Expert Categories: Internal
Konstantin Sonin
Konstantin Sonin is John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. His research interests include political economics, economic theory, and conflict.
Sonin earned MSc and PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University and MA in economics from Moscow’s New Economic School (NES), was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Davis Center, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a visiting professor at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. Before joining the University of Chicago, he served on the faculty and as a vice-president of NES and HSE University in Moscow. Over two decades, he has guest-lectured in dozens of universities, summer schools, and high schools across Russia and worked part-time as a teacher of economics in a high school.
His research has been published in leading academic outlets in economics and political science. In addition to academic work, Sonin writes columns, Op-Eds, and blogs on Russia-related political and economic issues. In 2023, he was put on the federal wanted list in Russia for posting information about the atrocities that the Russian occupying forces committed in the town of Bucha in Ukraine.
Konstantin first visited the Stockholm Institute for Transition Economies in 1999, and has been a research affiliate and a friend ever since.
Lennart Samuelson
Lennart Samuelson is an affiliated researcher at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) since 2008. He earned his Ph.D. at the Institute for Research in Economic History at the Stockholm School of Economics, in 1996. He was a guest researcher at the National Defence College in 1996-2001 and Waern visiting professor at the Institute for Studies in History at the University of Gothenburg, in 2011-2012.
Samuelson’s research in Russian economic history re-started when the archives opened in 1992. His major research topic is the development of the Soviet military-industrial complex from the 1930s onwards. He has participated in several research projects on Soviet agrarian history of the 1930s, on the Great Terror 1937-38 and the Gulag camp system, and also on Sweden’s relations with the Soviet Union in the Cold War period. His research results have been rewarded by several institutions. The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities rewarded its prestigious Rettig Prize in 2014 to Samuelson for his fundamental research and innovative grasp of the Russian archival materials.
On 4 November 2014, for organizing Swedish-Russian economic-historical workshops and conferences at Stockholm School of Economics and Gothenburg university, for arranging study visits for Russian archivists in Stockholm and for Swedish scholars in Moscow, as well as for his spreading knowledge on Russian history to the Swedish public, he was awarded Orden Druzhby (the Friendship Order) by President Vladimir Putin at the National Day ceremony in the Kremlin.
Marija Krumina
Marija Krumina is a Research Fellow and Director of the scientific institution at the Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies (BICEPS). She is a doctoral degree candidate at the University of Latvia and a leader of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) team in Latvia. Her research interests include entrepreneurship, health economics, labour markets, and migration policy.
(Last updated in May 2025)
Natalia Turdyeva
Natalia Turdyeva is senior economist at CEFIR. She has done research in such areas as computable general equilibrium (CGE) models including regional CGE for Russia, and the restructuring of the Russian electricity sector.
Natalya Volchkova
Natalya Volchkova is a Director of the Centre for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR at NES) and a Senior Lecturer at the New Economic School (NES) in Moscow, Russian Federation. She holds a Ph.D. from the Central Economic and Mathematics Institute of Russian Academy of Science.
She serves as a member of the Committee for Development Policy, United Nations, a member of the Expert Council of Open Government of Russia, member of the Expert Council of Accounting Chamber of RF and some others. In 2008, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. In 2016 she was nominated for Yegor Gaidar Award in Economics.
Her research interests are in the areas of international trade theory and policy, natural resource economics and corporate governance.
(Last updated October 2019)
Norberto Pignatti
Norberto Pignatti is an Energy & Environment and Labor Economist. Norberto holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Bologna (2007). Since 2016, he has been the Head of the Energy and Environmental Policy Research Center at ISET Policy Institute. He is also Associate Professor of Policy at the International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University (ISET), which he joined in 2009. His research interests include labor market policies, energy and environmental policies, and sustainable development.
(Last updated November 2o21)
Olena Nizalova
Olena Nizalova is a Research Fellow in Health Economics at the University of Kent (United Kingdom) and Associate Professor at Kyiv School of Economics. She completed her PhD program in Economics at Michigan State University.
Her recent works include an investigation of the behavior of near elderly with respect to the labor supply and informal care for their elderly parents throughout the world, motherhood wage penalty and inequality in workplace amenities in Ukraine.
Olga Rastrigina
Olga Rastrigina is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, UK. Before moving to the UK, Olga spent six years as a Research Fellow at BICEPS.
Currently, Olga is working on the development of the tax-benefit micro-simulation model EUROMOD.
Paul Castaneda Dower
Paul Castaneda Dower is an Assistant Professor at the New Economic School (NES) in Moscow, Russia, and also works as a Lead Economist for the Center for Financial and Economic Research (CEFIR).
He studies the political economy of development and his research has focused on the impact of land reform on household and firm behavior.
Aleh Mazol
Aleh Mazol received his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Belarusian State Economic University (2003) and obtained his Master’s degree in Economics from Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in 2013. Since January 2015, Mazol works at the Belarusian Research and Outreach Center (BEROC) as a Researcher.
His research interests are spatial economics, monetary economics, poverty and inequality and corporate governance.
(Last updated November 2022)