top of page

Distance Learning Program Main Instructors

Taras Hrendash.jpg

Innovation Economics 

​Taras is a junior researcher in the economics of science, technology change, and innovation at IDEA Think Tank at CERGE-EI. Taras’ research interests include the geography of collaboration networks, the clustering of innovation, accelerated patent examination, aging of scientists, scientometrics, and gender homophily in science.

Screenshot 2022-10-18 at 11.22_edited.jpg

Health Economics, Labor Economics

Eva works as an expert analyst of the economy in the Monetary and Statistics Department at the Czech National Bank. She received her Ph.D. from CERGE- EI in 2016, and holds a master’s degrees in mathematics management from Comenius University, and international trade from the University of Economics, both in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Christian Ochsner.png

Understanding the 2021 Nobel Prize - From Correlations to Causation

Christian Ochsner, Dr. rer. pol. has been an Assistant Professor at CERGE-EI (under U.S. permanent charter) since 2018. He is also an Assistant Professor at CERGE, Charles University, and a Researcher at the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Christian holds a Ph.D. (Dr. rer. pol.) from Dresden University of Technology, Germany. He received a B.A. in Business and Economics at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and an M.Sc. in Economics at Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany. 

Gabriela Kuvikova.jpg
Gabriela Kuvíková, Ph.D.

Financial Markets

Gabriela is a senior risk manager at Generali CEE Holding’s Financial & Credit Risk Department. She received her Ph.D. from CERGE-EI in 2015 and holds an M.Sc. in economics and corporate management from the University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia. Gabriela’s research is focused on credit risk and the screening devices that lenders utilize to alleviate adverse selection present on the credit market.

Daniil Kashkarov_edited.jpg

Modeling Macroeconomics: How Macroeconomists Understand and Predict the World

Daniil is a Ph.D. candidate at CERGE-EI. He joined CERGE-EI’s Ph.D. program after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from the University of Economics in Prague. He also holds an M.A. in economics from CERGE-EI. Last academic year, Daniil spent time at Yale University developing his research on the adjustment of workers to individual and aggregate shocks on labor markets. His research interests include: the macroeconomics of labor, life-cycle modeling, technological change, and skill and human capital accumulation. Daniil enjoys studying and developing quantitative macro models.

Martina Miotto.png

Development Economics 

Martina is a postdoctoral fellow at the Economic Institute in Prague. She received her PhD in economics from the University of Warwick in 2019, holds a MRes in economics from the University of Warwick, and a MSc in Economics and Finance from the University of Padua, cum laude. Her research interests include the intersection of economic history and development economics, and Bangladesh’s garment sector.

Silvester van Koten.png

Energy Economics & Electricity Markets,        Energy Economics & Climate Policy

Silvester is a senior researcher at the Department of Economics at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, and a research associate at CERGE-EI in Prague. His work was published in journals such as Energy Economics, Energy Policy, European Economic Review and the Journal of Regulatory Economics.

Darya Korlyakova.png

Behavioral Economics

Darya is a junior researcher at CERGE-EI, and works as a main instructor at the University of Economics in Prague. Darya holds a master’s degree in economics from CERGE-EI, and a master’s degree in international business from the University of Economics in Prague. Darya is keenly interested in experimental research, focusing on information provision and acquisition in the context of discrimination.

Vahan Sargsyan.png

Introduction to Data Science

Vahan is a data scientist

working with big data and implementing machine learning technolo-gies at a cloud-based computer software company. He received his Ph.D. from CERGE-EI in 2019 and holds master’s degrees in economics from the International School of Economics at TSU, Georgia, and marketing from the Armenian State Agrarian

University. During his Ph.D. studies, his research was focused on empirical economics, migration and labor economics, specializing in work discrimination.

Vladimir Otrascenko.jpg

Environmental Economics

Vladimir is a research associate at the Center for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU), Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisbon, Portugal. His research interests are environmental and resource economics, health and population economics, development economics, climate change, non-market valuation of public goods, field experiments, and quality of life with a focus on Eastern Europe and Central Asia.  He has published in peer- reviewed journals, including: Journal of Public Economics, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Comparative Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, Ecological Economics, and Land Economics.

Vilem Semerak.png

 International Trade 

Vilem is a researcher at the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and senior lecturer at the Institute of Economic Studies of Charles University (IES FSV UK). He has worked on research projects in China, taught in Myanmar and in other international projects.

Miroslava Federicova.png

Education Economics

Miroslava Federičová is a post- doctoral fellow at CERGE-EI and a researcher at IDEA Think Tank. She received her Ph.D. from CERGE-EI in 2016 and holds a master’s degree in the mathematics of economics and finance from the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Miroslava’s research focuses on the economics of education,

applied microeconomics, and micro econometrics, specializing in education inequalities and the effect of school systems on educational opportunities.

Jakub Grossman.jpg

Labor Economics

Jakub is an economic analyst at the Czech National Bank and junior researcher at CERGE-EI. He also works as a researcher at the IDEA Think Tank. Currently, his work focuses on labor market topics (the minimum wage, unemployment, migration), policy evaluation, and empirical micro- econometrics.

_MG_1330.jpg

Experimental Economics

Danijela is a post- doctoral fellow at the Economic Institute in Prague. She completed her Ph.D. in economics and econometrics at CERGE-EI in September 2020. Her research interests include: behavioral and experimental economics, including incentive influence on pro-social behavior; and the underlying psychological and

biological mechanisms influencing human behavior. Danijela is Course Director for the CERGE-EI Foundation’s Distance Learning Program.

Olga Popova.jpg

Public Economics

Olga is a senior researcher with tenure at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, Germany; a research associate at CERGE-EI; and a research fellow at IZA-Institute of Labor Economics and Global Labor Organization (GLO). She holds a Ph.D. in economics from CERGE-EI (2012). Her research interests include health and environmental economics, economic history, development economics, and public economics. Her research has been published in the Journal of Public Economics, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Comparative Economics, and Small Business Economics, among others, and was featured by the leading research policy portal VoxEU.

Aleksandr Levkun.png

Behavioral Economics, Game Theory

Aleksandr is an economic theorist specializing in Information Economics. He received his Ph.D. from the Economics Department at the University of California San Diego in 2022. Aleksandr’s research focuses on the strategic mediation of information.

Ella Sargsyan_edited.jpg

Econometrics in a Nutshell

Ella is a Junior Researcher and Ph.D. candidate at CERGE-EI. She holds an M.A. in Economics from CERGE-EI and ISET. Her research interests are mainly in the field of Development Economics with her current research focused on the impact of violent conflicts on various economic, social, and political factors in developing countries. She particularly enjoys working with spatial data. Since 2016, Ella has been involved in teaching, both as a graduate teaching assistant and as an instructor of courses including Statistics, Econometrics, Development Economics, and Microeconomics. She also works with the pedagogical team of CERGE-EI’s Academic Skills Center and serves as an instructor for several pedagogical training courses for economists.

bottom of page