher Studies (DES) in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Ivo Maes

Professor

Université Catholique de Louvain

Ivo Maes is a Professor, Robert Triffin Chair, at the Université Catholique de Louvain and a Non-resident fellow at Bruegel. He retired in 2021 as a Senior Advisor at the Economics and Research Department of the National Bank of Belgium. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics. In 2003, he was a member of the Committee for Institutional Reform of the West African Monetary Union. From May 2015 to June 2018, he served as the President of the Council of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought. He has been a visiting professor at several universities, among them Duke University (USA) and the Université de Paris-Sorbonne. He has published extensively on European monetary integration and the history of central banking and monetary theory. His book Robert Triffin : A Life (with Ilaria Pasotti, Oxford University Press, 2021) received the Best Book Award of the Italian and the European societies for the history of economic thought. In May 2018, he was awarded the Camille Gutt Prize for his scientific publications on money and finance.

Ewald Nowotny

President of the Austrian Society for European Politics

Former Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank

Mr Nowotny is President of the Austrian Society for European Poilitics. Before taking on his current position in 2019, he was the Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and a Member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank between 2008 and 2019. Before 2008 Mr Nowotny held a number of high levelpositions in financial institutions. Mr. Nowotny was the CEO of the Austrian BAWAG P.S.K. banking group from 2006 to 2007, served as Vice-President and Member of the Management Committee of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in Luxembourg between 1999 and 2003. Mr. Nowotny was a member of the National Council from 1978 to 1999. He is a full professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business since 1982 and was a full professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Between 1971 and 1972 he taught at the Harvard University and from 1967 to 1971 Mr Nowotny was the assistant to prof. Kurt W. Rotschild at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz.

Boris Vujčić

Croatian National Bank

Governor

In July 2012, Mr Vujčić became Governor of the Croatian National Bank for a six-year term of office and was re-appointed for another six-year term of office in July 2018. He has been a Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Vienna Initiative 2.0 since 2016, a member of the General Council of the ECB and a member of the General Board of the ESRB since 2013. Since 1.1.2023. Governor Vujčić is a member of the Governing Council of the ECB. Mr Vujčić won recognitions as the best governor in Central and Eastern Europe by Emerging Markets magazine in 2018, as well as the best world governor by The Banker (Financial Times) in 2019, and in 2021, he was rewarded with the Lamfalussy Award for lifetime achievement in the field of finance. Boris Vujčić holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zagreb. He has been an associate professor at the Zagreb Faculty of Economics since 2003. At the Zagreb Faculty of Science, Department of Mathematics, he has lectured as visiting professor since 2004.

Beatrice Weder Di Mauro

Centre for Economic Policy Research

President

Beatrice Weder di Mauro was appointed as the President of CEPR in July 2018. The Centre's President has overall responsibility for CEPR's research programmes, policy outreach, funding and all researcher appointments. She works closely with the Centre's Vice Presidents, Chief Executive Officer, Programme Directors, and CEPR staff to develop new initiatives and sustain existing activities. Beatrice Weder di Mauro is a Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, Visiting Professor at INSEAD and Distinguished Fellow at the INSEAD Hoffmann Global Institute for Business and Society. From 2001 to 2018, she held the Chair of International Macroeconomics at the University of Mainz, Germany, and from 2004 to 2012 she served on the German Council of Economic Experts. Previously was Assistant Professor at the University of Basel and Economist at the International Monetary Fund. She held visiting positions at Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the United Nations University in Tokyo. She has served as consultant to governments, international organizations and central banks (European Commission, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Central Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, OECD, among others). She has board level experience in leading global firms in finance, technology and Pharma. Currently, is an independent director on the board Bosch and of Unigestion. She is a senior fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economics Research (ABFER), a member the International Advisory Board of Bocconi and a member of the Bellagio Group. Beatrice's research addresses policy related questions in international macroeconomics, financial crises, climate change and growth. She has published widely in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics and Review of Finance. Recent publications have focused on , European integration, debt sustainability, the global financial architecture, the war in Ukraine, climate change and inflation.