Joana Silva

Professor at CATÓLICA-LISBON and Director of PROSPER CATÓLICA-LISBON

Joana Silva is a Professor at CATÓLICA-LISBON. She is the Director of PROSPER – the CATÓLICA Lisbon Center of Economics for Prosperity. She has expertise in applied economics, with particular focus on development, labor markets, international trade, firm dynamics, and policy evaluation. Joana has over twelve years of experience in empirical work on policy-relevant questions. She spent most of her career at the World Bank, where her research agenda focused on (i) the impact of economic policies on employment fluctuations, welfare, and long-term growth; (ii) international trade and firm performance; and (iii) adjustment to economic slowdowns and crises. In her research, Joana has used granular data from large administrative datasets from developed and developing countries to conduct impact evaluations of social programs and economic reforms, as well as research on globalization and its impacts on growth and inequality. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of International Economics. Joana led several large-scale projects on Employment, Poverty, Inequality, and Social programs. She has also co-authored two World Bank Regional flagship reports, and managed lending operations to several countries. She has extensive experience advising and supporting countries on the design and analysis of economic reforms, social programs and monitoring and evaluation systems. Joana holds a PhD in economics from the University of Nottingham and she is the Academic Director of CATÓLICA Lisbon MSc in Economics.