A meeting with Romain Svartzman, a IEP@BU new Research Fellow

Short bio: Romain was working (until Jan 2024) as a senior research economist at the Banque de France, and is honorary senior research fellow at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP, University College London). His work focuses on developing scenarios of ecological transition (including geopolitical factors) and assessing their economic and financial implications. He strongly favors interdisciplinary approaches and seeks to work at the interface between research and policy. He completed his PhD at McGill University (Canada). He also holds a master’s degree in Finance from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and a degree in Economics and Law of Climate Change from FLACSO Argentina. He previously worked as an environmental risk management officer for the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) and as an investor in ‘green’ technologies for a French venture capital firm.  

Ongoing and forthcoming research: Building on his policy, private financial sector and academic experiences, his ongoing research is interdisciplinary and focuses on three interconnected topics:

1. Developing scenarios to understand how the ecological transition can generate specific vulnerabilities for different countries and economic sectors (see e.g. this recent NGFS report he coordinated)

2. Integrating geoeconomic fragmentation considerations into the development of such scenarios (see e.g. this recent IMF WP), with a specific focus on critical metals (see e.g. this LSE WP and a summary here). 

3. Assessing reforms of the international monetary and financial system/architecture aimed at facilitating the ecological transition and the vulnerabilities identified through points 1 and 2 above.