The committee monitors the mission of the group, guides and decides about the direction of the research that ESG undertakes and contributes to the production of the analysis articles.

Merih Uctum
Director

Merih Uctum is professor of International Macroeconomics and Finance at the Graduate Center/Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Uctum’s research includes work on international portfolio flows and foreign direct investment; international financial integration; financial crises; corporate profits; exchange rates and sustainability of foreign debt and intertemporal solvency; she serves as a member of the Board of Economic Advisors to the New York State Assembly Ways and Means Committee.  Previously Uctum was the Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center.  Before joining CUNY, she was a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She received a Ph.D. in economics from Queen’s University, Canada.

Paul Krugman
Associate Director

Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and a renowned columnist at New York Times, Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2008 for developing the New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. Prior to this award, he was the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, given every other year to the top economist under the age of 40 and was given the Asturias Award by the King of Spain, the equivalent of the European Pulitzer Prize. Krugman’s major contributions to the academic research are in international trade, liquidity traps, and currency crises. He published more than 200 journal articles and he is the author or editor of more than 20 books. Krugman served as the senior international economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan, he has been a consultant to several international institutions and countries, and he is a fellow of the Econometric Society, a Research Associate of the NBER and a member of the Group of Thirty. Krugman received his Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jim Orr
Associate Director

Jim Orr previously worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where he served as Vice President and Head of the Regional Analysis Function. During his tenure at the New York Fed, Jim co-authored articles on the construction of indexes of economic activity for New York State, New York City and New Jersey, the price of land in the New York metropolitan area, the impact of the 9/11 attack on New York City, and the economic and fiscal situation in Puerto Rico.  His experience includes an assignment to the New York City Office of the Deputy Mayor where he authored a report on foreign investment in the city. Prior to working at the New York Fed, Jim was an economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and an Assistant Professor at Manhattan College.  He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Business Administration from Drexel University.

Fotios Siokis
Associate Director

Fotios Siokis is a professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. Previously, he worked for a number of years as a senior economist in Alpha Bank, Athens, Greece and in AT&T, Business Communication Services in New Jersey. He has been a consultant to several international companies in the area of technology investments. His research interests are in the areas of the industrial organization of the Banking System, the relationship between the political cycles and the macroeconomy and of the macro stability and growth in the Balkan area. Fotios holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Hengzhong Liu
Associate Director

Hengzhong Liu is a Managing Partner of Thoken.io, a fin-tech startup optimized for micropayments. He previously managed groups of risk management, quantitative modeling, and business strategies as Senior Vice President or Managing Director at Citigroup, CIT Group, Fifth-Third Bank and Bank of America. Hengzhong published two books and many papers and articles in both Chinese and English on financial markets, marketing strategies, Chinese economic reform and development. One of his contributions is his macro-model of the impact of the endogenous demand from rural-urban migration on economic development (contrasted with Arthur Lewis’ micro-model of two-sector transition), which made him one of the final candidates for the CCTV, the China Central Television, Best Chinese Economist of Year 2008. He Holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Graduate Center of City University of New York, and a B.A in politics and government from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.