Beata Javorcik: from a Yale PhD to becoming Oxford’s first female Statutory Professor of Economics

From policy to academia… 

After completing her PhD, Javorcik had tenure-track academic offers as well as opportunities to work at major development institutions. But ultimately, her heart lay in policy. 

“When she received multiple offers on the job market, she called me almost in a panic – asking ‘What do I do?’” recalled Andrew Bernard, one of her Yale advisors who is now the Kadas T'90 Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. “And I said, ‘Well, what’s your dream job?’ And she said, ‘I’d love to do economics research at the World Bank.’” 

In 1999, Javorcik joined the World Bank’s Young Professionals program. One of her first roles at the World Bank was Country Economist for Azerbaijan, a former Soviet state undergoing transition. She later moved to the Bank’s research department, where she could do more rigorous analytical work. Increasingly, she became interested in the complex effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) in transition countries.  

At the time, many transition countries sought investments from large multinational firms with the hope that their technical knowledge would “spill over” to local firms and boost domestic productivity. But Javorcik suspected that FDI spill-overs were less likely to occur within industries (since firms lacked incentive to share knowledge with local competitors) than across industries (between a foreign firm and their local suppliers, for example). Javorcik illustrated this dynamic in a 2004 paper on FDI in Lithuania in the American Economic Review, which ultimately influenced the prevailing wisdom on FDI among economists and policymakers alike.  

Inspired by the paper’s impact, the concept of usefulness became Javorcik’s lodestar. Regardless of job title or organizational affiliation, what really mattered to her was the ability to produce insightful (and perhaps even surprising) research on topics that were relevant to policymakers. Around the same time, academia and Europe beckoned her home: in 2007, she took up a faculty position at Oxford University. 

With colleagues like Peter Neary and Tony Venables, Javorcik helped nurture a world-class trade economics group at Oxford. Her research agenda focused on answering useful questions – often centred on when, where, and how transition countries can make the most of international trade, from services liberalization in the Czech Republic  to whether bringing FDI can help countries increase quality of their exports.  

In 2014, these efforts paid off. Javorcik was promoted to a Statutory Professorship – the first woman in the history of Oxford’s economics department to earn that title.  

…And back again 

Javorcik’s career came full circle in 2019: she was appointed Chief Economist of the EBRD, where she’d interned as a PhD student – and where the concept of economic transition is still a guiding principle.  

Of course, much has changed since 1997. For one thing, the EBRD’s definition of transition has broadened to include priorities like competitiveness, integration, equity, resilience, and sustainability. Likewise, the EBRD has expanded its regional scope, particularly into Turkey and the South and East Mediterranean region. Yet much of its work is still focused on post-communist states.  

“The legacy of central planning is still visible today, thirty years after transition started,” Javorcik said. “That makes these countries and the challenges they face distinct.”  

As part of the EBRD’s Executive Committee, she helps oversee the bank’s strategy, performance, and financial soundness. As head of the EBRD’s research department, Javorcik is working to improve evidence-based decision-making across the institution – namely by strengthening and expanding the use of rigorous impact evaluations, including randomized controlled trials and greater use of third-party data sets.  

These efforts come at a difficult time, amid a global downturn and war in Europe. Development finance is also adjusting to geopolitical shifts, with new priorities and challenges constantly emerging. Javorcik and her team are working to address some of the challenges of these developments – for instance, by better measuring the “additionality” of EBRD lending compared to commercial debt, which can help target investments more effectively. But she acknowledges the precariousness of our current moment, particularly in the context of global cooperation.  

“We need to prevent the world from fracturing into politically motivated trading blocs,” she said. “The global challenges we face, like climate change and a drawn-out pandemic, call for more multilateral collaboration, not less.”  

A lasting influence 

It’s clear that Javorcik’s dziadek – who said that education could open paths to a different future – was right in more ways than one. Javorcik’s education certainly changed her future, but it also had an impact on the wider world.  

As a researcher, her insights have advanced our grasp of trade and economic transition. As a professor, she has helped hundreds of students better understand the world. And in her current role, she informs policymakers and influences the public debate.  

“The questions she asks are almost always policy-relevant, but they are also research-relevant, and her experience has let her bridge those worlds,” said Bernard. “When you’re working on problems like strengthening Ukraine’s electricity grid, you don’t usually also write academic papers. But she’s encouraging her team at the EBRD to keep working on their academic stuff and keep asking important research questions.” 

Reflecting on her accomplishments, Javorcik credits her time in New Haven for shaping the leader she would become.   

“Yale shaped my thinking about economics and prepared me well for a career in the discipline,” she said. “I would not be where I am today without the rigorous training I received there.”