Courses a.y. 2025/2026
Biographical note
I was born in Hungary in 1979. I graduated in an IB school in Canada (L.B. Pearson UWC). I obtained and MPhil (2007) and a PhD (2010) from the University of Oxford. I was Junior Fellow at Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, postdoctoral researcher at Groningen University, and Assistant Professor at the LSE. I was appointed Assistant Professor of Economic History at Bocconi in 2014 and Associate Professor in 2019. I have been a CEPR Research Fellow and elected trustee of the European Historical Economics Society. I was principal investigator of ERC Horizon 2020 project Spoils of War: The Economic Consequences of World War I in Central Europe between 2019 and 2025.
About
I am Associate Professor of Economic History in the Department of Social and Political Sciences and member of the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy. I have been Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and elected trustee of the European Historical Economics Society. I have been the principal investigator of the ERC Horizon 2020 project SpoilsofWAR, which examined the consequences of the Habsburg Empire and World War I on regional economic development in Central Europe.
Research interests
I am an historian of economic growth and an economic historian of war. I wrote extensively on the impact of the Second World War on postwar economic growth in Europe. My monograph on The Economic Consequences of the War: West Germany’s Growth Miracle after 1945 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. I published two articles in the Economic History Review on the comparative performance of socialist economies in Eastern Europe. My new book project The Deadweight of War: Economic Backwardness in Easter Europe examines the long shadow of the Second World War in Central and Eastern Europe. I co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Economic Surveys on historical growth accounting in a global perspective. My ERC project has investigated the legacies of the Habsburg Empire and the First World War on regional economic development, industrial enterprise, and living standards in Central Europe since the late 19th century.
Selected Publications
Blockading Britain and Germany during World War I: preparations, conduct, and consequences of economic warfare
Economic warfare and sanctions since 1688, 2025
Survival through globalisation: Innovation, internationalisation, and the endurance of big business in Central Europe
BUSINESS HISTORY, Forthcoming
Accounting for growth in history
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, vol. 35, 3, pp. 655-69, 2021
Why did socialist economies fail? The role of factor inputs reconsidered
ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, vol. 72, 1, pp. 317-45, 2019
The economic consequences of the war: West Germany's growth miracle after 1945
Cambridge University Press, 2018
War and socialism: why eastern Europe fell behind between 1950 and 1989
ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, vol. 70, 1, pp. 248-74, 2017
Post-war reconstruction and the Golden Age of economic growth
EUROPEAN REVIEW OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, vol. 12, 2, pp. 221-41, 2008