Laura Abrardi is Assistant Professor of Applied Economics at the Polytechnic University of Turin (Department of Management), where she teaches Economics and Firm Theory. Her research interests are in the field of industrial organization and corporate governance, with a focus on applications of contract theory to managerial incentives, the ownership structure of the firm, regulation, platform economics and digital technologies. Abrardi’s work includes publications in the Journal of Economic Surveys, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Economic Inquiry, Small Business Economics, Journal of Industrial and Business Economics and in volumes published by Elsevier Academic Press. She received her PhD in Economics from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan (Italy) and is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Society of Industrial and Business Economics.

Christoph Wenk Bernasconi is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich and founding partner of SWIPRA Services, an advisory firm and think tank for corporate governance and sustainability in Switzerland. He is co-author of the ‘SWIPRA Considerations for Corporate Governance’ and of the SFI White Paper on corporate governance and is responsible for the annual SWIPRA AGM analysis and corporate governance survey. Since 2021, he has served on the ICGN Committee on Natural Capital. Bernasconi completed the PhD programme in Economics of the Swiss National Bank in Gerzensee and wrote his thesis in the field of empirical corporate finance at the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich.

Anamarija Cijan is a teaching assistant and a PhD student at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business. Her research interests cover granularity, more specifically if and how idiosyncratic shocks affect the macroeconomic performance of a country or region, international trade and trade policy, digitalization and foreign direct investment. Cijan has contributed to three academic papers in the last five years. She also worked at EY for almost two years in financial accounting advisory and in audit. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and her master’s degree at University of Birmingham, Birmingham Business School.

Jože P. Damijan is a full professor at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business, and Visiting Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium. His research interests and teaching cover international economics and trade policy, globalization, foreign direct investment, innovation, corporate governance, firm performance, labour markets, corruption and development. In the last ten years, he has published more than thirty peer-reviewed academic papers. Recent publications include papers in The World Economy, Review of World Economics, World Development, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Economics of Transition, Economic Letters and Economic Systems. Chapters in monographs were published by Edward Elgar, Palgrave MacMillan, the World Bank and the like. He has partnered more than two dozen international research projects funded by the European Commission, the World Bank’s Global Development Network (GDN), the United Nations, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He served as Minister for Growth in the Slovenian government, Vice-President of the Council of Economic Advisors to the Prime Minister of Slovenia and President of a Board of Reforms. Since 2008, he has been a special economic advisor to various ministries of the Slovenian government and to the parliament on various economic policy issues. He has also led several dozen consultancy projects for key domestic and foreign companies, government ministries and agencies.

Johan Eklund is the Managing Director of the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum and Professor at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) and Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), where he received his doctorate in economics in 2008. He is also affiliated to Indiana University, School of Policy and Environmental Affairs and Institute for Development Studies, USA. Eklund has more than 100 publications to his name, of which approximately 25% are peer-reviewed articles. He is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). Eklund’s main research interests concern the relationship between institutions – in particular regulations – and their long-term effects on economic development and growth. He has broad interests in industrial economics, institutional economics and law and economics. Eklund conducts research in regulatory economics and economics of education/human capital as well. More recent research interests include entrepreneurship and how institutions and the regulatory environment affect entrepreneurship. Eklund’s research is naturally positioned towards both academic and policy audiences. Previously, Eklund was a researcher at Ratio Institute, and was a guest researcher at George Mason University. He has served as Associate Dean at Jönköping International Business School.

Marc Goergen holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University, a master’s degree from Solvay Business School and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He is a full professor of finance at IE Business School, IE University, in Madrid. Previous appointments include the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Universities of Cardiff, Manchester, Reading and Sheffield. Goergen is an honorary professor at Cardiff Business School, a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and a board member of the International Corporate Governance Society (ICGS). He is the joint editor-in-chief of Annals of Corporate Governance and an associate editor of the British Accounting Review, the British Journal of Management, European Financial Management and the European Journal of Finance. Goergen’s research interests are corporate finance and corporate governance. His research papers have appeared in top academic journals, such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Intermediation and the Journal of Corporate Finance. Goergen has also authored or co-authored three monographs on corporate governance. He has contributed chapters to numerous edited books. The second version of his successful textbook on corporate governance, entitled Corporate Governance. A Global Perspective, was published by Cengage in 2018.

Klaus Gugler’s research interests are in empirical industrial organization, especially corporate governance, and competition and regulatory policy. Before the appointment to Full Professor of Economics at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, he was Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna, where he earned his PhD in 1997. He gained valuable scientific experience during research stays at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, London Business School and Harvard Law School. Gugler published in top-refereed economics journals including the Economic Journal, The Review of Economics and Statistics and the European Economic Review. He is a member of the ‘Industrieökonomischer Ausschuss’ and of the ‘Verein für Socialpolitik’, and head of the Research Institute for Regulatory Economics at WU. Gugler has been a member of the Austrian Competition Commission as well as a witness in numerous antitrust cases such as mergers and abuse of dominance cases for the Austrian Cartel Court. He is the editor of the book Corporate Governance and Economic Performance published by Oxford University Press in 2001.

