Gikas A. Hardouvelis is Professor of Finance and Economics in the Department of Banking and Financial Management of the University of Piraeus in Greece and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Greece. From June 2014 to January 2015 he served as the Minister of Finance of the Hellenic Republic.
Hardouvelis is First Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and member of the Executive Committee of the Foundation for Economic & Industrial Research, research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, member of the Academic Council of the Cyprus International Institute of Management, and a Trustee of Anatolia College, a non-profit primary, secondary and tertiary educational institution.
He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics (1985) from the University of California, Berkeley, and M.Sc. & B.A. degrees in Applied Mathematics (1978) from Harvard University. He was Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University from 1983 to 1989, and Associate Professor and subsequently Full Professor of Finance in the School of Business of Rutgers University (1989-1993).
He served as Research Adviser & Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1987-1993) and as Adviser to the Bank of Greece (1994-1995), where he also acted as Alternate to the Governor at the European Monetary Institute (precursor to the ECB).
Between 1996 and 2000 he held the post of Director of Strategic Planning & Research & Group Chief Economist of the National Bank of Greece, where he helped the bank transformation into a competitive institution and its expansion abroad: He led the first risk management unit in Greece and introduced VaR and asset-liability management models, he established and headed the Assets-Liabilities Management Department and the Investors Relations Department. Later from 2005 to 2014 he became the Group Chief Economist, Head of Economic Research and Member of the Executive Committee of Eurobank. In the past he has also been a member of the Academic Council of the Hellenic Banks Association (HBA), its President and the HBA EBF-EMAC representative.
Hardouvelis played a critical role in the establishment of the Athens Derivatives Exchange as an original member of its Board of Directors (1997-2000), and was a member of Board of Directors of National Securities, S.A. from 1995 to 2000. As a member of the Governing Council of the newly established University of Peloponnese (2000-2004), he was responsible for setting up its Economics Department.
Prior to being Minister of Finance, he was the Director of the Economic Affairs Office of the Prime Minister twice, from November 2011 to May 2012 and from May 2000 to March 2004.
His academic work extends in the fields of Finance and Macroeconomics and is published in many internationally renowned journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Business, and others. He was included in the Hall of Fame of the top-50 referenced authors worldwide in applied econometrics over the period 1989 to 1995. (See p. 432, in Badi H. Baltagi, “Applied Econometrics Rankings: 1989-1995”, Journal of Applied Econometrics 1999, Vol. 14, pp. 423-441).