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José Manuel Barroso was born in Lisbon on 23 March 1956. After graduating in law from the University of Lisbon, he moved to Geneva where he completed a Diploma in European Studies at the European University Institute, University of Geneva, and a Master's degree in Political Science from the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Geneva, earning an honours in both.

He embarked on an academic career, working successively as a teaching assistant at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon, int the Department of Political Science, University of Geneva, and as a visiting professor at the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.). In 1995, he became Head of the International Relations Department of Lusíada University, Lisbon. In 1979, he founded the University Association for European Studies.

His political career began in 1980 when he joined the Social Democratic Party (PSD). He was named President of the party in 1999 and re-elected three times. During the same period, he served as Vice President of the European People's Party. In April 2002, he was elected Prime Minister of Portugal. He remained in office until July 2004 when he became President-designate of the European Commission.

José Manuel Barroso was awarded honorary degrees by Roger Williams University, Rhode Island (2005), Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (2006), University of Genoa, Italy (2006), University of Kobe (2006) and Sapienza University of Rome (2007). He was also declared "European of the year 2006" by the magazine European Voice. He is the author of numerous publications on political science, international relations and the European Union, including "Le système politique portugais face à l'intégration européenne", Lisbon and Lausanne, 1983; "Uma Certa Ideia de Europa", 1999; "Mudar de Modelo", 2002 and "Reformar: Dois Anos de Governo", 2004.

Source: European Commission

Charles Bean became Deputy Governor on 1 July 2008.  Prior to that, he was Executive Director and Chief Economist from 1 October 2000.  In addition to his membership of the Monetary Policy Committee, he has specific responsibility within the Bank for Monetary Policy, including monetary analysis and money market operations.

After a spell in HM Treasury (1975-79 & 1981-82), Charles Bean joined the London School of Economics as a lecturer in 1982, becoming Professor of Economics in 1990 and Head of Department in 1999.   He was visiting Professor at Stanford University in 1990.  He has published widely, in both professional journals and more popular media, on European unemployment, on European Monetary Union, and on macroeconomics generally.  He has served on the boards of several academic journals, and was Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies (1986-90).  He has also served in a variety of public policy roles, including:  as consultant to HM Treasury;  as special adviser to both the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons, and to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament;  and as special adviser to the House of Lords enquiry into the European Central Bank.

Emmanuel College, Cambridge.  (B.A., First Class Honours in Economics and Mathematics, 1975. M.A., 1979.)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD, 1981. Harkness Fellow, 1979-80)

Source: Bank of England

He has a doctorate in Economic and Business Sciences, and is a lecturer in Public Finance at the University of Barcelona. He was manager of the Institute of Economy of Barcelona. He is a specialist in regional area and local finance, the economy of the welfare state and regional economy, he is also the author of numerous investigations and publications concerning this material.

He was a member of the Accountability Office of Catalonia between 1984 and 1989. He was elected as a representative in the Parliament of Catalonia for the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) in the fourth (1992), seventh (2003) and eighth (2006) legislatures. He was a member of the State-Generalitat Joint Evaluation Commission (1989-1996). He was the Spanish representative for the European Court of Auditors from1994 to the year 2000 and Secretary of Economic Policy for the Executive Commission of the PSC.

He has been the Minister for Economy and Finances of the Generalitat since the 22nd of December 2003.

Source: Generalitat de Catalunya

Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg is Professor of Economics at Princeton University and Co-Editor of the American Economic Review. She is also Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Senior Fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), Elected Fellow of the Econometric Society and Research Associate at the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies.

Prior to Princeton, she was faculty at Yale and Columbia University. She has published numerous articles in the areas of applied microeconomics, international trade, and industrial organization. Her current research interests include the effects of trade liberalization on growth and the income distribution, the determinants of incomplete exchange rate pass-through and the effects of TRIPS in developing countries. Prof.Goldberg holds a Diplom in Economics from the University of Freiburg, Germany and a Ph.D in Economics from Stanford University.

Faruk Gul received his MA and PhD from Princeton University in 1986. He has been a professor of economics at Princeton since 1995. His research focuses primarily on economic theory and choice theory.

