Habilitation in Economics under review of Prof. Thomas Straubhaar and Prof. Erich Gundlach at the University of Hamburg, Germany and Prof. Mary O’Mahony at the King’s College London, UK. Completed on the 29th of June 2020. Thesis title: Intangible Capital and Labour Productivity Growth and Determinants of Public Support for the Euro. My thesis was published as a two volume book with Springer entitled "Intangible Capital and Growth" (Vol. 1) and "Public Support for the Euro" (Vol. 2). The two volumes cover 19 academic essays of mine, including publications in Journal of Common Market Studies and Review of Income Wealth.

Doctorate in Economics under the supervision of Prof. Stephan Klasen at the University of Göttingen, Germany and Prof. Fran Tonkiss at the London School of Economics, UK. Completed on 12th of October 2007. Thesis title: Social Capital, Trust and Economic Growth- A Cross-Sectional and Panel Analysis. My thesis was published by Prof. Bruno Frey in Kyklos in 2009.   

Visiting Researcher at the London School of Economics, UK. Exchange as part of PhD in Economics 2005-2007. During my stay at LSE I prepared the manuscript on trust and growth to be published with Kyklos in 2009.               

Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Germany: Study of Economics, Sociology, and European Law. In 2003 awarded a Diploma in Social Science under the supervision of Prof. Ulrich Beck. Thesis title: Social capital and the public sphere – two forms of civil society. Core modules included Methods of Quantitative Empirical Research, Social Inequality, Economic Growth and European Economic Law. In addition, I conducted two semesters of research in Nancy (France) as an Erasmus Exchange Student.  

Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Essen, Germany. Abitur (1996). In 1993 I attained High-Schools in Rhode Island, US and Keflavik, Iceland; In 1988 I attained the US Embassy School in Reykjavik, Iceland.  

Senior Research Fellow & Senior Lecturerat the department of economics at the chair of international economics of Prof. Thomas Straubhaar, University of Hamburg, Germany. Since 2019 I have become the Principal Investigator of the macroeconomic research package conducted within the Horizon 2020 project GLOBALINTO. Since November last year the department of economics has conferred the status of Senior Lecturer on me.

Grantee, Scientific Expert and Research Policy Advisor within the EU framework programme for DG Research & Innovation, DG Joint Research Centre and DG Research Executive Agency, European Commission, Brussels. I worked together with Dr. Marianne Paasi (DG RTD), Dr. Andrea Saltelli (DG JRC) and Prof. Mary O’Mahony (KCL) in the context of my research expertise in the field of intangible capital and labor productivity growth.         

Non-Resident Research Fellow, DG EFCIN Fellowship Initiative 2014/2015, DG Economics and Financial Affairs, European Commission, Brussels. I was awarded a grant by DG ECFIN to conduct applied economics lecture notes on the topic of “Political Economy of EMU: Rebuilding Systemic Trust in the Euro Area in Times of Crisis”. Selected other participants included Prof. Marcel Fratzscher, Prof. Beatrice Weder Di Mauro, Prof. Charles Wyplosz, Prof. Ester Faia and Prof. Lucrezia Reichlin.

Associate Research Fellow, Department of Economics, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research, University of Göttingen, Germany. In 2009, Prof. Stephan Klasen conferred the status of associated research fellow on me and actively supported my co-joint work with Dr. Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann D.   
 
Editor of Intereconomics, Review of European Economic Policy, Brussels. On behalf of CEPS, I co-edited Intereconomics jointly with Dr. Brigitte Preissl working at that time at the ZBW in Hamburg, Germany
 
Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Macro-Economic Policy Unit, Brussels. The majority of my work (65%) involved the acquirement and the implementation of applied research projects (35%) funded by national ministries, national foundations and corporate members and basic research projects (30%) funded by the European Commission concerning my research on intangible capital and labour productivity growth and European Macroeconomic Policy and Economics and Political Economy of EMU and the Euro. The other part of my work (35%) involved the day-to-day economic policy consulting of a leading European Think Tank and the co-editing of the applied Economics journal Intereconomics. 

Scholarship contract as a Fellow of the Postgraduate programme “The future of the European model” at the University of Göttingen under supervision of Prof. Stephan Klasen. The Postgraduate programme was financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and involved eight interdisciplinary professorships from the faculty of Business and Economics and the faculty of Social Science.     

 


German (Mother Tongue), English (Fluent), French (Good), Italian (Intermediate), Icelandic (Basic)

Most commonly utilized statistical software includes Stata, MS-Excel, E-Views, SPPS, Stat Transfer and R. Stata is used for coding, dataset constructions, and panel data regression analysis (e.g. PP, FE, RE, IV, Difference, System GMM, Probit). MS-Excel is used for exploratory and descriptive statistics. E-Views is used to estimate time-series econometric estimations (FE DFGLS).  Text processing Software includes MS-Word, Open Office, TeXstudio, etc. MS-Word is used as the text formatting software for my academic articles. Presentation Software includes Power Point, which is used for lecture and conference presentations.