Evgeni Peev’s research interests are in corporate governance and country institutions. He is a co-founder of Corporate Governance and European Integration (CGEUI) network and Scientific Director of the European Research and Education Institute. He has been CGEUI Principal Investigator at the Institute for Quantitative Economics WU, Marie Curie Senior Research Fellow at the University of Vienna and Associate Professor at the Economic Research Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He has been Visiting Professor at the Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Visiting Fellow at the University of Zurich, the Technical University Freiberg, Copenhagen Business School and Heriot-Watt University, UK. He is involved in consultancy work for the European Commission and has been an initiator of studies on novel corporate governance issues in Europe, transition countries, Southeast Europe and Bulgaria, funded by the European Commission, the Research Support Scheme (RSS), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Austrian Institute for Eastern and Southeastern Europe, CERGE-EI, World Bank (GDN), Austrian National Bank, Austrian Scientific Fund, the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) and the Bulgarian National Fund for Scientific Studies. Peev has published in top academic journals, including the Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, International Review of Law and Economics and Journal of Comparative Economics. He is the editor of Separation of Ownership from Control in Southeast Europe: A Comparison of Bulgaria, Romania and Albania 1990–1996, Sofia, Kota, 1999.

Laura Rondi is Full Professor of Applied Economics at the Polytechnic University of Turin (Department of Management), where she teaches Firm Theory and Corporate Governance. She is a member of the Corporate Governance and European Union Integration (CGEUI) network. Her research interests are in the area of industrial organization and corporate finance, with a strong focus on the application of panel econometric techniques to firm-level data. Rondi has contributed to the literature on financing constraints to firm growth; corporate governance and managerial incentives; ownership and capital structure of regulated firms; and industrial organization in the EU. On these issues she has published in leading journals (Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Economic Inquiry, Corporate Governance: An International Review, European Journal of Political Economy, Review of Industrial Organization, International Journal of Industrial Organization and Journal of Regulatory Economics) and in volumes published by Elsevier Academic Press, Edward Elgar, Clarendon Press (Oxford), Palgrave Macmillan and Cambridge University Press. She serves on the editorial boards of the Review of Industrial Organization and Journal of Industrial and Business Economics.

Jakob Stemberger is a Young Researcher and a PhD student at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business. His research interests include global value chains and how inclusion in them affects firms’ performance, and international trade and foreign direct investment. He has contributed to three academic papers in the last five years. Prior to starting his PhD he worked as an advisor in the financial industry. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and his master’s degree at University of Birmingham, Birmingham Business School.

Alexander F. Wagner is a professor of Finance at the University of Zurich (UZH) and a Senior Chair at the Swiss Finance Institute. He leads the Executive Education of UZH’s Faculty of Business, Economics, and Informatics, and he is Co-head of the UZH Center for Crisis Competence. Wagner earned his PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. Prior to that, he completed studies in economics and law in his hometown of Linz, Austria. Wagner’s prior practical experience derives from his work as an independent counsel for PwC and from serving as the chairman of a proxy advisor. His research focuses on corporate finance and governance, sustainable finance, and behavioural economics and finance. His talk on ‘What really motivates people to be honest in business’ is available on TED.com.

Martin Winner is Full Professor of Business Law at WU Vienna University of Business and Economics. He specializes in company law, capital markets law and intellectual property law, with a strong comparative focus. Winner has published numerous textbooks, articles and commentaries, both in German and in English, for example recently an English-language volume on the Market Abuse Regulation, edited together with Susanne Kalss, Martin Oppitz and Ulrich Torggler. He is a member of the Informal Company Law Expert Group (ICLEG), the standing advisory group for company law of the European Commission; on a national level, he has been involved in the drafting of many acts on company law over the last twenty-five years. From 2009 until 2021, Winner was Chairman of the Austrian Takeover Commission, the regulator for public mergers and acquisitions.

Todor Yalamov is an associate professor in Management and Vice-Dean for Research, Innovation and Projects at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. His teaching portfolio includes diverse courses such as e-business, innovation management, gamification, economic security, learning organization and not-for-profit management. He has an educational background in mathematics, philosophy and economics and management (master’s degrees) and a PhD in Management. Yalamov has extensive experience over more than twenty years of working as senior analyst for the Center for the Study of Democracy, doing research and advocacy in the fields of anticorruption, informal economy and good governance, and as a consultant for the World Bank in Eastern Europe and Central Asia assisting incubation, entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems. He is Director of an international MBA programme with a focus on strategic management, attracting students from more than twenty countries. Yalamov has been a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for International Private Enterprise in Washington DC, an independent non-profit affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce (2013–2014) and a Fellow of the International Visitor Leadership Program of the US Department of State (2010). He delivered a summer school course on the business of games and gamification at the University of Cologne in 2019.