Ugo Panizza

Ugo Panizza is an Italian economist. He is a professor of International Economics and Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where he is also the head of the Department of Economics. Panizza is also deputy director of the Centre for Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute.

Panizza holds a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University and a Laurea (BA) from the University of Turin.

Panizza is known for co-establishing the concept of original sin in development economics, alongside economists Barry Eichengreen and Ricardo Hausmann. His work on the costs of sovereign default (joint with Eduardo Borensztein, Eduardo Levy Yeyati, Federico Sturzenegger, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer), on the links between finance and economic development (joint with Jean Louis Arcand and Enrico Berkes), and on the relationship between public debt and economic growth (joint with Andrea Presbitero) has been widely cited in the international press.

In 2012 Panizza coauthored (with Jean-Louis Arcand and Enrico Berkes) an IMF working paper titled Too Much Financeshowing that the relationship between financial development and economic growth goes from being positive to negative when the financial sector becomes too large.

In 2014 he coauthored a paper with Barry Eichengreen titled "A Surplus of Ambitions". The paper concludes that Europe’s crisis countries are unlikely to be able to run primary budget surpluses as large and persistent as officially projected.

He has contributed to the debate on Quantitative Easing in Europe and has been vocal in criticizing German opposition to monetary and fiscal stimulus in the Eurozone.

He has taught at the University of Turin and at the American University of Beirut. He also worked at the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) where he was the head of the Debt and Finance Analysis Unit. Currently Panizza is professor of International Economics and Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where he is also the head of the Department of Economics and the deputy director of the Centre for Finance and Development.Panizza is a CEPR Research Fellow, and editor of Economia (the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, LACEA). He is a member of the editorial board of several other academic journals.