Francois Gerard is a Reader in Economics at Queen Mary University of London. He obtained his BA at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley (USA). He started his career as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University before moving to the UK. His research lies at the intersection of Public Economics and Development, investigating questions related to inequality, social protection, taxation, and environmental policies in middle-income and developing countries.