Michail is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of International Development. He holds a bachelors degree in Physics, an MSc in Control Systems, an MSc Res. in Multidisciplinary Economics, and a PhD in (Economic) History under the supervision of Jan Luiten van Zanden in the University of Utrecht.

Michail has previously held postdoctoral research positions at Bocconi and Utrecht, and has been appointed Assistant Professor of International Economics at Maastricht University in September 2022.

He has been awarded a UKRI postdoctoral fellowship (evaluated through the Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship round of 2021), on the conceptualisation and unification of global poverty measurement for the 21st century. In his work, Michail considers the importance of uncertainty on a conceptual and an empirical level. His approach entails building bridges across people and ideas to better understand the world.

Research

• Global poverty
• Income and wealth inequality
• Real wages

Michail's current research focus is on the definition and measurement of global poverty using a cost of basic needs/capabilities framework. The objectives of the Unified Global Poverty project are to:

1. produce global poverty statistics via the operationalisation on a global scale of an absolute poverty definition that is already internationally ratified and described in the United Nations Copenhagen Declaration (together with methodological components such as reference diets, population tailored nutritional targets, error accounting microsimulations and linear programming, and by assembling global price series, 2000-2020).
2. unify the absolute and relative aspects of poverty within that framework, thereby avoiding the methodological discontinuity between more and less economically developed countries.
3. maximise policy relevance of global poverty statistics.

Further details

See Michail's research profile