Gikas A. Hardouvelis is a Professor in the Department of Banking & Financial Management at the University of Piraeus, Greece, and Chief Economist and Head of Economic Research of the Eurobank EFG Group. He is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research of London, Chairman of the Academic Council of the Hellenic Banks Association, member of the Academic Council of Cyprus International Institute of Management and member of the Board of Directors of Global Asset Management.

His educational and academic career in the United States spans approximately 20 years. He holds two degrees from Harvard University, a B.A and an M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (1978), plus a Ph.D. in Economics (1983) from U. C. Berkeley. He has been Assistant Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University (1983-1989), Associate Professor and subsequently Full Professor at Rutgers University (1989-1993).

In the past, he served as the Director of the Economic Office of the Greek Prime Minister Costas Sinmitis during the 2000-2004 Administration and has a long experience in central banks and the private banking sector. He served as a Research Adviser & Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for seven years (1987-1993), and as an Adviser at the Bank of Greece for the next two years (1994-1995), where he also acted as Second Alternate to the Governor at the European Monetary Institute (precursor to the ECB). Between 1996 and 2000, he held the post of Chief Economist at the National Bank of Greece, where he restructured the Economic Analysis Division, created the Risk Management Division, the Assets-Liabilities Management Department, and the Investors Relations Department. He played a critical role in the establishment of the Athens Derivatives Exchange, as a member of the Board of Directors (1997-2000). He also served as a member of the Boards of Directors of National-P&K Securities (1995-2000), as well as the Greek representative at the European Banks Association, in the Committees of Economic and Monetary Analysis and Monetary Integration (1996-2000).

His academic work extends in several areas of Finance and Macroeconomics, with a special focus on monetary policy and money & capital markets. He has published extensively in many internationally renowned journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics and others. He has been included in the Hall of Fame of the top-50 individual publishers worldwide in applied econometrics over 1989 to 1995. (See p. 432, in Badi H. Baltagi, "Applied Econometrics Rankings: 1989-1995", Journal of Applied Econometrics 1999, Vol. 14, pp. 423-441). His work on margin requirements had a crucial impact on the regulation governing US stock index futures markets.