Distance Learning Program Main Instructors

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.