Elias Papaioannou
Academic Director of the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development, Professor of Economics at London Business School
bio
Elias Papaioannou focuses on international finance, political economy, applied econometrics, growth, and development.
In the academic year 2019/2020, Elias held the Varian Visiting Professor of Economics at the MIT Department of Economics.
After completing his doctorate in 2005, he worked for two years at the Financial Research Division of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany. From 2007 to 2012, he served as an economics assistant at Dartmouth College in the US. Between 2010 and 2012, he was a visiting assistant professor at the economics department of Harvard University in the US.
His research has been recognized with a consolidator ERC grant in 2018, the inaugural 2013 European Investment Bank Young Economist Award, the 2005 European Economic Association’s Young Economist Award, and the Royal Economic Association’s Austin Robinson Memorial Prize, 2008. He is a research affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Elias’ research has been published in leading peer-refereed journals, with his work appearing in numerous book volumes. He regularly consults with international organizations and institutional investors on macroeconomic developments in the EU and Greece.
In 2005, Elias received his Ph.D. from LBS. He holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University and an LL.B. Bachelor’s in Law from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Together with Nathan Nunn (Harvard University), Stelios Michalopoulos (Brown University) and Leonard Wantchekon (Princeton University) and supported by CEPR, STEG and the European Research Council, Elias led the Wheeler Institute open-access lecture series African History through the Lens of Economics. The course ran from February 1 to April 13 of 2022 and has attracted more than 27.000 registrations. For more information visit the course website.
Elias is a member of the Wheeler Institute Call for Proposals Faculty Committee.
Publications
Religion and educational mobility in Africa
Abstract
The African people and leaders1,2 have long seen education as a driving force of development and liberation, a view shared by international institutions3,4, as schooling has large economic and non-economic returns, particularly in low-income settings5. In this study, we examine the educational progress across faiths throughout postcolonial Africa, home to some of the world’s largest Christian and Muslim communities. We construct comprehensive religion-specific measures of intergenerational mobility in education using census data from 2,286 districts in 21 countries and document the following. First, Christians have better mobility outcomes than Traditionalists and Muslims. Second, differences in intergenerational mobility between Christians and Muslims persist among those residing in the same district, in households with comparable economic and family backgrounds. Third, although Muslims benefit as much as Christians when they move early in life to high-mobility regions, they are less likely to do so. Their low internal mobility accentuates the educational deficit, as Muslims reside on average in areas that are less urbanized and more remote with limited infrastructure. Fourth, the Christian–Muslim gap is most prominent in areas with large Muslim communities, where the latter also register the lowest emigration rates. As African governments and international organizations invest heavily in educational programmes, our findings highlight the need to understand better the private and social returns to schooling across faiths in religiously segregated communities and to carefully think about religious inequalities in the take-up of educational policies.
