Giovanni Ricco, Professor at École Polytechnique and member of CREST, has taken over as Programme Director of the Monetary Economics and Fluctuations (MEF) programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), effective 1 September 2026. He succeeds Refet Gürkaynak (Bilkent University), who led the programme for six years.
The MEF programme is one of CEPR’s core research areas, bringing together economists working on monetary policy, central banking, and business cycles — from the transmission mechanisms of monetary policy and the interaction between macroeconomic aggregates and central bank decisions, to the propagation of shocks, recessions, and stabilisation policy.
As Programme Director, Giovanni Ricco will coordinate the programme’s network of Fellows and Affiliates, its research agenda, and its events, which include the Macroeconomic Policy in Emerging Markets conference, ESSIM, the MEF Programme Meeting at the Study Center Gerzensee, and the Winter Symposium in Paris.
Giovanni Ricco holds a PhD in Economics from the London Business School and a PhD in Physics from the University of Pisa. He is Professor at École Polytechnique, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, and Chercheur Associé at the OFCE (Sciences Po). His research focuses on empirical macroeconomics and time-series econometrics, with a particular focus on the identification and transmission of monetary policy shocks. He is also a member of the CEPR-EABCN Euro Area Business Cycle Dating Committee and an Associate Editor of the European Economic Review. In 2024, he received the American Economic Journal Best Paper Award in Macroeconomics for “The Transmission of Monetary Policy Shocks,” co-authored with Silvia Miranda-Agrippino.
Within CEPR’s research architecture, MEF succeeded the former International Macroeconomics programme, alongside the International Macroeconomics and Finance (IMF) and Macroeconomics and Growth (MG) programmes.
CREST warmly congratulates Giovanni Ricco on this appointment, which reflects the international standing of the laboratory’s research in macroeconomics and monetary economics.