Simeon Djankov

At Harvard, Dyankov edited a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Economics on the 25th anniversary from the start of transition in Eastern Europe.

Jointly with Anders Aslund at the Atlantic Council, he co-wrote a book on the transformation from communism.

The book contains chapters by Leszek Balcerowicz on Poland, Václav Klaus on the Czech Republic, Lajos Bokros on Hungary, Ivan Mikloš on Slovakia and Mart Laar on Estonia.

Simeon Dyankov (Симеон Дянков, also Djankov; born July 13, 1970) is a Bulgarian economist.

Dyankov was born in Lovech, Bulgaria, on July 13, 1970.

He attended Ekzarh Yosif I high school in Lovech (1984–1989).

In 1989, he passed the entrance exam to the Karl Marx Institute of Economics (now University of National and World Economy).

He holds a 1997 doctorate from the University of Michigan, on the topic "Three Essays on the Economics of Transition".

His main thesis advisor was Alan Deardorff.

Dyankov has published in journals such as American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Financial Economics.

He co-edited the book The Resolution of Financial Distress with Stijn Claessens and Ashoka Mody.

He was an associate editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics from 2004 to 2009.

Dyankov was a chairman of the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

From 2009 to 2013, he was the deputy prime minister and minister of finance of Bulgaria in the government of Boyko Borisov.

He has been a vocal supporter of Bulgaria's entry into the Eurozone.

Before his cabinet appointment, he was the chief economist of the finance and private sector vice-presidency of the World Bank.

From 2013 to 2015, he was appointed rector of the New Economic School in Moscow.

In October 2013, it was announced that the board of directors of the private Moscow-based university New Economic School (NES), also known as the Russian Economic School, had approved Dyankov as its rector.

During his tenure as rector, the New Economic School moved to a new campus in the Skolkovo Innovation Center.

Sergei Guriev was the Rector at New Economic School (NES) until he resigned on 30 April 2013 and fled to France.

In July 2014, Dyankov himself was put on a draft list under Russian foreign agent law and shortly resigned.

Dyankov is the policy director at the Financial Markets Group, responsible for a large research project on post-Covid recovery.

The project shows that the pandemic caught governments in developing economies off guard, and that governments in Africa reacted in ways that pushed more people into the informal economy.

In advanced economies the pandemic opened a larger gender gap in employment, while bankruptcies actually fell due to generous government support schemes, further expanding the inequality of opportunity between men and women.

His research is also on the rising income inequality in Russia, including due to autarky.

Since November 2015, Dyankov has been co-director for policy of the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics.

At the World Bank, Dyankov was director for development policy and senior director in the office of the chief economist.

He led projects on the post-communist economic transition in Georgia (country), Moldova and Ukraine.

Dyankov was also involved in the publication of Women Business and the Law, World Development Reports and Doing Business reports.

The Doing Business reports were discontinued after an audit documented that Dyankov, along with then World Bank CEO Georgieva, pressured staff to make data for China and Saudi Arabia look better.

Dyankov was one of the creators of the Human Capital Index, first published in the World Development Report 2019, which he co-directed.

The academic study describing the index construction was published in the leading science journal Nature.

After leaving the government of Boyko Borisov, Dyankov joined the Harvard Kennedy School as visiting faculty.

His teaching is focused on the politics of development.

Since April 2020, Dyankov has been policy director at the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics.

He has also been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

He has written widely on the economic impact of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This invasion has resulted in significant loss of human capital, destruction of agricultural trading infrastructure, huge damages to productive capacity, including through the loss of electricity, and a reduction in private consumption of more than a third relative to pre-war levels.

The all-out aggression requires an all-out response by the European Union to win the war.

Ukraine remains the main policy priority of the European Union in the coming decade.