Currently Prof. Gul is Fellow of the Econometric Society, Associate Editor of Econometrica, and a member of the editorial board of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.

Guido Imbens got his MA and PhD in economics from Brown University in 1991. His research focuses on theoretical and applied econometrics with a particular emphasis on causality, which includes methods for selection bias such as matching and instrumental variables, with applications to the evaluation of social programs.

He was an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard from 1990-1994, and then taught at UCLA and UC Berkeley (where he won a teaching prize) until he returned to Harvard as full professor in the Fall of 2006.

Professor Imbens has received numerous grants in support of his research from NSF. He has been the receipient of a Sloan Fellowship and is a Research Fellow at the NBER. I

He has also published over 40 articles that have appeared in journals including the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, The Annals of Statistics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Biometrika, The American Economic Review and Econometrica, for which he currently serves as the associate editor.

Andreu Mas-Colell is Secretary General of the ERC and Chairman of the Barcelona GSE. He is currently on leave from his position as a Professor of Economics (Catedrático) at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

He was also Professor of Economics at Harvard University (1981-96) and Professor of Economics and Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley (1972-80). Professor Mas-Colell is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and was its President in 1993. In 1997 he was elected Foreign Associate to the US National Academy of Sciences and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association.

He has served as main Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Economics (1985-88), and of Econometrica (1988-92). From 1999 to 2005 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association (IEA). In the year 2006 he served as President of the European Economic Association (EEA).

From 2000 to 2003 he was Minister for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia and President of the Advisory Scientific Committee of Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo (2005-2008).

He has been Sloan Fellow and Guggenheim Fellow. He holds Honoris Causa Doctorates from the universities of Alacant, Toulouse, HEC (Paris) and Universidad Nacional del Sur (Argentina). He has received the Rey Juan Carlos I Prize in Economics and the Pascual Madoz (National Research Prize).

A. Mas-Colell has written more than 100 research papers on subjects ranging from abstract general equilibrium theory and the structure of financial markets to pricing policy for public firms. He is the author of The Theory of General Economic Equilibrium: A Differentiable ApproachMicroeconomic Theory (Oxford University Press, 1994). (Cambridge University Press, 1985) and co-author with M. Whinston and J. Green, of the graduate textbook Microeconomic Theory (Oxford University Press, 1994).

Roger B. Myerson was awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was recognized for his contributions to mechanism design theory, initiated by co-winner Leonid Hurwicz of the University of Minnesota, and which Myerson further developed with others, including co-winner Eric Maskin of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Myerson has made seminal contributions to the fields of economics and political science. In game theory he introduced a refinement of Nash's equilibrium concept, called "proper equilibrium." He has applied game theoretic tools to political science to study and compare electoral systems, and he also developed fundamental ideas of mechanism design, such as the revelation principle and "revenue-equivalence theorem."

Myerson also has developed computer software for auditing formulas and for simulation and decision analysis for use with Microsoft spreadsheet software.

He is the author of Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict (1991) and Probability Models for Economic Decisions (2005). Myerson also has published numerous articles in Econometrica, Mathematics of Operations Research and the International Journal of Game Theory, for which he served as an editorial board member for 10 years.

During his 25-year tenure at Northwestern University, Myerson twice served as a Visiting Professor in Economics at Chicago. He joined the Chicago faculty in 2001.

He received his A.B., summa cum laude, and S.M. in applied mathematics in 1973 from Harvard University and a Ph.D., also in applied mathematics, from Harvard University in 1976.

Source: University of Chicago

Professor Lord Stern was adviser to the UK Government on the Economics of Climate Change and Development from 2005-2007, and Head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. He was also Head of the Government Economic Service, 2003-2007; Second Permanent Secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury, 2003-2005; and Director of Policy and Research for the Prime Minister's Commission for Africa, 2004-2005. He was Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank from 2000-2003.

During his time as Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Visiting Professor of Economics at LSE, he was one of the founding forces behind the Asia Research Centre, formally becoming its director on 11 June 2007.

His research and publications have focused on the economics of climate change, economic development and growth, economic theory, tax reform, public policy and the role of the state and economies in transition.

Source: LSE