Alexander Mihailov

Alexander Mihailov Image
  • Director of the Group for Economic Analysis at Reading (GEAR)
  • Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) Maintainer
  • Convener of Conversations online sessions for Economics students

Areas of interest

  • International macroeconomics and finance
  • Monetary theory and policy
  • Political macroeconomics and socioeconomic dynamics
  • Information and learning

Postgraduate supervision

I am interested to supervise research students working on the topics included in my areas of interest.

Teaching

  • Advanced Macroeconomics (undergraduate)
  • Advanced Macroeconomic Analysis (postgraduate)

Research centres and groups

Background

I am a Professor in Economics at the University of Reading and Director of the Group for Economic Analysis at Reading (GEAR). I am also External Affiliate at the Centre for International Macroeconomic Studies (CIMS) at the University of Surrey and member of the editorial board of  Open Economies Review . I have been employed by the University of Essex, the  Créa  Institute of Applied Macroeconomics at the University of Lausanne, and the Research Department of the Bulgarian National Bank.

I have held part-time academic positions at the University of Warwick, City University London, Studienzentrum Gerzensee and Sofia University, and short-term visiting appointments at the University of Lille and El Colegio de Mexico (Colmex). I am co-founder and co-organiser of the annual European Workshop on Political Macroeconomics (EWPM) and the Lille-Reading Workshop on International Finance.

I hold a PhD in Economics from the University of Lausanne (2004). I work, and have published, in the areas of international macroeconomics and finance, monetary theory and policy, political macroeconomics and socioeconomic dynamics, information and learning.


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Academic qualifications

  • PhD in Economics (2004) and MSc in Economics (1998), University of Lausanne
  • Diploma/MSc in International Economics (1991), University of National and World Economy, Sofia

Major research grants

  • September 2025 – August 2027. Grant project over 2 years from the Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej (NAWA) / Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange on a strategic partnership among 7 universities (Mendel University Brno, University of Ghent, Kiyv School of Economics, Krakow University of Economics as lead, University of Lille, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and University of Reading) on “UkraiNe’s Integration Trajectories in Europe (UNITE)” (shorter/acronym title), where I am the principal investigator and hub-lead at the University of Reading, to enhance research and PhD mobilities within the network: Grant No. BPI/PST/2024/1/00139 “European Integration of Ukraine and Ukrainians: Experiences, Opportunities and Challenges” (full title); three resulting co-authored papers are in progress, one of them published as Reading Discussion Paper 2026-08 in August 2026.

  • April 2024. Co-investigator in a team with Falk Laser, principal investigator, and Jan Weidner, co-investigator, on a two-week fully funded research visit at BOFIT, Bank of Finland, along our project on “Currency Compositions of International Reserves – Recent Developments”, published as BOFIT policy brief No. 624 of 6 September 2024, with a subsequent version (including also monetary gold shares) as Reading Discussion Paper 2025-01 in March 2025.

  • November 2023 - October 2026. Grant project over 3 years from the Scientific Research Fund (SRF) of the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science on “Labour Market Adaptation to the Conditions of Eurozone Membership: Socio-Economic Dynamics, Technological Modernisation, Demographic Change and Education Restructuring”; with a team of researchers where I am the only invited External Researcher representing the University of Reading, at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEBA) of Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski and the Institute for Economic Research (IER) of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Resulting publications: “Formal or Informal Employment: A Model of Choice” (in Bulgarian), with Ilia Atanasov and Stefan Petranov, chapter 8 in Labour Markets and Bulgaria’s Accession to the Eurozone, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 2025 (collective monograph); and "Estimating the Dynamics of Time and Risk Preferences in the Bulgarian Labour Market,” with Ilia Atanasov and Stefan Petranov, Economic Studies (Ikonomicheski Izsledvania) - refereed academic journal published by the Economic Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Vol. 35, No. 6, June 2026, 132-157.

  • July 2010 – June 2012.  British Academy Small Research Grant, as principal investigator, on Evaluating Methods of Forecasting Inflation for Policy-Based Decision Making; resulting paper entitled “Inflation Forecasting Using the New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a Time-Varying Trend”, with Stephen McKnight and Fabio Rumler, in Economic Modelling, Vol. 87, May 2020, 383-393.

  • July 2010 – September 2011.  University of Reading Board for Research in the Social Sciences Pump-Priming Small Grant, as principal investigator, on The Rise and Fall of Communism: A Tale of Discovering the Equity-Efficiency Trade-off; resulting paper entitled “The Grand Experiment of Communism: Discovering the Trade-off between Equality and Efficiency,” with Etienne Farvaque and Alireza Naghavi, in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, Vol. 174, No. 4, December 2018, 707-742.

  • August 2009.  Research Visit at the CEPS/INSTEAD, Differdange, Luxembourg, co-funded by the IRISS / European Commission 6th Framework Programme, as co-investigator at par, on Intergenerational Transmission of Inflation Aversion: Theory and Evidence, with Etienne Farvaque; one resulting paper (empirical) published as “Who Supports the ECB? Evidence from Eurobarometer Survey Data,” with Etienne Farvaque and Muhammad Azmat Hayat, The World Economy, Vol. 40, No. 4, April 2017, 654-677 (lead article); another resulting paper (theoretical), “Intergenerational Transmission of Inflation Aversion: Theory and Evidence,” with Etienne Farvaque (August 2008, last revised January 2012); superseded by “A Theory of the Intergenerational Dynamics of Inflation Beliefs and Monetary Institutions,” with Etienne Farvaque, February 2014, revised August 2023 and currently.
       

 

 

Publications

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