Povilas Lastauskas

The 5th Baltic Economic Conference will take place on June 19-20, 2023 at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia. Paper submission deadline: 28 February, 2023. More information here.

I am an academic economist interested in economic policy, particularly international trade, policy uncertainty, and the economic effects of (de)globalization. I was educated at postgraduate level (MPhil and Ph.D.) at Trinity College, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, I shortly after that held bye- and full fellowships at a few Cambridge colleges, also acted as a Director of Studies in Economics. In 2016 I returned to Lithuania, and in 2017 I was elected into the permanent directorship of the Bank of Lithuania’s premier academic and research unit, known as the Research Centre, CEFER. The activities and the vision of the Centre when I was in charge of it are summarized in CEFER Insights: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol3. In October 2022, I joined the Queen Mary University of London as Assistant Professor in Applied Macroeconomic Analysis.

I am also a member of the initiative group to bring Baltic and Lithuanian academic economists from all over the world as well as strengthen the links between them and their homelands. I was the founding Board member of the Baltic Economic Association and served as President in 2021/2022. Moreover, I have initiated and acted as a founding head until 2022 the first rigorous, modern, English-taught Bachelor’s program in Quantitative Economics in Lithuania, which combines economics, data science, econometrics, quantitative finance, and uses open-source teaching materials. I have served on the ECB’s monetary policy review workstream, focusing on the impact of (de)globalization on monetary policy transmission and the OECD's expert work on the evidence-based policymaking strengthening in Lithuania. Previously, I served on a Task Force of the Monetary Policy Committee of the European System of Central Banks on structural reforms, participated in a steering group on pension reforms at the Bank of Lithuania, and the OECD's review team on Lithuania's independent fiscal institution.

On the research front, I am a principal investigator and project leader of the Baltic Research Programme grant on "Micro-level responses to socio-economic challenges in the face of global uncertainties" (Eur 0.8M), funded from the financial mechanism of the European Economic Area EFTA states (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). I was also a principal investigator of the inter-governmental grant titled Goods and labor market reforms and economic activity within the EU (Eur 0.2M), and the main investigator of the European Social Fund grant titled Reassessment of the OCA theory in the persistently heterogeneous EU, informally known as Euro4Europe (Eur 0.6M); see final conference details. My research was featured in major media outlets and blogs (e.g., VoxEU, LSE Business Review, centralbanking.com, El Pais, LSE's Research for the World, IMF Research Perspectives) and published in the internationally leading academic journals such as the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking and European Economic Review, among others. My teaching portfolio includes mathematics, statistics, econometrics (with a special emphasis on panel data settings, causal inference, and policy evaluation), international trade, MNEs and global business, WTO, international finance, and global economy.