Last August, Theodore Koutmeridis participated in a high-profile panel discussion with three Nobel Laureates in Economics. This event was held during the Economics Forum in Lindau, Germany, as part of the celebrated Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, where Nobel Prize-winning economists meet some of the field’s most promising young researchers.
The young Greek economist, Theodore Koutmeridis, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Warwick in Great Britain and he was one of the two talented researchers who were selected to participate in the opening ceremony panel discussion along with the Nobel economists Joseph Stiglitz, Roger Myerson and Daniel McFadden. The other PhD economics student who participated was Stefanie Stantcheva from MIT, USA. The German Federal President, Christian Wulff, gave the opening speech and the ceremony was attended by 17 Nobel-Laureates in Economics and 350 bright young economists, among others. The young economists were selected from a field of more than 5,000 applicants. Overall, more than 600 distinguished guests and reporters from every corner of the globe attended the opening ceremony panel discussion.
The panel discussion under the title “Sustainability in International Economics” focused primarily on the future of economics both as a scientific discipline and as a reference for policy-making in the light of the 2008 financial crisis and the Eurozone debt crisis. The panelists covered a broad range of topics from political economy considerations to the sustainability of health systems and from biodiversity to economic inequality. Instead of focusing on long-run deficiencies of the global economy, Theodore Koutmeridis and Joseph Stiglitz concentrated on the short-run and mainly on the sustainability of the European economy. Theodore Koutmeridis stressed that solutions based solely on austerity cannot be viable and that Eurozone needs a deepening of its institutions with both monetary and fiscal integration. Along the same lines was Joseph Stiglitz’s speech, who agreed on most of Theodore Koutmeridis’s remarks and he concluded that unfortunately for Germany there are no costless solutions, as it needs money to make the Euro work but it also needs money to break the Euro down. (you can watch a video of the opening ceremony, which concluded with the panel discussion at: http://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/#/Video?id=601)
Theodore Koutmeridis’s research has recently been honoured by the European Science Days organization with the First Prize of the international interdisciplinary “Award for the Best Paper on Signalling Theory”. Additionally, during his doctoral studies and in recognition for his contribution in teaching, the Greek economist received the “Award for Teaching Excellence” by the Economics Department at the University of Warwick. Apart from research and teaching awards, at the age of 27 he has already participated in some of the most important conferences in his field, such as the annual conferences of the Royal Economic Society in Cambridge, as well as of the European Economic Association in Oslo, among others.
Theodore Koutmeridis holds a BA in Economics from the University of Macedonia, Greece, as well as an MSc in Economics from the University of Warwick, where he is currently completing his PhD in Economics. His research interests include macroeconomics, labour economics and applied econometrics but he mainly focuses on issues related to wage inequality and market failures, such as financial constraints and asymmetric information. You can find more information about Theodore Koutmeridis’s work at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/tkoutmeridis
