Elena Panaritis @
Social Entrepreneur, Economist, Policy Innovator
Speaks at the German Marshall Fund Conference on February 27, 2013 (11:00-12:30), Lisbon, Portugal
“Between the Euro Crisis and Arab Revolution: The Future of Mediterranean Europe. Thinking Beyond the Crises: Reinventing Southern Europe”
Organized in cooperation with the Italian Institute for International Affairs (IAI), and in partnership with the Compagnia di San Paolo, OCP Foundation, Noble Energy, the Luso-American Foundation, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Keynote Speaker Robert Bell Secretary of Defense Representative, Europe; Defense Advisor to the U.S. Mission to NATO, Brussels
Elena Panaritis will join thought leaders and will explain how institutional reforms are a foundation for growth and not austerity. She will present her innovative method for institutional reforms to make real change. The session entitled “Thinking Beyond the Crises: Reinventing Southern Europe” will explore challenges North and South, against a backdrop of larger, global power shifts, raise fundamental questions about the future of Southern Europe, both within Europe and on the international scene. In a period of European enlargement, Europe’s southern members were models for development and integration – economic and political. What now? To what extent do current crises offer an opportunity for change at the level of societies, including youth participation, the structure of economies, and governance? What are the consequences of inaction? What are the alternative futures? How can they be shaped? Who can do the shaping?
About Elena Panaritis
Elena Panaritis is an institutional economist, social entrepreneur, and policy innovator. Until recently ago she served as a special advisor to the Greek Prime Minister and as a Member of Parliament of Greece. In more than a decade as an economist at the World Bank, Elena spearheaded several institutional/structural reforms including property rights reform in Peru that received International Best Practice and Innovation awards (10Million benefited while the return was over 150 multiple). Elena’s reform methods have revolutionized and forever changed the way people and policymakers think about them; and specifically about property rights’ reforms. As an institutional economist she pioneered social entrepreneurship, she is renowned for her success in transforming informal markets (by changing property rights) into vibrant, growing formal economic and social entities. Her book Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust (Palgrave Macmillan) recounts her experience and expands on her methodology- “Reality Check Analysis”, which is considered one of the best practical applications of institutional economics to property rights issues. Robert Litan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and Vice President for Research and Policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurship calls her work “a real contribution.”
She is the founder of Panel Group, a triple-bottom-line business that focuses in distressed cities and markets with high level of informality, transforming the wealth base of poor property holders, to proud middle class owners. Panel Group also provides counsel to governments and private sector on how to apply structural reforms and changes to transform illiquid assets (property) and turn markets more efficient and productive. She has also founded Thought for Action, an educational foundation to create awareness about transforming informality and countries under solvency crisis like Greece. Elena Panaritis has taught economic development, housing finance and property markets reform courses at the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, INSEAD, and the Johns Hopkins University- School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She blogs at: www.prosperityunbound.com/blog
Key articles at Huffington post: “Why Europe Is Failing to Prevent the Spread of the Euro Crisis” (11 October 2012) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elena-panaritis/european-debt-crisis_b_1959016.html), “GR Elections 2012: Crisis-Confusion- Protest” Greece Election Results 2012: Crisis, Confusion, Protest” (11 May 2012) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elena-panaritis/greece-election-results-2012_b_1509563.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications)
For registration and more information contact Johanna Urrutia at [email protected] +1 202 471 0092
