Francesco Giavazzi, Isabel Schnabel, and Tessa Ogden honoured at the CEPR Paris Symposium 2024

Francesco Giavazzi is Chair of CEPR’s Advisory Board and was one of CEPR’s first Research Fellows, appointed in 1985. He was a Programme Director of CEPR’s International Macroeconomics programme between 1988 and 1999. A prolific contributor to CEPR’s research output, Francesco has authored nearly 50 CEPR Discussion Papers, two Policy Insights—including Policy Insight 130: Is Italy’s RRF Plan Working, or Is It Just Another Waste of Money?, co-authored with Chiara Goretti and published in May this year—and has contributed to several CEPR books and publications.

He is currently Deputy Chair of Bocconi University’s International Advisory Board and Professor Emeritus at Bocconi University. His research spans international monetary economics, particularly European monetary integration, public debt sustainability, fiscal stabilisation, monetary policy, and financial institutions, and he has made major contributions to the academic literature, some of which were joint with the late Alberto Alesina.

In addition to his academic contributions, Francesco is an institution builder, playing a key role in the inception of IGIER, the Innocenzo Gasperini Institute for Economic Research, the research centre created in 1990 born from the collaboration between Bocconi, CEPR and NBER. He has also played major roles in economic policy, most recently as Economic Advisor to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi from May 2021 to October 2022, and between 1992 to 1994 as Director General of the Italian Treasury with responsibility for overseeing economic research and privatizations.

Isabel Schnabel has served as a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB) since 2020, where she is responsible for Market Operations, Research, and Statistics. Isabel is currently on leave from the University of Bonn, where she has been Professor of Financial Economics since 2015. Previously, she was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts (2014–2019) and served as Co-Chair of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts in 2019.

She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Mannheim, and her research, which focuses on financial stability, banking regulation, international capital flows, and economic history, has been published in leading journals such as the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of International Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, and Journal of Economic History. In 2018, she was awarded the Gustav Stolper Prize of the Verein für Socialpolitik.

Isabel has been a CEPR Distinguished Fellow since 2022 (Research Fellow since 2015, Research Affiliate since 2006) and is also a member of the European Financial Architecture RPN.  She has been an active contributor to CEPR, having co-written 21 VoxEU columns, authored 10 CEPR Discussion Papers, contributed to eight CEPR books, and was an author of the well known “7+7 CEPR Policy Insight on reconciling risk sharing with market discipline.

At the CEPR Paris Symposium 2024, her keynote address focused on navigating towards a neutral level of policy rates, highlighting that monetary policy is at a critical juncture. With interest rates approaching neutral territory and risks to the inflation outlook broadly balanced, she argued that monetary policy should proceed gradually and remain data dependent.

CEPR also took the opportunity to celebrate the exceptional service of our CEO, Tessa Ogden, presenting her with the 2024 CEPR Special Service to the Profession Award. Tessa's outstanding contributions to CEPR began in 1995, and after serving as Chief Operating Officer until 2002, she returned in 2014 as CEO following the retirement of Stephen Yeo, who had led CEPR for 30 years. Over the past decade, Tessa has expertly guided the organisation, working initially with Richard Baldwin and, since 2018, with Beatrice Weder di Mauro, securing CEPR’s financial stability and growth. Her leadership also oversaw the successful relocation of CEPR's headquarters to Paris, a move that has led to a significant increase in both activity and staff. CEPR’s research community owes Tessa a tremendous debt of gratitude for her tireless dedication, not just to the organisation, but to the economics profession as a whole.

CEPR warmly congratulates all three prize winners.