Paolo Manasse is Professor of Macroeconomics and International Economic Policy at the University of Bologna. He also taught at L. Bocconi University, at Sorbonne (Paris I), Johns Hopkins (Bologna Center) and other Italian universities. He obtained his PhD from the LSE with Rick van der Ploeg and Charlie Bean. He worked as a Consultant for the OECD, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and was a resident Consultant, Visiting Scholar and Technical Assistance Advisor for the IMF. His research interests are in international macroeconomics, including monetary and fiscal policy in currency unions, fiscal federalism and asymmetric information, international trade and the labor market, international policy coordination, sovereign debt and banking crises. His publications include, among others, American Economic Review, European Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. He is a regular contributor to voxeu.org, roubin.com, Linkiesta.it, lavoce,info, and writes on current Italian and European issues on his blog “Back-of The-Envelope Economics” (in Italian, but Google Translator friendly). In 2011 he addressed the European Parliament in a Public Hearing on the Sovereign Debt Crisis.